The Business Data Trap

The cult of data ownership has created a new class of busy-work addicts. Teams of smart people spend days, weeks, and months wrestling with pipelines, cleaning datasets, and debugging reports instead of doing what they do best: running their business.

But here's the thing: You don't mine your own gold to make jewellery. You don't generate the electricity to power your office, and you probably don't write your own accounting software.

So why are you trying to build a data operation from scratch?

It's a classic case of missing the forest for the trees. Or more accurately, missing the business for the spreadsheets.

Every hour spent trying to be a data scientist or attempting to build a data operation is an hour not spent with customers, innovating products, or outmanoeuvring the competition.

Some companies are convinced that owning every piece of the data puzzle is the path to insight nirvana. This mindset is both an expensive myth and a costly trap, diverting businesses from what actually drives growth.

By letting go of control, you gain more of it. By outsourcing the complexity, you simplify your path to insights. By partnering with experts, you become more expert at what matters – your core business.

When you work with specialists who live and breathe data, you're not just buying their tools – you're buying years of pattern recognition, battle-tested processes, and solutions to problems you haven't yet encountered.

Smart companies don't collect data. They collect insights. And they're humble enough to know the difference between building a business and building a data warehouse.

The real question isn't "Can we do this ourselves?" It's "Why would we want to?"

Fitzwilliam Dunne is a data adviser for next-generation companies, helping clients to automate, scale, and win.