Companies are constantly asked how they can use data to enhance operations and improve decision-making. But an equally important question is often overlooked: Can internal data become a new business opportunity?

This is data monetisation — the selling of internal data — and it is a huge opportunity. Companies across industries have successfully turned their everyday operational data into a valuable external resource.

The data monetisation opportunity

Data monetisation isn't new, but it's gaining momentum across industries. More businesses are recognising that their internal data - when aggregated, anonymised and structured appropriately - can have significant external value.

A growing percentage of organisations are actively generating revenue from selling their data, with even more planning to in the near future. The shift reflects a broader recognition that data is an asset - not just for internal use but as a marketable product.

Who buys data, and why?

A huge opportunity exists in the investment world —  hedge funds and asset managers that trade equities, bonds and other asset classes for their investors. Private equity, venture capital and other types of investment firms are also potential clients.

Other data buyers include:

• Consulting and strategy firms - Use external data to advise corporate clients and predict market trends.
• Insurance and risk management - Evaluate external data for underwriting, fraud detection and pricing models.
• AI and technology companies - Require vast datasets to train machine learning models and enhance predictive analytics.

These businesses are hungry for new datasets to give them an business edge. Some of the most commonly sourced datasets include:

• Web-scraped/web-crawling data
• Transactional data
• Web- and app-tracking data
• News and event data
• Economic and macro data data

Case study: consumer spending

Consumer spending is a key indicator that helps build a picture of economic health and future performance. Data sourced from e-receipts is, therefore, very popular in this space. Breaking down such data by region or sector can be useful for forecasting consumer spending indices and retail sales. This means even a bank — maybe even your credit card provider — can monetise its data. It might well be already.

One very popular vendor on the Neudata platform offers anonymised banking, debit card and credit card transaction data from 20 million consumers, updated daily, while another offers point-of-sale data for consumer packaged goods, covering 900 thousand stores across 85 countries.

Advantages of selling data

Beyond generating revenue, data monetisation offers several strategic benefits:

• Diversified income streams – Create new revenue channels without disrupting core operations.
• Stronger market position – Offering unique data insights enhances industry credibility and influence.
• Internal innovation – Encourages better data governance and infrastructure improvements.
• Enhanced departmental value – Positions data teams as strategic contributors rather than cost centres.
• Increased business valuation – Well-managed data assets can strengthen a company’s financial standing and attractiveness to investors.

Key challenges to consider

Many businesses underestimate the potential of their data simply because they haven't explored these factors in depth. However, with the right approach, data monetisation can be both compliant and highly profitable.

Sellers need to consider confidentiality and compliance issues. Who owns the end data? How will this new business offering be explained and communicated to existing clients?

If solid data practices are in place internally, it should be relatively straightforward to source and structure data. The challenge will be to identify potential data customers and understand how they will want to use the data in their decision-making processes.

Wondering how to price your alternative data? There is no rulebook here — the most important factors to consider are the uniqueness, relative scarcity and investment idea-generating potential of your data.

Where to start

If you're curious about monetising your data, the first step is understanding its value.

“Neudata is ideally placed to consult on data monetisation and help companies create new revenue streams to future proof their businesses.” Rado Lipuš, founder and CEO, Neudata.

Neudata's data monetisation division helps companies establish whether they have sellable data. We can:

• Assess the value of data
• Determine what products a company could build with their data
• Provide use cases and rank their market potential
• Advise on compliance or data aggregation required to enter the market
• Help structure data collection and contracts to be compliant and/or have ownership at an aggregated level

It is an end-to-end service built on five strands, from market introduction to in-life management, once a data product is being actively sold on the market.

Learn more

Up next: Knowing your use case