In the digital age we live in today, it may sound cliche to say that information is one of the most valuable assets of organisations. At the same time, the idea of developing information strategies that actually make information valuable is a lot trickier. In fact, Gartner reported that the first task of people responsible for creating such strategies should be to think of ways to link information to their business objectives. But how?

By aligning different types of data with key business objectives, decision-makers can assign an appropriate value to information. With this, they can then determine how best to store, protect, collect and, ultimately, even monetise information. However, information managers, policymakers and IT staff often do not know where to start.

Determine how closely information aligns with business objectives

Of course, different organisations value different types of information more or less. A shop may prosper or die because of their stock records. The success of an emerging tech startup will probably depend more on their product development and data testing. Because of the different needs of organisations, you need to find a way to categorise types of information by value.

Assigning value to different types of information

To help you understand how closely different types of information relate to your business objectives, you need to assign value to the different types of information.

Measure the quality of information

It goes without saying that accurate information offers you more value than poor-quality information. For example, data with errors does not help you make good decisions. You need information that helps you predict trends, make good business decisions and keep you compliant with laws and regulations in your own industry.

Determine the relevance of information

How relevant is information to your key business objectives? As mentioned above, what information is relevant varies from one organisation to another. Measures of the value of information to an organisation can also include its ease of use, analysis and sharing.

Organisations suffer a lot from what is called 'dark data'. This forgotten information that is stored in all sorts of places in the organisation, but which nobody knows is there anymore. Let alone what you get out of it. Dark data is information that Market analyst Gartner describes it as follows: 

The information assets organizations collect, process and store during regular business activities, but generally fail to use for other purposes (for example, analytics, business relationships and direct monetising). Similar to dark matter in physics, dark data often comprises most organizations' universe of information assets. Thus, organizations often retain dark data for compliance purposes only. Storing and securing data typically incurs more expense (and sometimes greater risk) than value.

Dark data can therefore be extremely useful if organisations know how to filter out the valuable information. Piquant fact is that of all the data within an organisation, the majority is dark data. That said, you can therefore conclude that organisations with more data are more likely to have more valuable information. 

Understand the performance of information

The value of information depends partly on how easy it is to use and share. This is an important factor. If employees have a lot of trouble finding and using information, even the most valuable information will not be utilised. So it is crucial that people have easy access to the right information at the right time.

Estimate the damage of lost information

How much would your company suffer if sensitive information was leaked to competitors or lost due to a data breach? In the case of loss of customer data due to hacking, the damage exceeds the value of information. There may also be additional costs due to fines from the government. Your information costs money to collect, but it can cost you even more money to lose.

Calculate how much information contributes to your income

The real value of information is not just in the cost of collecting, storing or protecting it. You should try to understand the extent to which information helps your business generate revenue. Only then can you do a proper cost-benefit analysis of information. 

Discover the market value of your data

The aforementioned Gartner report details how organisations have been able to make profits by 'marketing' their information and data. For example, big companies like Google and Facebook earn revenue mainly from selling ads to companies hoping to profit from the data these big companies collect.

Even if selling data is not the focus of your organisation, you need to understand how much others would pay for this kind of information. Just think, if your competitors would want for your information, that is an indicator of what the value is.   

Why see information as a valuable asset?

Organisations that understand how much value their information has possess a competitive advantage. These organisations are also usually much better at estimating how much they need to spend on smartly collecting, storing, securing, cleaning, sharing and analysing their information. Very often, organisations discover business opportunities from information simply by valuing it.

Since the value of different types of information to businesses can vary, it is a good idea to categorise types of information to make better decisions. In the long run, properly valuing information leads to better business choices and even more opportunities to generate revenue.

Separating valuable from non-valuable information

Separating and classifying what is valuable and what is not you can do manually. Eh, if it had been 2002 maybe. This process is eminently one to fulfil with artificial intelligence. Intelligence that filters out by itself what is valuable and what is redundant, duplicate or bad information. This intelligence is in M-Files. M-Files determines what is valuable based on all the information in your organisation. For example, M-Files recognises contracts by itself, so M-Files also finds all the contracts in your organisation despite them being everywhere and nowhere. Let alone all duplicate and draft versions of, in this case, contracts. But so this applies to all types of documents. From invoices to project proposals. 

Your organisation has dark data, prevent it from remaining an untapped goldmine.