Recent survey data from Forrester reveals that external third-party data is rapidly rising in importance to organizations. Such third-party data sets are rising in importance partially because they provide opportunities to take advantage of the explosion in data sources — for example, from data generated by the proliferation of mobile and other sensor-enabled devices. External data provides real value — not just in traditional use cases such as improving market intelligence data, but increasingly in improving customer experiences, such as EA Sports piping real-time weather data into its game venues to create more realistic gaming experiences.
 
Our recently published report, “Navigating The New Data Market Landscape,” explores how this explosion in data sources has given rise to a new market for data and data services — what will make up the foundation of the emerging data economy. The report aims to arm both technology management as well as business professionals with the knowledge to guide new data strategies, in particular with the possibility to incorporate external data into business intelligence and decision-making.
 
My colleagues Jennifer Belissent and Gene Leganza recently wrote about what this means for CIOs and enterprise architects, but sourcing and vendor management (SVM) professionals also need to be aware of this emerging dynamic. The data economy is still in its relatively early stages and the organizational responsibilities for sourcing, managing, and governing third-party data are still very much in their formative states. Experts in supplier management are well placed to bring their know-how to bear on these emerging relationships; particularly as the data becomes more and more important to business strategies. It also raises interesting questions, such as if your organization comes to rely extensively on a particular set of third-party data, will this expose you to risk should that data no longer become available?
 
We see this as a rich area of future research at Forrester, so please leave a comment below or reach out to me directly if you have thoughts or suggestions on this emerging space.