I recently read a paper by Doug Laney from Gartner which started to challenge companies to treat information as another category of intangible financial asset. I’ve often heard companies talk about their data as ‘a source of competitive advantage’, yet there is a reluctance to try to measure the true value of this asset (maybe this falls into the ‘too hard’ category!).
Accounting policy is such that public companies are not currently required to split out the value of information assets, and I loved Doug’s example of the gap between Facebook’s recent $100B market valuation (now $70B) versus its book value of under $7B – the gap possibly representing the markets view of Facebook’s ability to monetise their information assets. In the past I’ve seen this represented as Goodwill on the Balance Sheet…
I totally agree with Doug when he argues that, regardless of accounting policies, attempting to value information assets offers a range of benefits to organisations. Perhaps the most fundamental benefit is ensuring that investment is right-sized to the expected value of the asset.
I would recommend starting down the path of valuing your information assets, then challenging the organisation to ensure that they are leveraging these assets for optimal return…
