In my recent posts, I've been exploring the issues of integrating data that originates from beyond the organization. But this post looks at a different facet of extra-enterprise data management: data availability. In many organizations, there's a growing trend of making internal analytical data accessible to external consumers. I can point to some simple examples that we barely even consider as publication of analytical data:

• Financial account comparisons. Financial services firms often provide online access to customers enabling them to review their own accounts, conduct internal research about other potential investments, and get information about how their investments compare to other, similar customers. They may also be able to see what customers with greater returns on investment are including in their portfolios. This data is intended to positively influence customer investment choices.
• Utility reporting. Power providers share data with residential customers that compares their energy utilization with other similar households. At the same time, they suggest ways to save energy and reduce costs. This information is intended to help lower overall energy spend.
• Maintenance service providers. Organizations that broker maintenance services – such as those that provide cleaning services or supplies – share information with customers that compares their overall maintenance spend against other customers' of similar size and revenues. This information is intended to generate ideas about how to be more effective, because it helps show how maintenance activities correlate with financial success.

In each of these cases, internal data is presented to external data consumers. The objective of analyzing data accumulated from numerous customers is to distill it into information products that will potentially benefit many, if not all, of the customers.

Publishing information products that are compiled from aggregated data could certainly benefit customers – but it definitely poses some challenges around data protection and governance. The basic issue is that for these types of information products to work and convey the most information possible, you need to incorporate data from all of the customers. But that requires buy-in from every customer, and agreement that each customer’s data can be incorporated into the resulting product.

Each customer may be concerned about exposing confidential information to others – no retail business would want to share its monthly sales volume with competitors, for example. An effective process will require data use agreements to be drafted for each customer (as a data provider) that specify what data can and cannot be included in aggregated information products. The data use agreements also need to spell out how the data can be used, who may use the information product, whether there are any policies the information product consumers must abide by, and even whether the data provider should receive any financial compensation.

There will be more and more opportunities to produce information products that publish aggregated shared data outside the organization. To simplify the production process, your first step should be to establish policies and governance practices that satisfy both the data providers’ and data consumers’ needs.