One major part of operating a successful enterprise is constantly discovering new knowledge and insights that can improve and elevate your business. The more information that you collect and analyze about your business, industry, market, and customers, the better informed your decisions will be and the more accurate your predictions about the future will be.

That’s why, as 2023 nears, more and more organizations are using high-quality external data to augment their existing data. Gaining insight from second and third party data adds depth and detail to the information your organization already has. So where can you find high-quality external data? And how do you get that data into your own organization quickly and seamlessly? With the right data acquisition strategy for 2023, you could be feeding important new insights into your company through efficient and cost-effective avenues.

What is data acquisition and why do you need a strategy?

Data acquisition is the process of discovering data outside of your organization and bringing that data into your organization. In order to glean the most valuable insights from the data you acquire, it’s important to think about what kind of data you need, where that data can be obtained from, and how this new data will intersect with your existing data in order to form a single vision of information. This requires smart planning so that you don’t waste valuable time and resources on data that your organization won’t be able to use.

Determine what problems you want to solve 

The first step is to decide what problems you want to solve by obtaining new data. Are you seeking to:

1. Answer a specific question that requires new, better, or complementary data to answer, or
2. Optimize an existing solution 

If you are trying to answer a specific question with new insights, you are most likely searching for a large and diverse deposit of data that is related to a particular theme. For instance, if you want to know how a new product is going to fare in a market in 2023, you might be interested in market trend data, financial performance data, and social media data - and that data would just get you started. There are no bounds to the amount of data you could collect that might help you make predictions about your product. So many types of information from so many different types of resources could help you answer the question you are asking. 

If you are trying to optimize an existing system with new data, your focus would be a little more fine-tuned. You need to think more carefully about where the gaps in your knowledge are and what data could adequately fill in those gaps. You don’t want to waste resources on extra puzzle pieces, you just want the pieces that will complete the puzzle. Maybe you want to optimize the production of a certain food product in the winter. To do that, you might specifically need weather data or agricultural data from a certain area. 

Determine who and where you want to buy data from

Once you have figured out what kind of data you need, the next step is figuring out who has that data and how you can acquire it from them. Accessing the right data sources, trying to avoid purchasing data that isn’t useful, and integrating new external data neatly with your existing data can be complex and frustrating. That's why it’s vital to choose the best tools and platforms you’ll use for your data acquisition and factor that into your planning before 2023 begins. You have a few options in this step. You can: 

Buy directly from another company

By buying data directly from another company, your organization will acquire precise and trustworthy data, but will also sink a good amount of time and energy into a single purchase. This option is straightforward, private, and secure, but can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive endeavor that must be repeated each time you want to purchase data from a new company one-on-one.

Buy from a data broker

Data brokers are organizations that collect data from multiple sources, provide some value-adding processing, and repackage a mash-up of usable data into summarized datasets. Going this route is an easy way to buy a bulk of data quickly and without too much hassle. However, it’s also more of a gamble. However, data brokers are notorious for providing low-quality data because they mix a large amount of data together from multiple sources as opposed to providing quality and transparent single-source data. With data brokers, you don’t know exactly what data you are getting or how the data was collected, so you can’t verify that you are receiving quality data. You also aren’t able to pick and choose which datasets you want; you have to purchase the data you are offered as is. 

Buy from a data collaboration platform

A data collaboration platform is a marketplace that makes it faster and easier than ever to buy quality data assets without having to sacrifice too much time or resources. You’ll be able to access many different types of data from many different types of sources without having to forge contracts or undergo negotiations. Narrative’s data collaboration platform provides trillions of available datasets from dozens of providers and gives you the tools you need in order to discover the exact data you want.

The tools provided by a data collaboration platform help you automate data discovery, streamline cleaning and formatting tasks, and ensure that you’re paying only for the exact data points you need. For instance, Buyer Studio is the latest win for data acquisition technology. It is a self-service, no-code app that makes it easy to find and buy precise datasets by automating the most time- and labor-intensive aspects of buying data. Users of any skill level can use the app to find the precise data they need, place a custom order, and have their data delivered directly to the systems they want, all with just a few clicks.

Use a data collaboration platform to discover and purchase the exact data you need

Now that you’ve decided what kind of data you need and how you are going to get it, you can use your data collaboration platform tools to purchase the exact data points you need. Whether you need a bulk of data of all types or just a very specific type of data, you can find and purchase your precise specifications using the Buyer Studio.

 With access to trillions of data points from multiple data providers at once, you’ll be able to select the exact types of data that you’d like to acquire, including but not limited to geolocation, demographic, purchase, identity, and device data. You can use precision filtering options to include only the exact observations you need, opt into a deduplication feature to ensure you never pay for the same data point more than once, and set a custom budget that works for you.

Want to learn more? Start building your best data acquisition strategy today with help from our experts.