6 Ways to Measure the Value of Your Information Assets

Last week we talked about how everything is measurable and it is necessary for organizations to measure the value of IT so that the entire organization sees the importance of IT. This author of this article speaks with Doug Laney, research vice president for Gartner Inc., who says there is a gap between the realized and potential value of information. Laney gives his six models for how businesses can treat data as an asset in order to help close that gap.

Non-financial Methods

1. Intrinsic value of information – breaks data into characteristics such as accuracy, accessibility, completeness, then rates each characteristic and tallies for final score.

2. Business value of information – measures data characteristics in relation to business processes.

3. Performance value of information – measures data impact on key performance indicators over time.

Financial Methods

4. Cost value of information – measures the cost of “acquiring or replacing lost information” as well as lost revenue caused by loss of data

5. Economic value of information – measures how data contributes to revenue

6. Market value of information – measures the revenue generated by “selling, renting or bartering” corporate data.

Do you agree with the methods Laney suggests? Are their other ways you would measure the value of data? Which methods do you think would be most effective at convincing your CEO that data is an asset to your company?