Data Application Areas and the Palantir Opportunity
While Palantir’s stock price plummets and this darling of the data and analytics world hits new lows, I keep wondering why we aren’t seeing a large information services firm in our industry nab it? Our industry is now mostly part of the software industry ecosystem, and we have seen firms vertically integrate a host of digital capabilities. However, one of the most powerful engines for refining and applying data — whose stock price has collapsed thanks to activist investors — seems to be flapping in the wind.
Perhaps our industry’s leadership feels it’s no match for Peter Thiel. Perhaps our industry’s imagination isn’t vast enough. Or perhaps I have it wrong.
We have been saying for years that there are six key application areas for monetizing data:
- Monetizing Customers: Making use of data for market analysis, engagement, branding, lead generation, and revenue generation. This includes the use of data to increase the efficacy of sales and marketing processes (conversion, ASP, LTV).
- Risk Mitigation Data: The use of data to identify risk and inform operational decisions that increase efficiency and limit or mitigate risk (i.e., financial data).
- Discovery & Innovation: Using data to drive R&D and IP to accelerate product development.
- Commercialization: Commercializing or licensing corporate data assets or launching data-driven information solutions into the marketplace.
- Human Capital Management: Making use of data to improve or enhance the finding, hiring, training, and retaining of talent.
- Supply Chain/Logistics: Using data to optimize supply chain and logistics operations.
A look at Palantir’s website shows application support in most of these areas. It’s a huge horizontal play, and a large firm with ubiquitous access to huge horizontal data sets that supports enterprise customers could seemingly layer on this capability.
It might not be as exciting as Elon Musk and Twitter, but, hey, this seems like a unique opportunity. Any takers?