Tool teaches businesses to make big business out of data

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Photo: Kia Hartelius

Big data, open data, own data. The volume of data is ever growing. But Danish businesses have much to learn when it comes to profiting off of the possible uses, says Thomas Ritter, Professor with the Department of Strategic Management and Globalization at CBS

According to him, there is ample opportunity to create a business strategy based on data of e.g. the production in a business or customer purchases.

”We are seeing a lot of fun in the sandbox with businesses trying off a lot of different things. But now is the moment of decision, where you have to take a professional approach to building a business around the data,” he says.

Businesses can find inspiration for that task at CBS Competitiveness Day 2016 on 5 September. The Danish corporate sector is invited to learn about research that could strengthen their competitiveness in e.g. business development based on data. Thomas Ritter will be presenting the analysis tool ”DataProfit” which is developed to help businesses gain an understanding of how they can better utilise the information contained in their data.

”A lot of businesses want to collect data. But they also need to profit from it. That's the challenge. If we don't support the transformation from idea to profit, the businesses will miss out, and Denmark as a nation will too,” he explains.
Thomas Ritter has interviewed and held workshops for 30 businesses and has identified four barriers:  

• The first is that the business doesn't have the necessary competences, e.g.  analytical competences.
• A second obstacle is that the business doesn't know what creates value for the customers.
• A third barrier may be management, because resources are not set aside to test the possible uses of data collection.
• And finally the fourth barrier: The businesses interviewed want a common platform where they can borrow data from each other and profit off of sharing their information.

The analysis tool is designed to help businesses overcome these barriers. A website will let businesses answer a number of questions regarding their data management – e.g. how efficient their data collection is and how the information is used. The businesses then receive a score based on their answers, which gives them an overview of their own business and what other businesses do, and helps them to make a decision on their strategy.

The tool, which is already online, will be introduced at CBS Competitiveness Day, where Thomas Ritter and his colleagues will go over the steps from data to business and how to use DataProfit. Later this year the research team will investigate the answers received to see where they should aid in the use of data in future.

”Data is the intelligence. It's hard to say how many billions Danish companies are missing out on, but if you don't utilise data, you will end up in a situation where you are a sub-supplier, have no say in the supply chain and will not make a profit,” says Thomas Ritter.

CBS is hosting Competitiveness Day for the third time with the specific aim of offering businesses application-oriented research for the businesses' benefit, explains Christina Merolli Poulsen with the CBS Competitiveness Platform, who are organising the event:

”The event is meant to strengthen competitiveness in current areas such as data-driven business development, innovation, servitisation and human capital analytics. These are important competitive parameters if businesses are to compete in both the Danish and the global market. Participants will gain practicable knowledge from top researchers who are able to communicate complex knowledge in such a way that others can both understand and apply it.”

See the programme for CBS Competitiveness Day.

Read more about the research project From Big Data to Big Business (in Danish). The analysis tool DataProfit is part of the project executed by CBS Competitiveness Platform. The project is funded by the Danish Industry Foundation, and the tool is implemented by the international research and digitisation initiative Networked Business Initiative.

Please contact Christina Merolli Poulsen or Thomas Ritter if you have any questions.