Improving the client experience through an intuitive data marketplace – lessons from Datos Insights

Across every sector, organizations understand the importance of making access to data intuitive and seamless. For businesses focused on selling high-value research information to clients, providing the right experience and enabling self-service access is vital to increasing usage and demonstrating the value that they deliver.

Sharing information through a data marketplace brings multiple benefits to these data-driven businesses and their clients. Users can simply access the marketplace, discover the most relevant data for their needs, and then filter, visualize and export it, shortening time to insight and boosting productivity.

To understand the benefits, we spoke to Alan Burt, Director, Market Data and Forecasting, at research and advisory organization Datos Insights about their experiences after deploying a Huwise data marketplace.

“Datos Insights is a leading research and advisory partner to the financial services industry, helping financial institutions, insurers, and their technology partners drive enterprise-wide change.

To provide our clients with seamless access to our proprietary data across the cards and payments, banking automation and retail technology sectors, we’ve deployed Huwise’s intuitive, e-commerce style marketplace, enabling our clients to discover, access and consume relevant data to power their decision-making.”

“Previously we supplied clients with information, such as reports and data, in static formats such as PDFs and spreadsheets. While this worked, we wanted to build a better understanding of how our clients were using this data, and to track who was accessing information within their organization. We also wanted to enable clients to create their own, personalized data visualizations through self-service, rather than requiring us to build these on a bespoke basis. 

That’s why we deployed a data marketplace. We now have a better picture of who is accessing data, helping us demonstrate the value that it brings, boosting visibility and retention. Clients can independently filter data via the marketplace and produce their own visualizations and reports, based on their individual needs, delivering faster access to the insights that they need.”

“Once we’d outlined our requirements, we researched the market and Huwise offered the best fit for our needs. It provides our clients with an intuitive, e-commerce experience which means they don’t need data skills to create their own visualizations, and we could fully customize the platform to match our branding. Importantly, users can access information in multiple formats – so technical experts can download raw data or connect it to their applications through APIs. We can therefore meet the needs of all types of users through a single platform that is straightforward to manage.”

“We’re using Huwise for global studies in our Market Data & Forecasting practice, which accounts for around a quarter of our business. This covers the cards and payments, retail technology and banking automation sectors and is used by leading market participants, analysts and regulators for industry and competitor benchmark data. All our regular studies are now on the data marketplace, which means clients can simply log on and access those that they have subscribed to. These are major, in-depth pieces of research which normally cover different markets and countries in real detail. Thanks to the data marketplace, as well as reading the report, clients can now drill-down into specific areas of the data, create customized visualizations or view the raw data.”

“I’ve already mentioned the intuitive interface and the ability for clients to create their own visualizations, which delivers a better experience for them. Also, by observing who within a client is requesting data we now have verified usage information, which is really important. For example, for one client our main point of contact was in the US. However, by analyzing access requests we were able to see that it was also being used extensively in their Japanese office. Having these direct interactions widens our reach, helping us better meet the client’s future needs and build deeper relationships.

As the data marketplace automates access management it lessens administration time from our side. Some clients have just bought access to specific parts of a report, such as a country or technology area, and the data marketplace delivers that personalized view automatically based on their login credentials. Through the marketplace they can still see what other reports are available, giving them the chance to widen their subscription to cover more areas.”

“The marketplace provides them with the ability to dive deeper into the numbers behind the insights, delivering greater value and maximizing the impact of our data assets. It’s much more intuitive than accessing a static report or spreadsheet. Whether they are data experts or business users, they can create their own visualizations or download data in the right formats for their needs.

Rather than emailing documents around the company clients simply provide their users with access to the data marketplace, meaning that they can be confident that data is always consistent and up-to-date. Overall, it means the whole process of discovering and consuming data is much faster and more efficient for them, saving them time and increasing productivity.”

“As well as the ability to deliver a more personalized experience to our clients, the data marketplace increases our internal efficiency. Self-service means we’re getting fewer requests from clients for additional cuts of specific data or different visualizations, which saves us time. If clients have just bought access to specific parts of a flagship report, this can be filtered on the data marketplace, rather than us having to produce bespoke views or spreadsheets.

We can track which data is being consumed by clients, helping with retention conversations and ensuring that our research agenda is always optimized around their needs. As the majority of our reports are annual, we’re now launching our second editions of many on the data marketplace. With the templates already in place, the whole process is much faster and more efficient. In some areas, such as Cards and Payments, we’ve now stopped creating a spreadsheet deliverable of the raw data – it is just available via the marketplace.”

“Usage is increasing, and we can see more people logging onto the portal from our clients. More importantly we now have deep insight into the reach of our data within clients. Before, we didn’t have this level of visibility – we can really see how important our reports are across client organizations and geographies. Alongside our annual reports, we’re considering adding our less frequent publications to the data marketplace, making it the default place for clients to access our Market Data & Forecasting research.”

“We’ve built a very strong, collaborative relationship. They take the time to listen and understand our needs and are very responsive when we have queries or have features that we’d like to introduce. The team is very open to showing how other Huwise customers are using the platform, which helps us plan what we might incorporate moving forward.”