No self-respecting EA professional would enter into planning discussions with business or tech management execs without a solid grasp of the technologies available to the enterprise, right? But what about the data available to the enterprise? Given the shift towards data-driven decision-making and the clear advantages from advanced analytics capabilities, architecture professionals should be coming to the planning table with not only an understanding of enterprise data, but a working knowledge of the available third-party data that could have significant impact on your approach to customer engagement or your B2B partner strategy.
 
 
Data discussions can't be simply about internal information flow, master data, and business glossaries any more. Enterprise architects, business architects, and information architects working with business execs on tech-enabled strategies need to bring third-party data know-how to their brainstorming and planning discussions. As the data economy is still in its relatively early stages and, more to the point, as organizational responsibilities for sourcing, managing, and governing third-party data are still in their formative states, it behooves architects to take the lead in understanding the data economy in some detail. By doing so, architects can help their organizations find innovative approaches to data and analytics that have direct business impact by improving the customer experience, making your partner ecosystem more effective, or finding new revenue from data-driven products.
 
In collaboration with my Forrester colleagues I'm undertaking a thread of research into the data economy — what it is, how it works, how it is impacting organizations, and how to make the most of it. In the near future we'll be looking at practices for monetizing data. To begin familiarizing yourself with the roles and the players in the emerging data economy, I invite you to read and download the first report we've done in this series, Navigating The New Data Market Landscape
 
Let me hear from you if there are particular areas in which you need more research. One of the areas I'm looking into is the impact on organizational design from the increasing priority of enterprise data capabilities. How is the data economy impacting you?