Data Marketplace: It’s about bringing people together
Do you need data for your use case? Where would you search for it? The Data Marketplace of our Global Data Platform is the place where data producers and data consumers can find each other to exchange data. However, this is much more than just a transaction. Let’s explore how the Data Marketplace can foster collaboration and become a space where people can truly connect and build relationships.
- Marialena Anyfanti Product Manager, Global Data & Analytics Platform
Building relationships: a fundamental need
All human beings have an inherent desire to connect and to build relationships. That's how humanity thrived through the centuries. Healthy relationships, whether familial, friendships, romantic or professional, are considered one of the pillars for our well-being, happiness and even success. According to data from the field of social psychology, leaders who prioritize relationships with their team members not only enhance their own performance but also significantly boost their employees’ performance.
A fundamental need of people working with data is a channel to connect and interact about the data. Therefore, the Data Marketplace is at its essence a product about bringing people together and not merely about a data exchange. As part of our vision, we have made it a priority to establish strong relationships between data producers and consumers. In this article, I will outline the best practices we followed to address three key aspects of building healthy relationships:
- Communication
- Trust
- Honesty
Establish communication channels
Everything starts with communication, to be able to openly express your opinions and needs. At the same time, it is essential to have the ability to listen.
To cover this need, we decided to build a communication channel within the Data Marketplace and to embed it within our governance. Our data producers can, and in some cases must, send out announcements to their data consumers to proactively inform them about significant changes or issues regarding their data on the Global Data Platform. Typical examples are issues in the data deliveries as well as announcements about physical changes within their data products. According to our data, announcements are a widely used and popular feature that helps enormously consumers to use their data effectively.
From the data consumer’s perspective, we addressed the need to approach data producers through the Data Marketplace in an automated manner. The consumers can ask a question to the data producer about a data product via a hyperlink that generates a prefilled email in their outlook. The producer receives the question in the mailbox and can take the necessary actions to respond to the data consumer’s inquiry. If needed, they can also update the data product with any missing information. Furthermore, consumers can raise a data issue, which is automatically assigned to the producer for investigation and action. The information about a data issue is visible to other consumers to ensure transparency and help them staying informed.
Building trust in data products
To trust means to have confidence in another person and is considered the basis for forming meaningful connections. But let’s not forget that trust takes time, effort and commitment to develop from both parties.
Within our area, we have established standards and guidelines for data management and data preparation, which guide data producers to improve their data deliveries efficiently. In addition, we are providing standards as well as insights into producers’ compliance, which help guide them in improving the quality of their metadata over time. Next to that, metadata insights give input to the consumers on whether they can trust a data product. In other words, data producers learn how to build trust in their data products, allowing consumers to decide whether they can trust and utilize a data product for their specific use case.
Cherish honesty
Honesty is the quality of being truthful in actions and words. Sharing your opinion in a respectful and constructive manner is essential to ensure all parties are in sync and to build deeper connections and bonds.
As part of the data sharing request process, we have implemented a feedback loop in the Data Marketplace. This allows the producer to pause the access request process to ask for additional input on the motivation behind the request. The consumer then needs to provide additional context, such as more detailed information about the business purpose for which the data will be used. This continues until the producer has sufficient information to make an informed decision about granting access to data.
Moreover, data consumers can share their opinions on the quality of data products by providing ratings and remarks. This functionality allows users to assess the reliability of the data products based on feedback from others, ultimately leading to the enhancement of data product quality over time.
By finding and understanding each other, we unlock the full potential of the data. "
Embracing the future
Just like relationships, our journey is ongoing. We work closely together with our users to continuously gather new insights and make our product the best possible Data Marketplace. The next focus is on strengthening existing relationships around data while also discovering and establishing new interactions.
To conclude, in our data-driven world, bringing people together is key. By finding and understanding each other, we unlock the full potential of the data. Our higher aspiration is for our Data Marketplace to significantly contribute to a more engaged and happier workplace by fostering data collaboration.
Also interesting: The Data Tango: Harmonizing producers and consumers