If you think you do, when it comes down to practicalities, you might be quite wrong.
As information management theory says, there’s data, information, and knowledge. Data is the sets of facts, figures, or other points of measurement that, among other things, companies store in computers. Pull the data together and you can get information that shows the relationship of the data points. Apply human experience and you turn the information into knowledge.
But it all starts with data, which is, as a result, a valuable commodity. It’s one that Anne Hollander, CEO of Lobby CRE, a Thirty Capital company, counsels commercial real estate companies to appreciate and guard.
That might bring a reply of “certainly, that’s obvious” from executives. But as it turns out, when it comes to computers and data, some things that would seem a given aren’t.
“One of the more controversial ideas that exists right now within commercial real estate is the idea of data ownership,” Hollander tells GlobeSt.com. “It requires an understanding first off of [whether] you value data? Do you value what you can derive from data? If the answer is, ‘I think we’ve got our hands around data,’ you could do a better job going forward.”
There are three aspects to this. One is understanding what a company can gain from data. Maybe there are patterns that could reveal problems and improve profitability, like improved control over cash management or uncovering a market gap opportunity in how certain types of business get transacted.
A company can improve this, but it’s also, oddly enough, probably the least of the three aspects of losing value.
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