Regardless of their industries, today's digitally-driven organizations are increasingly recognizing data as the lifeblood of their daily operations and a key tool in unlocking future successes.
Whether that data is used to innovate, monetize or convert new customers, more and more businesses are waking up to the value of data and the necessity of data collaboration in harnessing its power. Those that realize this sooner will be rewarded for their foresight; in the next year alone, organizations that harness data collaboration are predicted to outperform competitors on most business value metrics.
Already, data collaboration is enabling seismic transformations, enabling:
1. Better security
As finances, identity checks, and other highly sensitive activities have become digital by default, so have threats from those looking to compromise such personal information. In response, businesses have had to adopt fraud prevention and detection efforts that help prevent anti-money laundering and enable better Know Your Customer (KYC).
To combat this, e-commerce giant eBay and its various service providers utilize data collaboration to guarantee that data is only ever accessible by those intended to see it, and not imposters or intruders. All data governance decisions within eBay are driven by its data-sharing council, comprised of representatives from all corners of the business, including technology, product, legal and more. While eBay is an early adopter of such a setup, other businesses looking to seize the data collaboration opportunity will undoubtedly follow suit.
2. Deeper insights
Sales and marketing teams have long understood the importance of data in attracting, converting and retaining customers and driving brand loyalty. Today, emails, social media channels, previous purchases and other digital touchpoints are monitored to help retailers gain deep insights into the behaviors and expectations of their customers.
Taking things a step further, Majid Al Futtaim, a leading mall, community, retail and leisure conglomerate in the Middle East, used data collaboration techniques to maximize the value of its data and mine deep data-driven insights into hundreds of millions of customers. Data collaboration allowed every business within its malls and communities to safely and securely share data, gather insights and work together to better understand and monetize customer interactions.
This use of data collaboration was such a success that the Dubai government enlisted Majid Al Futtaim to continue its efforts, helping the government better understand the region’s economic trends and develop new policies accordingly.
3. Faster progress
Time has always been of the essence for the medical industry, which relies heavily on the latest and greatest technologies and innovations to improve patient diagnosis times, treatment effectiveness and drug development.
Looking to speed up the time taken on the latter, MELLODDY, a 17-partner European consortium, built a data collaboration platform based on federated machine learning in order to mine insights from countless preclinical datasets quickly. The use of data collaboration allowed for accelerated drug development as each contributor was able to train a machine learning model from the privacy of their organization’s firewall and safe in the knowledge that their data remained firmly - and safely - within their own infrastructure.
What is a Collaborative Data Ecosystem