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Although data is the main asset of modern business, the issue of its monetization remains relevant. Business owners and leaders clearly understand that data is the key to effective operations and overall success. However, they have no idea what monetization opportunities exist.

Let’s consider 3 main options for data monetization to improve business performance.

1. Transparency and understanding

The first way to monetize data is to use it for better market, trends, behavior and customer needs understanding. Data is a key tool for identifying current and future customer needs.

Regular work with customer data helps to create more relevant, quality and personalized products and services. The client gets the desired product – the business increases profit.

The result of this approach is building long-term relationships with clients, establishing their loyalty, which in turn increases the lifetime value of each client.

2. Reduction of expenses

Any company seeks to increase revenue and reduce costs. The data can be used for: business processes optimization, workplaces automation using AI, reduction of transport, logistics, time and financial costs, marketing costs optimization, etc. It is important to study the data held by the company to understand exactly how to use it to optimize all processes, cost and increase profits.

3. Data renting or selling

Of course, selling or renting data can be a great monetization option. Data uniqueness or inaccessibility will be the advantage in this case. Data is an independent asset of the enterprise? and its value is included in the total company value for a sale.

To implement this method of monetization, it is necessary to answer several questions:

• What data does the company own?
• Who might be interested in a particular data type?
• Who can pay for it?

Based on the answers and ideas, an effective monetization strategy can be drawn up.

Companies from different market area can use this method. For example, the American engineering company John Deere has created an intelligent farming system. Thus, the system collects data on weather, climate, soil condition to form recommendations for farmers what and when to plant, what fertilizers to use, etc. The company’s annual income from the data sale to farmers is about $1 billion.

Another example of using this method of monetization is the American financial services corporation Visa. The company sells data to retail businesses that need information about shopping patterns. Retailers may not always be able to see their customer’s entire purchase history. Thus. it makes impossible to get a correct understanding of shopping behavior. Visa, possessing this valuable information, sells it to companies and generates additional income of more than $1 billion a year.