Unifying data sharing through a data marketplace – lessons from Bouygues Group

Large, diversified international companies can struggle to share data effectively across the entire organization. Data remains siloed inside individual subsidiaries or country organizations, making it unavailable to the wider business. In turn, this leads to inconsistencies, data duplication, and additional time and resource spent sourcing information that has already been created elsewhere.

Sharing data effectively in such a complex environment with a range of different technology stacks is difficult. Data product marketplaces bridge this gap, providing a single space for data sharing and collaboration. 

We talked to Corentin Lienard, Data/AI Innovation Project Manager at Bouygues Group to find out how they had successfully accelerated data sharing through their self-service data product marketplace. The Bouygues Group operates in more than 80 countries, with six main businesses across four sectors – construction, media, telecoms, energy and services. This diversity is a valuable asset for the Group, but it also creates a major challenge around sharing data with its approximately 200,000 employees.

“We had one main challenge. The Bouygues Group comprises six companies (Colas, Bouygues Construction, Bouygues Immobilier, Equans, Bouygues Telecom, and TF1). across four sectors.

Each business function has its own data, and there was little to no sharing in place between individual companies or the central organization. These data silos lead to resource duplication, missed business opportunities, limited synergies between business functions, and a significant amount of high-value data that remained underutilized across the Group.”

“Previously data sharing relied on manual methods, such as SharePoint or email, with no automatic updates or traceability. What we wanted was a self-service platform to exchange data, built on strong governance, interoperability and robust security/ethics.

We needed three things from a data marketplace. Firstly, as each subsidiary has its own tech structure, the solution had to be able to connect to a wide variety of solutions and data sources. 

Secondly, we realized that to drive engagement and usage by the business, the marketplace had to be intuitive and easy to use. It had to reflect the different brands and ways of working that our subsidiaries have, without adding to technical complexity. 

Finally, it had to be secure and protect data, ensuring that it could only be accessed by authorized users in line with our governance and compliance policies.

Based on these needs, we selected Huwise to provide the technology for our corporate DataHub.”

“We knew that simply creating a marketplace and sharing data doesn’t drive usage, particularly given the size of the group. 

So on the technology side we focused on the user experience. Thanks to the Huwise platform’s flexibility and white-label customization capabilities, each business area has its own branded homepage. Subsidiaries share the same entry point and the same features, but with their own visual identity. This sense of ownership directly encourages platform adoption.

Secondly, we looked to create a data culture.  The solution is supported by a team of Group-level coordinators, now complemented by organizers within each business area, all of whom are responsible for ensuring data quality and smooth data flows. The model is based on data producer accountability. Every producer is responsible for what they share, including ensuring that data is authorized to be used, particularly with regard to GDPR. The organizers within each business area ensure compliance with this framework.

Each homepage highlights the latest shared data products and introduces the business-area organizers, making it easy for users to immediately identify the right contacts and find the right information.

Finally, we made the DataHub the home for open data within the group. This data already existed inside Bouygues, but it was scattered across different locations and came from multiple sources. It is now brought together through a single access point, providing datasets in areas such as socio-demographic, environmental, regulatory, or geographic information. This provides another reason for people to visit the DataHub and incorporate it into their working lives.”

“Looking at our needs, we ensured that the DataHub supports all four types of data-sharing model within Bouygues Group:

• From subsidiaries to the Group: for example, to centralize Group procurement data and consolidate supplier views
• From the Group to subsidiaries: including distributing agreed interest and exchange rates and other reference data to all business areas
• From one subsidiary to another: for targeted data sharing between teams
• Inside the subsidiary: for sharing between local teams.”

“We’re seeing more and more use cases over time. An early one was between Bouygues Immobilier and Colas, both of whom are involved in construction. Bouygues Immobilier had created a data product containing enriched cadastral (property boundary) data, including legal owners, which it has integrated into an application available across the company. Colas needed the same data to develop its own business application. 

Rather than duplicating the work needed to understand, enrich, and qualify this data, the DataHub enables this information to be shared. It provides a single enriched, governed, and documented dataset that can be reused by both Bouygues Immobilier and Colas for their different business needs. 

Beyond the obvious time savings, this approach meant that Colas didn’t need to undertake a highly complex data qualification process. Colas employees can also use the metrics that Bouygues Immobilier has calculated. These are particularly valuable because they combine data from multiple sources.

A second example is around sharing reference data from the Group to all subsidiaries. For financial and reporting reasons we obviously need data such as interest and exchange rates to be consistent across the Group. They are now distributed centrally through the DataHub, providing a single source of reference data for everyone, and allowing each subsidiary to seamlessly reuse them in its day-to-day activities without having to search for, verify, or manually re-enter the correct rates. By consolidating this reference data at Group level, each entity benefits from greater reliability and speed, while freeing up time previously spent manually collecting and checking reference information.”

“As I mentioned, security and governance was a key requirement. Access to the data marketplace relies on the Group’s Single Sign-On (SSO) platform, with access rights tailored to the sensitivity of specific data. This enables all Group data to be centralized while ensuring that authorized users can only access the data relevant to them.

Alongside this we have teams of data organizers in each business. They provide a contact point for employees, while allowing us to understand and share data that individuals want to use.”

“Huwise is a clear fit to our needs, particularly through its interoperability and seamless user experience.

The data marketplace connects to all of the Group’s data sources, via APIs or native connectors, and adapts to the different technology infrastructure used across each business area. While we are making ongoing efforts to standardize our data stack, this is not always possible given the level of diversification across the group. Huwise’s connectivity therefore adds real value for us, handling data flows with automatic updates to minimize administration.

We knew the importance of the user experience to drive adoption. Huwise’s white-label customization has allowed us to create portals tailored to the individual identity of each subsidiary, without having to run multiple different platforms. Employees feel that they are accessing their platform, creating a sense of belonging and ownership, which translates into engagement and usage.”

“We are early in the project, but the corporate DataHub has begun an ongoing transformation in our data culture. 

We are seeing faster adoption of consistent data practices internally. Publishing data is straightforward, and the platform makes it easier to navigate between data products. 

Previously, 8 out of 10 employees were unaware that data sharing was possible within the Bouygues Group. This picture has changed dramatically – the DataHub is now known and used across the Group, helped by a dedicated data awareness and enablement effort within every business area.

Finally, the DataHub has become a genuine performance driver by helping accelerate Group-wide projects. Multiple use cases demonstrate that centralizing data and confidently sharing it can increase opportunities and deliver innovation. We’re already exploring the next steps in our strategy, with new data products, accelerating momentum and harnessing AI.”

Find out more about Bouygues Group and its data product marketplace in our new case study.