What Is a Data Marketplace?

A data marketplace is a platform that enables data producers to list consumable data products to its users. In this way, a data marketplace simplifies how data consumers discover and access trusted data assets within an organization.

What’s the value of a data marketplace?

Organizations have no shortage of data. In fact, data creation and consumption have seen a large surge, with some studies indicating a 192.68% increase from 2019 to 2023. For this reason, the struggle to get utility out of data is ever-increasing with an estimated 60-73% of data going unused by analytics.  Why is this so challenging for organizations? Let's review some common approaches organizations use to drive data utilization – and why they fail.

What are common data-program approaches? Why do they fail?

Hire a Chief Data Officer

Hiring a Chief Data Officer (CDO) signals a commitment to a robust data strategy, but the challenge here is that the role of a CDO is frequently ill-defined, with many CDOs coming from technical backgrounds and concentrating on defensive data strategies. These strategies include modernizing data warehouses, cleaning data pipelines, and establishing data governance policies. While these tasks are crucial, they are costly and may not yield significant business outcomes within 18 months—the average tenure of a CDO. To make a real impact, the focus of the newly minted CDO should shift towards demonstrating value quickly.

Start data literacy programs

Data literacy programs are often seen as essential for enabling employees to identify, understand, interpret, and act on data within a business context to drive value and outcomes. However, despite good intentions, these programs frequently fall short. It’s challenging to make the training relevant for every employee and to provide context-specific applications of data. Like any other training, the lessons tend to fade away within a week if they are not integrated into the employees’ daily workflows.

Asking business users what they want

Organizations often begin by focusing on delivering business value, but this approach has its challenges. Business users may struggle to articulate their needs clearly. In their bestseller Competing for the Future, Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad caution companies about the risks of not understanding unspoken customer needs. This principle also applies to gathering data requirements. Despite various methods available for needs-gathering, data teams often face difficulties in capturing these unarticulated needs.

Internal data marketplace: Key features and benefits

An internal data marketplace is a platform within an organization that facilitates the discovery, access, and sharing of data among its various departments and teams.  It can transform how an organization manages and utilizes its data, driving efficiency, innovation, and better decision-making. 

Some key features and benefits of an internal data marketplace are:

Centralized data access

A data marketplace provides a centralized repository where all organizational data can be accessed. This makes it easier for employees to find and use the data they need without navigating through multiple systems.

Data as a product

Data in an internal marketplace is treated as a product. This means each dataset is well-documented, maintained, and made easily accessible to users.

Self-service capabilities

Users can search for, request, and access data through a self-service interface. This reduces the dependency on IT teams and speeds up the data acquisition process.

Enhanced data governance

Internal data marketplaces often include robust governance features, such as role-based access controls (RBAC), data lineage tracking, and compliance monitoring. This ensures that data is used responsibly and in compliance with regulations.

Improved data quality. By centralizing data and applying consistent quality standards, internal data marketplaces help improve the overall quality of data. This leads to more reliable insights and better decision-making.

Increased collaboration

These platforms foster collaboration by making data more accessible across different departments. Teams can easily share and integrate data, leading to more comprehensive analyses and innovative solutions.

Cost efficiency

By reducing data silos and streamlining data access, internal data marketplaces can lead to significant cost savings. They eliminate the need for redundant data storage and processing.

A data marketplace empowers CDOs, data program managers, and business teams to achieve early wins by democratizing trusted data. By shifting the strategy to focus on connecting data consumers and producers within a data marketplace with reliable and consumable data that addresses business questions, data leaders can set the wider organization up for success. This approach sets the stage for a meaningful data journey, unlocking new opportunities for growth, efficiency, and innovation.

What are data products?

A data marketplace typically hosts trusted data assets and data products. But this term bears some explanation. Data products are curated, reusable datasets or data assets designed to deliver value to specific business users or processes. Unlike raw data, which can be disorganized and difficult to interpret, data products are refined and structured to address particular business needs, whether for analytics, reporting, or fueling AI-driven insights.

Data products encapsulate the idea that data, when curated and managed with the intent to solve specific problems or fulfill defined outcomes, transforms into a product – one that is discoverable, addressable, trustworthy, self-describing, and interoperable. This concept is akin to how we view physical products, where the emphasis is on quality, usability, and the satisfaction it brings to the consumer.

In a data marketplace, these products are made accessible to a broad range of users across the organization, much like a physical product in an online marketplace. Each data product typically comes with clear documentation, metadata, and lineage that explain its purpose, how it was generated, and how to use it effectively. This makes it easier for users to confidently leverage data in their decision-making.

In the context of modern data architectures like data mesh, data products are treated as decentralized assets owned by different teams, each responsible for the quality, accessibility, and governance of their respective data. This approach not only improves the scalability of data-driven operations but also fosters a more agile and self-service data culture within organizations.

By investing in high-quality data products, businesses can unlock new insights, streamline operations, and enable innovation across various departments. It’s no longer just about collecting data—it’s about delivering it in a way that drives real value.

Curious to learn how a data catalog can help you develop an internal data marketplace? Book a demo with us to learn more.