If You Can Buy It, It Probably Isn't Your Advantage

Large organisations often assume that the value of a dataset increases with its quality. As a result, they invest heavily in completeness, accuracy, lineage, and governance maturity.

But quality does not create value. It amplifies value that already exists.

Consider contact data, company information, and organisational hierarchies. If a third-party provider can supply a cleaner version, the value of maintaining your own version is ultimately bounded by the price of buying it. Improving the quality of commodity data may improve efficiency, but it rarely creates competitive advantage.

The more strategic datasets are different. They are created through the firm's own operations and relationships: how clients make decisions, who influences outcomes, which products gain approval, where sales teams spend their time, and what patterns consistently lead to success. These datasets cannot simply be purchased, nor are they easily recreated by competitors.

This suggests a different way to prioritise data investment. Before asking whether a dataset is accurate, complete, or well-governed, ask:

• Can competitors buy it?
• Can competitors recreate it?
• Does it improve decisions that affect revenue, cost, or risk?

Only then should quality become the focus.

Many firms govern data as if the goal were cleanliness.

The better goal is to identify and compound the few datasets whose value comes from being difficult to acquire, difficult to imitate, and uniquely yours.