Why controlling the flow of data is more important than controlling its value

As you may have noticed, none of the four characteristics of Data Driven Strategy—reciprocity, flow control, scalability and platform—are about the data itself. They are all about the way in which your organization is capable of providing a consistent, scalable flow of data that is easy to access and of high quality. From the customer’s point of view, flow control is probably one of the most basic and important criteria: It guarantees the continuous supply of dependable data.

If data were a raw material in an offline production process, flow control of the raw material would be a no-brainer. As soon as your supply of raw material runs out, the production line comes to a halt. With data, however, sometimes the consequences of not providing (or providing only part of the data) are not immediately noticeable. Since a majority of the data is obtained through a production...