Data Inventorying Increases the Value of Information Assets by 15%, According to Ponemon

According to new research from the Ponemon Institute, commissioned by DocAuthority, improving the visibility and management of data can immediately increase the value of a business’s information assets by 15 percent.

The independent research surveyed 2,827 professionals with a responsibility for important business data in the US and UK, across seven functional areas. It found that the value of companies’ information assets were 15 percent higher if they were using an automated discovery tool to better understand and manage their data.

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Respondents who used an automated discovery tool:

• rated the ‘market value’ of data as being on average 15% higher than those who hadn’t used automated tools. Market value was defined as what their organisation could earn from trading or selling the information.
• rated the ‘business value’ of data as being on average 15% higher than those who hadn’t used automated tools. Business value was defined as how good and relevant the data was for specific purposes.

“Businesses are short-changing themselves if they don’t understand the value of their data,” says Doctor Larry Ponemon, Chairman and Founder of the Ponemon Institute. “You need to have a clear view of your data, where it is, who can see it, what is valuable and what is toxic if you are to effectively manage and defend it. But you also need the same level of understanding if you hope to appreciate and realise the true value of data you hold; whether that is Intellectual Property or data that increases business sales or marketing effectiveness.”

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Steve Abbott, the CEO of DocAuthority, comments, “The implications of these findings are far-reaching. Data discovery enables Chief Data Officers (CDOs) to identify the market value in order to monetise their information assets, as well as put a dollar value on governance projects. Data management – by using automated data identification tools – allows CDOs to not only communicate to the CFO in a language they understand, but to demonstrate their ability to immediately impact a business’s bottom line and can be done with relative ease.”

Steve continues, “If you don’t understand the data held within your business, how can you know the commercial value of the assets you have available in the context of a sale? Only around 5% of data retained by businesses will be the most valuable; but identifying that 5% is a major challenge for businesses battling with unstructured data.”

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