How Data Sharing is Driving Businesses Forward

Over the last several years, data has quickly become one of the most valuable assets in the world. This is particularly true for today’s enterprises. Their firewalls protect nearly 80% of the world’s data. They hold the keys to greater profits, increased efficiency, untapped potential, and innovation. Yet many modern enterprises cannot realise the full potential of their data for one simple reason: they hesitate to share it.

Data Sharing: A Long-Standing Practice

Data sharing is by no means a new practice. Data exchange has been an integral part of various industries for decades. For instance, retailers share sales data insights with Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies. This helps CPG companies understand who is purchasing their product. Banks and insurance companies rely on shared data to assess risk and detect fraudulent activities. Healthcare organisations utilise patient data to advance medical research and develop personalised treatments for better outcomes. More recently, software companies have allowed sharing of datasets between different SaaS applications through cloud platforms. Data sharing has always been vital in fostering growth and progress across diverse sectors.

Overcoming Barriers to Data Sharing

Despite the long-standing practice of data sharing, some businesses still need to be more confident. Why? Many believe data sharing is costly and risky. They think it is reserved for big enterprises dealing with massive data volumes for monetisation. Because of this, smaller companies perceive data-sharing practices as an obligatory function rather than what it is: a business goal that can open the door to opportunities for new value creation.

What is Data Sharing About?

At its most fundamental level, data sharing has always been about making data resources available to various partners. It also ensures data integrity across all data-consuming entities. However, until recently, the traditional data exchange processes between separate companies made achieving this objective almost impossible. To make the transfer, large quantities of data must be gathered and compressed into files before being exchanged and loaded into the target platform. As a result, the risk of data corruption is high. Additionally, since it’s time-intensive, it’s already outdated by the time data sharing finishes.

However, over the last few years, the rise of cloud-based data-sharing technology has effectively reduced the risks, costs, and frustration of traditional sharing methods. For instance, in 2017, the cloud-based SaaS company Snowflake introduced an innovative data-sharing service. This service enables two Snowflake deployments from two different organisations to securely share data at scale in real time within the same Snowflake platform, all without dealing with costly and complex to maintain inter-organisation data exchange flows.

The Value of Data Sharing

But what’s the driving force behind the growing data-sharing trend today? In a nutshell, data gains value when it is shared.

According to a study by Gartner, by 2023, “organisations that promote data sharing will outperform their counterparts on most business value indicators.” Implementing data-sharing practices enables organisations to streamline decision-making processes, improve overall performance, and gain a competitive edge in the market. Real-time pricing is a prime example. It’s made possible by data sharing.

This empowers businesses to make informed pricing decisions swiftly. They can rely on accurate market insights. Consequently, they can respond promptly to market changes and optimise their pricing strategies. Moreover, data sharing makes information more accessible and breaks down barriers that impede collaboration. Enabling companies to share relevant data securely facilitates collaboration and knowledge exchange. The ultimate goal is fostering innovation and growth for all parties.

Who Can Benefit from Data Sharing?

Using the right approach, businesses across nearly all industries can benefit from sharing data, internally and externally. Consider this example: organisations with multiple departments. They can utilise intra-departmental data sharing. This enhances communication by breaking down data silos, leading to streamlined processes, improved operational efficiency, resource allocation and enhanced decision-making.

Take the marketing and advertising sector as an example of external sharing. Here, data is crucial for audience metrics, targeted campaigns, and assessing campaign impact. When data is shared among advertisers, publishers, and marketing agencies, organisations can delve deeper into consumer behaviour and market trends. This leads to more effective campaigns overall.

Let’s apply these same principles and outcomes to several industries ranging from Health & Wellness, Retail, Construction, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), and Software. Recently, Salesforce and Snowflake, cloud-based software firms, joined forces. They introduced zero-copy data-sharing capabilities. This allows customers to securely collaborate on real-time data between Salesforce Customer Data Platform (CDP) and Snowflake. This reduces risks, costs, and frustrations associated with traditional sync methods.

Even enterprises dealing primarily with sensitive data can implement data-sharing practices. They can use a third-party provider to create a clean room, enabling organisations to collaborate on shared data without compromising privacy, security, or violating regulatory requirements. Primarily, marketers and advertisers utilise the latter.

Critical Factors for Successful Data Sharing

Data sharing has proven to be an invaluable strategy with overarching benefits across the entire enterprise ecosystem. However, it’s worth noting that, like any strategy, if implemented carelessly, data sharing may harm more than it helps. For any modern data-sharing practice to be effective, there are four critical success factors to consider:

• Data-sharing culture within the company. Realising the benefits of data sharing begins with fostering a culture of digital trust, open data, and collaboration from the inside out. In turn, sharing data may help discourage siloed mindsets in department leaders, making them less likely to hoard their valuable data in the future and leverage more excellent value from their data-sharing ecosystems.
• Reinforcing customer/supplier relationships. Customer and supplier partnerships play a vital role in data-sharing initiatives. By reinforcing transparent relationships built on trust, companies create an environment conducive to collaborative data sharing. This is mutually beneficial to all parties.
• A ready-to-use ecosystem. Leveraging a ready-to-use ecosystem can expedite the implementation of data-sharing practices. However, a data-sharing process isn’t a one-fits-all. Organisations should partner with trusted providers. Using these platforms will offer them robust data management and sharing capabilities that are aligned with business needs and objectives.
• Utilising Data Analysts. Only skilled data analysts can unlock the actual value of data. They do so by analysing data with the right level of granularity for the company. Using shared data, data analysts can derive actionable insights to enhance decision-making and performance in line with an organisation’s unique needs and objectives.

The Big Picture

Data sharing has been around for years. However, its implementation has generally been limited to companies with the time, capital, and risk capacity to reap its benefits. With the rapid pace of technology, these barriers have all but disappeared. This allows businesses of practically any industry or size to share data at scale at virtually no cost.

As new marketplaces continue to grow at an unprecedented rate, a world of capabilities and opportunities is opening. It securely allows companies to extract the total value of their data and easily leverage external sources. This enables more profound, more impactful insights to drive company performance and growth.

Furthermore, the proliferation of data has far-reaching implications for the growing AI-led business models that thrive and learn from increased access to diverse datasets. It accelerates the expansion of an industry already transforming how you do business. Companies can be sure of one thing: those who share will succeed when navigating the data-driven world.