For many years, those of us who believe in data empowerment from the individual perspective have suffered from the ‘chicken and egg’ problem. That is, if one wants to connect individuals and organisations in trustworthy data sharing relationships then there needs to be enough people and organisations in the connected ecosystem to clearly articulate and demonstrate the benefits to both parties that could then scale.
We will shortly make available our human-centric data simulator which enables a breakthrough around the above ability to articulate the benefits that we envisage. And which, we believe, will identify one or more paths through that chicken and egg issue.
Working with Smart Data Foundry we have created a significant synthetic dataset of ‘people’, the relationships they have with their products and services, and with the organisations that provide them. That evolving dataset began with an open banking scenario to make accessible the ‘person with a transactional relationship with an organisation’. We then take the individual view of that transactional data and augment it in a range of ways to illustrate what can be built on that ‘Demand side’ using machine learning, AI and workflow. Our next and most critical step is to show that this rich, augmented, demand side data can be made available on a granular basis to the Supply side in ways that they can then use to improve customer management across a whole array of processes from digital advertising and acquisition marketing through to customer service.
What we can already see from the new data flows that become possible is that this is not an incremental fix to the current rather broken model around personal data. This is more akin to the shift from fossil fuels driven cars to electric vehicles.
For example, when actual purchase intent data can be shared in a trustworthy way on a semi or fully-automated way, then the provision of appropriate information and offers becomes much more of a customer-pulled opportunity for dialogue, than a more broadly targeted marketing message. And when the customer can be much more precise with the details they release, those pulled offers have a conversion rate unrecognisable from the current norms.
In many ways what this enables is about building engagement and relationship management super-powers on the customer side, which then enable new super-powers on the supplier side. It builds genuine relationship, recognising that the customer/ citizen/ user/ patient/ employee now has advanced tools, data and agents on their side to bring balance to their supply relationships.
Over time, as the data-set evolves and grows, we will plug in a whole range of capabilities in order to assess their impact – positive or negative. This will include digital wallets of various types, verified credentials, new types of human-centric apps that leverage this demand side data, data spaces, 5G networking, and data services – proving things, augmenting data and personal AI.
Where this takes us, we believe, is much more tightly networked demand and supply. The data that drives Demand and Supply becomes more open and smart, but with increased privacy, data quality, and no loss in security.
This enables what we call ‘Decentralised Master Data Management’ (dMDM), by which we mean that master data management can now be externalised to include data run by and for the customer. And in many cases the customer/ citizen/ user/ patient/ employee is a more architecturally sound place to enable master data management tools and processes. In turn this enables information logistics – the right data going from the right place, to the right place, at the right time, on the right legal basis. The scale of that opportunity is shown below in a report from UK.gov and Ctrl-Shift.
Our Simulator is initially available to large B2C organisations, NGO’s, government departments and regulators willing and able to engage in collaborative learning and innovation around personal data. We will publish summary learnings over time and make the capability available to other audiences as we add more access mechanisms appropriate to different types of organisation. To have a discussion about Simulator access please get in touch via the web form on our Simulator web page.
