At Working Three we spend a lot of time helping our clients see the world from their customer’s perspective.

To help you do the same I pose one simple question: are you comfortable with how much data companies hold about you and what they are doing with it? If your answer is “no” you may want to consider how the conversation about and approach to consumer data is developing in your company. Then ask yourself  “would I want to be our customer”.

Oil is valuable. If you find, collect and store oil it will remain valuable. Data is a very different thing. Data is generated when people do something. It is a record of an event. That means it starts losing value almost as soon as it is generated because it ages. We can see trends and obtain insights but to get real value from data it must be used in real time. Simply gathering and storing data is a pointless exercise.

From a business perspective that sounds great – a new way to communicate with your customers and it can be adapted to suit them. But this brings us back to our first question. As a customer are you comfortable with this? Companies try and convince themselves that people don’t really care, but of course they do.

And this is where the real opportunity actually lies. As a business leader try to avoid thinking about data as an asset to be mined. Think about it as the raw material you can use to offer value to your customers and build a better relationship. As London based author David McCandless said “Data is the new oil? No: Data is the new soil”. It’s the place where your customer relationships can grow.

Generating business value from consumer data isn’t about technology at all. It’s about how you use data to create a fantastic experience for your customers. If you can help your customer get value from their own information they will reward you for that effort. If you continue to use data to spam your customers or  provide value to your company, you may find yourself wondering where everybody went.