Family businesses underestimate the value of their data

The value of the data generated by businesses is being undervalued by many family firms as they fail to realise the importance of such information to help run their businesses more effectively.

A new study by German research groups TU Darmstadt and credit shelf found that many of Germany’s important Mittelstand businesses lack the know-how to evaluate “Industry 4.0” data and are missing out as a result.

“It is a pity that many companies are not yet able to analyze their industrial data and that of their customers,” says Tim Thabe, founding partner and CEO of credit shelf. “Tomorrow’s production will be based on real-time data – and that will fundamentally change financing.”

The study says the lack of Industry 4.0 data will undermine the financing for these businesses in the future.

Rado Lipus, founder and CEO of Neudata, which scouts for new and interesting datasets, reckons family businesses are missing out on millions of dollars of revenue by not using their data more efficiently.

“The data monetization opportunity for many family businesses to the financial sector is in several millions of dollars of recurring revenues. And in rare cases in tens of millions of recurring revenues. It is particularly valuable if the data source is unique, has granularity, and its timeliness is high.”

Data is becoming so important for businesses of all sizes that some analysts are now saying the data companies have might be more valuable to them than the actual product or service they produce.