Written by Eric Johnson, CIO, Talend

Data has transformative power, going beyond improving current business operations and giving companies the opportunity to reinvent themselves with new products, services, and business models. Across virtually every industry and all sizes of companies, data is a difference maker, helping to launch innovative projects that would not be possible otherwise.

In my role as CIO of Talend, I've had the opportunity to see excellent examples from among our customers of how data is playing the role of a change agent - and yielding benefits. For some, data has sparked innovation and the development of better products and services. For others, data has enabled a transformation from a product-centric business to an experience-centric one.

Truly data-driven companies go beyond improving existing processes and operations with data: they solve business problems and innovate for their end-users.

For example in the financial services sector, banks and credit card companies are leveraging data to improve customer retention. One way they do this is by sending detailed credit card usage reports at the end of the year. In this case, historical data provides transparency and next-level details that enable households to better understand how they spent their money over the past year and give insights into how they can manage funds better in the coming year. This yearly credit card summary is now a standard across banks because of the perceived value it gives customers.

TD Bank, one of the largest banks in Canada, has taken this a step further, not only looking into the past but also forecasting the future for its customers. As part of an effort to anticipate the projects of customers - may it be to buy a first home or to finance a child's education - and guide them through their financial journey, the bank analyzes data to suggest the right savings or credit products customers will soon need. This enables the bank to continue providing customers with a "legendary customer experience."

To achieve this, TD Bank created an infrastructure that includes a private cloud data lake with data on customer behavior and interests. In addition to gathering operational data about customer interactions, transactions, and feedback, the bank is also mapping non-banking information such as data that shows how customers interact, using their phones or communicating on social media. The cloud infrastructure lets the bank provide users with on-demand access to the data and tools they need. With the latest cloud management and analytics technology, TD Bank has greatly reduced the expense of analyzing and delivering actionable insights from its data. Among the biggest benefits: $13 million in cost avoidance. By applying complex analytics to data, TD Bank can then create unique, customized experiences for each customer.

In addition to spurring innovation, data is helping support a shift from product-centric consumption to customer experiences. This is best exemplified in the automotive industry, where cars as products are declining in numbers but traveling and transportation options - the experience - is on the rise.

Keolis, which provides public transportation such as trams and automated subways, is riding this experience wave by going beyond simply taking passengers from point A to point B. The company's philosophy is that public transportation should offer the best customer experience, with offerings such as displayed timetables and station arrival times, mobile apps for route planning, and e-tickets.

A key component of Keolis' IT infrastructure is a platform that lets Keolis manage 2.5 million messages each day that come from more than 500 data feeds shuffling back and forth among 70 systems. Thanks to the platform, Keolis can offer travelers new multi-device services (website, mobile, tablet, e-shop, ticket dispensers). With its Plan/Book/Ticket project, a single application combines all the daily services a traveler needs: finding the right route, buying a ticket and validating it.

Pizza company Domino's is also focusing on enhancing customer experience through data, always making it easier for customers to order food. Domino's AnyWare offering enables customers to order pizzas via smart watches, TVs, car entertainment systems, social media, and even Amazon Echo. All those channels add up to a large amount of data that Domino's consolidates to gain a single view of its customers and global operations.

Domino's is also using business intelligence and advanced analytics to gain more insights from the data, in part by leveraging a unified platform on a private cloud for data integration, big data, master data management, and data quality. The company has built a data tracker that collects data from all its point-of-sale systems and 26 supply chain centers, and through all its channels. With a modern data platform in place, Domino's has a trusted, single source of the truth that it uses to improve business performance - from logistics to financial forecasting - while enabling one-to-one buying experiences across multiple touchpoints. Over the past decade, this data-driven strategy as well as the renewed focus on customers has really paid off. Domino's is now the No. 1 pizza company in the world.

The transformative power of data knows no barriers. It's not just the consumer market that can benefit; business-to-business and business-to-government can also create new revenue streams and new services thanks to trusted data.

Consider Euronext, the first pan-European exchange in the eurozone, which fuses together the stock markets of Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, Lisbon, and Paris, and comprises nearly 1,300 issuers.

In 2016, Euronext began its data modernization and moved its database, one of the largest in Europe with 100 terabytes of data, to the cloud. The database is the active memory of transactions handled directly by the stock exchange operator each day (some 1.5 billion messages). The goal was to create a governed data lake with self-service access for business units and clients to monetize new services and generate additional revenues. Euronext uses a big data platform to absorb real-time data in the data lake, including internal data from its own trading platform; and data from external sites such as news services.

In addition to managing much more data, Euronext is now positioned to become a "data trader," able to refine and add to its wealth of information so it can monetize the data. Because data and analytics are now timelier, Euronext can share its data with external partners on a pay-per-use basis. The sale of data already brings in 20% of the exchange's revenues. Getting trusted data on a timely basis is truly changing the way Euronext does business.

Also benefiting from data in a B2B context is Air France KLM E&M, which is using data on its maintenance programs to provide more efficient maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) services for aircrafts.

Air France KLM began by using data collected from sensors on its Airbus A380, as part of an IoT initiative, to predict when aircraft parts would need to be replaced. With this first predictive maintenance project, the airline collected a huge quantity of historical data about deficiency of plane parts on its own fleet of planes. Ultimately, this database gave Air France KLM a great competitive advantage to do a better job than its competitors of pinpointing defects and predicting the failure of parts.

The possibilities for leveraging new and existing data streams are virtually endless. Data enables people to live better, to do their jobs better and companies to proactively serve their customers.

The examples outlined in this article have some key  things in common: the data is trusted and it's timely. This innovation through data does not come overnight. To be successful, any data initiative needs to include a flexible technology architecture, company commitment and courage to do things different. Only then, can you deliver trusted data at the speed of business.

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About the Author

Eric Johnson, Chief Information Officer, Talend