You have to start managing data as a corporate asset.

Doesn't that sound like so much finger-wagging by pedantic-sounding industry gurus and consultants? I've been telling clients and audiences to manage their data as an asset for over three years now. It sounds great. But no one--including a lot of the gurus busy admonishing their constituencies--really knows what it means.

I like to tell the story of a CIO who, when asked whether her company was managing data as an asset, shook her head up and down so fervently she looked like a bobblehead. "Yes, we are!" she insisted. I then asked her whether she was investing in data proportionally to her other corporate assets.

Suddenly her office was so quiet we could hear the hum of the Data General MV/8000 systems in the computer room downstairs.

To understand what it means to manage data as an asset, you first have to understand the business definition of the term "asset." An asset:

• Is something that has value. For instance, a company's inventory has value.


• Is something whose value can be measured. For instance, a company's fleet of vehicles has quantifiable value on its own. Furthermore, the cost of the fleet not being operational is also measure-able.


• Helps a company achieve its strategic objectives.

When managed the right way--that is, as an asset--a company's data meets all three of the above criteria.

Obviously, you can't just flip a switch and start managing data as an asset. There are processes, skills, and technologies that should be brought to bear on corporate data. It's called data asset management, and the acronym itself appropriately echoes the expletive your business executive utters when he realizes that--like other corporate assets--you have to invest in data to realize its true potential.

But like other corporate assets data is worth the investment.