Quantifying the value of data has profound implications for organizations

Sunil Soares and Matt Noll

Chapter 35 in Handbook on Intangibles, 2026, pp 669-688 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Treating data as an asset continues to advance across organizations under the responsibilities of chief information and chief data officers. Complementing the trend will be the growing practice of valuing data. The concepts of data products and data use cases are increasingly adopted constructs that are helping to provide the definition and structure necessary for a data asset to be valued. Organizations that value their data are more likely to: allocate capital with more confidence and efficiency, deliver higher value to stakeholders, communicate their value proposition better to investors and customers, and make better allocations of intangibles in corporate acquisitions This chapter discusses several approaches to valuing data, including the prerequisites for data valuation, defining data products and data use cases, and data quality. Finally, the chapter also covers DataCos, wholly-owned subsidiaries with assigned data assets to drive investor appetite and regulatory compliance. The authors are co-chairs of the Enterprise Data Management Council (EDMC) Data ROI working group. The EDMC is the industry-standard trade association for data management with 25,000 practitioner members. Many of the topics in this chapter, including the recipe for valuing data, are broadly based on the authors’ work with the EDMC.

Keywords: Data economics; Data valuation; Data ROI; Data as an intangible asset; Data asset; Data intangibles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035306367
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