Many company owners have not yet grasped the fact that data is now the single most valuable asset of their business. What these owners don’t understand is that, in many ways, data is the new currency—and that the monetization of information is potentially more valuable than their traditional products and services.
Take, for example, casino operator Caesars Entertainment. When the company filed for bankruptcy several years ago, it was not the physical assets or the land Caesars owned that was deemed most valuable. Instead, it was the company’s data. Specifically, its customer loyalty program, which held detailed information on more than 55 million gamblers, was assessed to be worth a whopping $1 billion by creditors.
This goes to show that it is data that holds lasting value and drives a business forward. Yet too often, business owners think of data as something inextricable with technology—and that technology is best left to the nerds in the back office.
This is a mistake, especially now. Because as companies accumulate an increasing amount of data and as this data becomes increasingly valuable, it is the companies that appreciate the significance of their data and manage it effectively that will win in the years ahead.
The value of data—and its recovery
You might think companies would realize the urgency of managing and monetizing all the data they collect, but most don’t. More than two-thirds (69%) of all business owners are not adequately aware of or appropriately concerned about the business impact of data growth, according to a new study by Dimensional Research.
Data accumulation remains a severe issue for companies large and small. A typical business now manages 100 times more data than it did 20 years ago. In a short space of time, even SMBs have gone from managing gigabytes of data to petabytes, introducing a new set of problems they never anticipated—namely, how to organize and make sense of all this information.
Unfortunately, many SMBs are still relying on the same outdated data-management technology they used at the turn of the century. Yes, this legacy infrastructure helped many SMBs get where they are today, but continued dependence on it will cripple them as they try to make progress in the digital era.
What SMBs need is a system that will not only manage data effectively, but that will quickly recover data in case of a system outage—because the loss of data can quite literally mean the end of a business. Any responsible business leader who is focused on the strategic direction of the company must get intimately involved in data recovery.
However, according to that same Dimensional Research survey, an astounding 64% of business leaders are either unaware and uninterested in data recovery, or they only want a basic assurance that their company has a data recovery plan in place, never mind the details.
In this day and age, that’s like saying you don’t know or care how your business makes money, as long as the money is there when you want it. It’s just not a successful strategy for building a thriving business in the digital era.
Testing, testing
What is a successful strategy is an appreciation of data as an asset and attention to all the details of its management and recovery. You need to know if your business can survive a data outage and quickly recover. Regular testing of your backup system is critical to provide assurance of your ability to recover in case of data loss.
Yet, at too many businesses, this testing never happens. They wait till there’s a crisis before they worry about a solution, which is a bit like waiting till you’re in a head-on collision before you think about checking your airbags.
You need a solid backup plan, and you need to be able to recover all your data quickly and completely. This is critical for business continuity—and testing is the only way to ensure the information you depend on is safe. Organizations should make it a habit to periodically test their backup copies to ensure they can reliably restore data.
As the proliferation of data reaches more enormous proportions ever, business owners need to take more responsibility and have a greater awareness of the volume, composition, and business value of their data. After all, that awareness is the critical first step in using data to their advantage while also keeping it safe and secure.
Rising to the challenge
The good news is that modern storage technology can give business owners exactly what they need: the ability to understand and access their data easily and quickly recover that data in the event of a system outage. The better news is that these new storage management solutions don’t cost an arm and a leg and don’t require a team of full-time tech people to operate. They can be implemented and run by non-technical businesspeople.
Exploding data volume, limited storage capacity, and the escalating cost of downtime are among the most pressing challenges faced by SMBs today. Businesses can rise to these challenges by getting closer to their data and more involved in solutions for its management and recovery. This will enable them to maximize the value of their data and ultimately flourish in the digital economy.
