By Yann Stadnicki, Chief Data Officer, iBanFirst

The rise of dark data

Since the turn of the century, the data revolution has allowed companies to analyse and understand large amounts of data by accessing multiple sources, cleaning it, aggregating it and correlating it to create valuable insights.

Companies across the globe can now use data to inform important business decisions, enabling them to improve their services and fuel their rapid expansion. This has been taken a step further with ‘dark data,’ even though for many companies a large amount of this data is unknown or unused.

Harnessing dark data is crucial for all businesses, including fintechs, looking to drive growth and stay resilient in a competitive international environment. To help companies manage this untapped opportunity, the use of automation and emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, are key.

What is dark data?

Dark data may be an unfamiliar term for many in the fintech industry. In technical terms, dark data is information collected as a by-product of normal business activities but is not used to generate income.

We also can think of dark data more simply. Think of all data as research sources. If you’re researching a specific topic such as international payments and you only use a search engine to look for sources written about this subject, you end up neglecting other important sources, such as online journals, subscription-based newspapers, magazines and journals. While not as targeted as a string of search terms, these additional sources of information could still offer valuable information on how to interpret the sources that you do use.

Dark data represents the information assets that slip through the cracks but are key to better understanding a business’ customers and the market conditions. Types of dark data can range from internal data, like email correspondences and financial statements, to external data, such as customer profiles and information. By analysing these data sources, businesses can contextualise existing insights and generate new intelligence to inform their business models, strategies, and day-to-day operations. Therefore, dark data is crucial to decision-making.

The good news is that almost all companies will have an abundance of dark data because as the volume of data increases, so does the volume of dark data. However, many businesses have neglected dark data and its impact, so they are missing out on vital information and intelligence that could transform their business.

Tapping into dark data with emerging technologies

Harnessing dark data – by transforming it into coherent and structured data – can often seem overwhelming. This is where automation and emerging technologies come in by enabling businesses to accelerate the learning process. For example, a business can use AI to perform a repetitive task previously carried out by an employee, with that employee being moved to a part of the business where they can add additional value and increase the company’s ROI.

With access to dark data, companies can better understand their business, and anticipate, detect, and navigate costs. As a result, they will be more informed when it comes to making critical business decisions. For instance, a large European hotel chain analysed its internal dark data, in the form of Wi-Fi usage data, to identify and solve their customers’ issues regarding excessive waiting times to check in and out, as well as improving staff allocation across the hotel. Dark data helped the business to optimise its resources while improving their customer experience.[1]  Similarly, research by Accenture shows that dark data has helped insurance companies unlock valuable insights, increasing their profits by up to 21%.

Dark data offers the same business benefits for fintechs, allowing them to generate stronger analytics and potential business opportunities.

Business resilience in a post-COVID-19 world

For those approaching dark data for the first time, it is not too late to begin leveraging it. Dark data offers businesses of all sizes – from SMEs to multinationals – a means to remain competitive and profitable in the current international environment. In particular, there is a significant opportunity for hyper-growth companies since they will have built up vast amounts of dark data over a short space of time.

As we move in a 2021 post-COVID-19 world, all businesses will be striving for resilience. The difference between companies that sink or swim will be how closely aligned they are with market conditions and customer expectations.

Dark data is key to resilience. It is a golden opportunity for fintechs to make informed, data-led business decisions. So, by leveraging dark data as part of their organisation’s business model, CFOs can drive new business opportunities while providing their business with a significant edge over their competitors.