Data ROI

The importance and relevancy of data management has grown significantly across all industry. Yet in many cases, teams still struggle with defining the true ROI of data and data programs. The EDM Council is pleased to launch the Data ROI workgroup to address the challenges and define best practices. The objective of this workgroup is to work collaboratively with industry leaders and SMEs to develop a standard best practice framework for data management ROI.

EDM Council announces the publication of Measure, Manage, Create Value – Practical Steps for Achieving High Data ROI by Treating Data as an Asset, the second report produced by the Data ROI Working Group. This downloadable report demonstrates how to isolate the overall value of data in an organization from its total unattributed intangible value. This includes variations for the special situations of data product companies and banks, and illustrates how to compute a data ROI (return on investment).

The Three-Step Framework includes:

• Measure: Assign a specific value to your organization’s data.
• Manage: Understand how to treat data with similar care as physical assets.
• Create value: Establish a practice to compute the return on investment (ROI) of data initiatives.

To address this objective, this workgroup will examine the following Data ROI Use Cases:

1. The Data ROI of the Data Office and the CDO / Data Programs
   •  Can a best practice be designed to demonstrate the success of a data management initiative within the organization?
   • Can a framework be developed to bring transparency to the benefits of a proposed data project or software/hardware acquisition (e.g.: data lakes; MDM; Golden Copy; etc.)?
2. Data as an Asset with ROI
   • Is there a standard way in which intrinsic value of data can be represented (data on the balance sheet)?

For each of these use cases, the group will create a framework of best practices and guiding principles, and a resource of examples and success stories, that can be used cross-industry, to assist in defining the ROI associated with data and data management initiatives.

The Data ROI workgroup is managed by the EDM Council and co-chaired by Scotiabank and Wellington Consulting, with participation from the financial institutions, technology firms and data providers.