Why The Best Data Might Be In A Different Industry

With Australia’s Open Banking Review now complete, sharing data from across industries will soon be the new norm. In this piece, Steven Millward, General Manager – Product, Sales and Marketing at smrtr explains why now is the time to get ahead.

Banking, automotive, insurance, agriculture and healthcare. These are just some of the industries that are currently being transformed by data. Through interpreting the vast amounts of data that are collected during day-to-day operations, businesses can identify new opportunities, resolve unseen issues and learn from past mistakes.

This means there is also now enormous potential to use data from an entirely different industry. With technology blurring the lines between industries and transformative forces such as IoT bringing these same industries closer together, looking ‘outside’ for your data has never been more viable.

The advantages are clear. By leveraging insights from another industry and identifying potential synergies, a business will gain a deeper understanding of its own strengths and weaknesses and will be able to better predict the future outcomes of any potential decisions. The characteristics of one customer from a specific industry may also be highly applicable to another industry.

However, given the continued proliferation of data sharing, it is no surprise to see the space becoming increasingly regulated and legislated. Whether it be the EU’s GDPR or the Australian Government’s review into the Privacy Act, companies now must be aware of exactly how they are managing their data.

But given we are in a data-driven economy, there is also the emergence of legislation that encourages and formalises proper data sharing – particularly between different industries. Australia’s highly-anticipated Open Banking regime, which went live in 2020, means that “big four” bank customers can share their bank data with accredited third party providers relating to home, investment and personal loans. This will help create a stronger financial services sector in its entirety and ultimately improve outcomes for consumers. The Open Banking legislation is the first part of Australia’s economy-wide Consumer Data Right.

According to Scott Farrell, who chaired Australia’s Open Banking review, the data sharing arrangements that come with Open Banking will soon be extended to new sectors such as energy and telecommunications, meaning a customer can willfully share their data across various industries.

Time to act

A telco may have data that is extremely valuable to a non-competitor in another industry, such as energy (and vice versa). However, there are still very few businesses thinking about how to capitalise on this cross-industry opportunity. Given these looming changes around the Consumer Data Right, businesses should now be thinking of ways to commercialise their data before it gets taken from them for free by consumers or other intermediaries. It is not unlikely that this legislation will continue to broaden in the coming years, meaning the time to commercialise your data is now.

One way to do this could be through a second party data deal, in which businesses essentially trade their first party data in order to provide mutually beneficial insights that can be found across the different companies. Such a deal would usually require direct interaction between the two businesses. There is also an opportunity for businesses to engage in data pooling when looking for ways to commercialise their data across different industries. Data pooling combines together different sets of data to improve the overall effectiveness.

At smrtr, we are staunch believers in the power of using data from different industries to help our partners. As an example, the value of our rich automotive data is not limited to the automotive industry. These segments can be combined with our real estate data to highlight specific purchase behaviours and help businesses across both industries target customers in the right way. We also help our partners share their data in a way that enriches it and leverages insights from differing industries. It’s all available in our data universe which combines transactional and profile based data sets across a range of industries, all mapped together using Identity Graph technology.

To find out more, contact us and we’ll be in touch by the next business day.

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