Navigating Data Standards in Business Strategy

Examines the evolving landscape of data privacy and ethics, arguing that businesses can build trust and drive growth by adopting transparent, consumer-focused data frameworks beyond legal compliance

Data privacy continues to be an important topic for discussion throughout changing technology, business, and legislation landscapes. The U.S. legislation continues to shift state-by-state, resulting in changes that are often difficult for companies to keep up with. This is (one reason) why businesses should adopt their own data framework principles to guide their business strategy. Developing data guidelines or principles is the practice of a business voluntarily going beyond data privacy legislation to create and implement a data collection and usage framework that prioritizes customer relationships through a lens of transparency and control.
The book explores how consumer data are currently collected from everyday interactions, surveys, website usage, purchases, and more, then examines how that information feeds data and business strategies for companies around the world. Data collection is often complex—it requires different kinds of technology and uses different validation methods, all across different pieces of data—and this complexity can lead to issues with accuracy and tracking of when and how consumer data are used. Data are used to drive business strategies by helping companies find their most loyal users, bring in new customers, and increase usage, among other things. An underlying guide for data principles can lead to improved accuracy in data collection, help businesses stay transparent with consumers, generate more trust, and ultimately, increase business performance.
As consumers become more educated and more aware about what data are collected and how they are used by companies, there is a growing need for businesses to develop a relationship with their consumers built on trust and mutual value. There is currently a gap between the amount of data collected, its usage, and how consumers trust and value the companies with which they do business.
Finally, this book discusses how businesses can bridge that gap, between consumer trust and effective business strategy by developing their own set of data guidelines and principles that can improve business growth. These strategies are designed to help drive consumer trust by treating consumers like real people and understanding the relationship between data collection, usage, and consumer trust.