Rise in ‘data on balance sheet’

Those calling for data to be added to the balance sheet have had their case strengthened on the back of Microsoft claims that half of all businesses believe their data represents up to 75% of the value of their organisation.
Speaking at the Computing Big Data Summit 2013, Microsoft UK’s data platform product marketing manager Anthony Saxby cited the company’s research and argued the challenge lies in exploiting the value of the data.
One of the key drivers is bringing data silos from both inside and outside the organisation together for greater insights into the data they contain. According to Saxby, Microsoft’s customers are increasingly bringing structured and unstructured data together in order to harness powerful new insights.
He cited record label EMI as one organisation that is already benefiting from adopting this approach. Microsoft has given hundreds of EMI staff across 25 countries access to data, which is then being used to research how a particular musical artist should be presented in a particular country.
The Microsoft claims are supported by a recent SAS study, ‘Data and the CFO: a love/hate relationship’, into finance leaders’ attitudes to their company’s data. It revealed that one in five businesses are assigning a line on the balance sheet for data and managing it as an asset.