From data chaos to data products: Big Data LDN

Organizations now have access to an enormous variety and volume of data. Yet while this is collected, stored, and cataloged the majority of it remains unused. It is stuck in silos, only accessible to technical experts with the skills and tools to unlock its value. According to IDC 68% of data remains unused with the average organization.

It is time to break down these silos, free information and make it easily available to the entire business to unlock value and deliver improved performance, productivity, and innovation.

Drawing on Opendatasoft’s presentations at the forthcoming Big Data LDN event (24-25 September 2025), this blog explores how data products and data product marketplaces can transform and scale data consumption to deliver benefits at scale, turning data chaos into value.

Today’s Chief Data Officers (CDOs) and Chief Information Officers (CIOs) face a growing number of priorities and objectives to deliver on when it comes to data. These are the top five that they are tasked with achieving:

The need to empower business teams with data

To deliver value from their data investments, CDOs must break down silos between business, IT, and data teams, democratizing access to ready-to-use data products. This will demonstrate the importance of their role and budgets to the business and enable everyone to benefit from data in their working lives, increasing productivity, efficiency, and innovation. At the same time CDOs need to remove duplication and ensure consistency by centralizing and distributing external data (whether free or paid-for) across the organization, saving money and providing straightforward access to this information.

Governing the lifecycle of data products

Organizations are investing heavily in data products to transform data into business value. These business-focused, consumption-ready data assets are designed to be used at scale, continually developed and governed by data contracts. They transform raw data into understandable, trusted data that provide business users with everything they need to confidently harness data in their working lives. However, creating and managing data products across their lifecycle, from identifying areas to focus on, to keeping them updated to meet user needs is complex. CDOs must also balance providing access to data at scale with data governance to ensure regulatory compliance and security.

Accelerate analytics use cases & AI-ready data

Every organization is focused on deploying AI to drive efficiency and greater efficiency. Successful AI relies on accurate, up-to-date, and complete data – without it models and agents will not deliver on their promised benefits. It is therefore vital that CDOs put strong data foundations in place, providing AI-ready data before they accelerate and scale their AI projects. At the same time as making reliable data available to AI, it also needs to be available to human users through business intelligence and analytics tools, driving better decision-making by analysts and experts.

Enhance and monetize data assets

Simply making internal data available to employees is not enough to guarantee value. To generate ROI, it has to be the right data, focused on people’s needs, and based on specific high-value use cases. Enhancing data promotes data reuse internally, delivering the benefits of innovation and efficiency, and also enables data to be potentially monetized externally, providing new services to customers and generating additional revenues for the business.

Share information as open data in their ecosystem

Consumers, citizens, partners, and regulators are all demanding greater transparency from the public and private organizations that they deal with. CDOs therefore need to be able to publish accurate and reliable public information around areas such as performance and progress towards sustainability goals. In many cases, such as the energy sector, this is mandated by law, meaning that achieving compliance is vital. Sharing data across ecosystems also underpins greater efficiency and innovation, enabling greater collaboration that benefits everyone involved. 

All of these priorities revolve around data, making it vital that organizations are able to share it at scale with all employees and partners in ways that they understand, trust and can make use of. However, achieving this consumption is held back by:

• Complex, large data infrastructures that are focused on storing, governing, and cataloging the growing volumes of data that organizations now collect, rather than making it available to all. These add to inefficiency and costs.
• Technical tools, such as data catalogs, which are designed to be used by data experts, rather than business teams. This adds to data team’s workloads as they are responsible for handling a growing number of data requests from the business.
• Data silos which hide information from the wider business, meaning it cannot be easily discovered or accessed. This also leads to potential data duplication and means there is no single version of the truth that is trusted by everyone in the business.
• A lack of a data culture. As data is difficult to access, business teams are not confident in using it in their working lives. Even if they can find data, they don’t trust in its reliability or accuracy. They therefore follow manual processes or make decisions based on incomplete information, potentially leading to poor outcomes and greater inefficiency.

CDOs understand the requirement to scale data consumption to meet their objectives and unlock value at scale. Existing data infrastructures and approaches are not able to provide this as they are focusing on managing data, not ensuring its availability to all. Without consumption, data simply doesn’t deliver sufficient value. 

Leading organizations are therefore deploying a combination of data products and data product marketplaces to scale data consumption and enable data democratization.

Data products

Data products make data understandable and consumable at scale. They have five key characteristics:

•     They are business-focused, addressing a specific, identified, and significant business need
•     They are easy to discover and access, and include all the elements required (such as data, tools, and visualizations) to enable their seamless consumption by non-experts
•     They are designed for a large user base, to deliver impact at scale
•     Their development is ongoing, with data products continuously monitored, updated, and improved in line with user feedback
•     They are governed through clear data contracts that provide SLAs for data quality, how it can be used, and access rights

Data product marketplaces

Creating data products is the first step in scaling data consumption. However, they need to be easily available, discoverable, and consumable by all employees if they are to deliver real benefits.

This is why data product marketplaces are vital. They provide a single, centralized, and intuitive self-service space that allows the publication, discovery, consumption and management of data products and other assets. With a user experience based on e-commerce marketplaces, they act as a storefront for data products, connecting non-technical users and AI models with the data they need and those who have produced it. 

They act as the last mile of data sharing, making it easy for data owners to publish data products and other assets while ensuring governance and security through granular access management and clear approval workflows. Essentially, they provide a one stop shop for data for everyone, from human business users to AI models and agents with centralized, secure access to ready-to-consume data at scale. This accelerates data value, greater efficiency, improved performance and increases innovation.

Opendatasoft’s powerful data product marketplace is already enabling over 350 organizations globally to increase data consumption and value. Delivering an intuitive, self-service, AI-powered experience and the highest levels of security and governance, it enables organizations to share, manage, and activate their data more effectively.

 Join us at Big Data LDN, the UK’s leading data event to find out more. We’ll be on stand J78 at Olympia between 24-25 September. Visit us to experience:

•   Live demos of our AI-driven internal data marketplace solution in action
•   Expert insights with our team sharing best practice advice on transforming data into value
•   Peer-to-peer networking with other data leaders who will share their experiences

And don’t miss Matt Webb, CIO of Opendatasoft customer UK Power Networks, outlining how the UK’s largest electricity network operator has turned data into insight, innovation, and performance. Matt will be speaking at 11.20 on 24 September in the Data & AI Strategy Theatre.

Book a meeting with our team or just come along to our stand to learn more. We look forward to seeing you at Olympia!