Table of contents

Chapter 1: The State of External Data Today 3

Chapter 2: Delivering Strategic Value through External Data 5

Chapter 3: How to Be a Savvy External Data Curator 7

Chapter 4: What Kinds of External Data Should Business Analysts Use? 11

Chapter 5: Why Data Procurement and Integration is Such a Pain 16

Conclusion: About Explorium 21

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Chapter 1: The State of External

Data Today
External data is not a new concept. Businesses have been buying it in

some form or another for nearly as long as they’ve been running analytics

programs. But now many companies are amping up their external data

procurement efforts. A recent survey, found one of the leading usages of

external data within analytics are business intelligence (69%) and data

science (56%).

Why the sudden rush to buy up third-party data? A Forrester report on

external data sourcing quoted the CDO of a midsize US bank: “With

our own data, we can only look internally.” Sure, internal data can shed

valuable light on how your business currently operates — what kind of

sales you’re doing, what kind of customers you have — but it’s effectively

just presenting information you already have at your disposal. Would you

rather spend your analytical cycles looking back or looking forward?

When venturing into uncharted territory, external data is how you pave
4 | Practitioners Guide: External Data for Business Analysts

the way forward. When you are trying to penetrate into new markets, new

geographies, or new market segments - external data provides a fresh,

accurate and actionable perspective, highlighting opportunities and

reducing uncertainty. Almost by definition, critical strategic opportunities

require external data analysis. No smart company would move into a

new market or customer segment without assessing the landscape. That

requires data you don’t already have.

Therein lies the opportunity for business analysts: to serve as an

indispensable guide and to illuminate undreamt-of opportunities when

the organization gazes into the future. Through external data, analysts

can build predictive models that quickly substantiate the ROI of a given

venture, enrich existing business initiatives with greater context, and reveal

who the ideal customers are and when, where and what they are willing

to buy. In this guide, we explore the ways business analysts can deliver

strategic value through the kind of quantitative insight only external data

can bring.
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Chapter 2: Delivering Strategic

Value through External Data
Market expansion is a prime example of how external data can help

businesses achieve strategic goals. Imagine a health equipment company

on the East Coast looking to expand to the West Coast. External data

can reveal rich insights about the target region, including the number

of relevant doctor clinics, their speciality, contact information and even

customer reviews. It can also indicate socioeconomic characteristics in

the area of each clinic such as median income, average age, number of

children and pets, and other demographic compositions.

Product launches are another common use case. Business analysts

need to establish whether the customers they’re targeting with the new

product are similar to those they’ve targeted before, or totally different

that requires its own strategy. They will want to consider companies of a

specific size and type as well as the size of a specific department they’re

trying to target - identifying these types of companies can only be

6 | Practitioners Guide: External Data for Business Analysts

answered with external data.

Business analysts can also use external data to predict their customers’

next moves. For example, they can train “lookalike” models to better

understand and build Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs). If they discover,

hypothetically, that their “lookalike” customers with Human Resource

departments with more than 10 people make a better target, they’re

more likely to focus their marketing efforts on them as they align with what

they’re selling.

These are fairly straightforward examples. As we’ll discuss in the next

chapter, the real strategic payoff comes when business analysts

approach sourcing more creatively, finding and combining datasets that

reveal unexpected patterns.

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Chapter 3: How to Be a Savvy

External Data Curator
When procuring datasets, it’s easy to fall into a routine of buying the

same tried-and-true external data categories. To take your external data

curation skills to the next level, try to approach data sourcing with an

investigative mindset.

Think about what you already know about your customer. Then think

about what you don’t know. What missing information do you need to

build a complete profile? If you can’t attain a data source that provides

the exact detail you’re looking for, how can you find that information

another way?

Perhaps you’re stuck trying to figure out why retail stores in one zip code

perform much better than stores in the neighborhood next door. You

decide to layer on census data, which reveals that the high-performing

zip code also has higher household income.

8 | Practitioners Guide: External Data for Business Analysts

Becoming a savvy curator of external data is about assembling different

combinations of external data to enhance your predictive models. The

key to doing that is to ask pertinent questions about the value of a data

source. Here are a few points to raise when buying external data from a

vendor.

Data Accuracy, Completeness, and Consistency

When external data vendors amass large volumes of data from diverse

sources, overlapping or mismatched information is common. Ask

vendors where their data comes from. You can also ask them to provide

independent quality certifications. You can usually trust that information

from primary or government sources will be fairly reliable, while information

derived from other types of sources, such as social media, may need

additional vetting. You may not ever be able to assume a source is 100%

clean. Finding one that works pain-free from day one is extremely rare.

But what you can do is work with an external data vendor who takes

responsibility to investigate any mismatches, errors, missing values, or

bugs in the data set.

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Data Recency
Data can go stale quickly. When it does, it becomes useless for
analytics. Invalid or inaccurate data can lead to misinformed
predictions and misguided decisions. Always ask before you buy: How
fresh is the data? How often is it updated?

Data Impact
Above all, does the data work for you? Business analysts can poke holes

in a dataset all day without ever concluding whether it will do what they

need. To assess data impact, examine the use case, expected outcomes,

and the cost of acquisition. While it can be difficult to show ROI until the

dataset is deployed in a real-world scenario, consider what kind of tests

you can perform at a high level to assess the value.

Privacy Compliance
Company and people datasets (see next chapter) may contain sensitive

information such as names, contact details and other Personally

Identifiable Information (PII), making them subject to privacy regulations

such as GDPR and CCPA. A competitive data strategy demands a

world-class data security and privacy posture. Even if your organization

10 | Practitioners Guide: External Data for Business Analysts

prioritizes data security and privacy compliance, you need to make sure

your external data vendor does the same. Ask your vendor if they follow

the latest industry-leading security standards and have the certificates to

prove it.

A robust security and compliance posture includes some of the following

frameworks and practices:

SOC 2 Type 2 audits

Information security management standards such as ISO 27001

(security), ISO 27701 (privacy) and ISO 9001 (quality)

Ongoing internal security audits and reviews

Ongoing external security audits, infrastructure penetration testing and

vulnerability scans

NIST 800-53 Cybersecurity risk management approach (Identify –

Detect – Protect – Respond – Recover) for constant improvement and

alignment with current risks

Best-in-class industry standards encryption such as the AES 256 for

encryption at rest, TLS 1.2 or higher for encryption in transit and AWS

KMS in use for sensitive information.

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Chapter 4: What Kinds of External

Data Should Business Analysts Use?
As we’ve said, the real value of external data comes from marrying different

categories of information to create a holistic view of the problem you’re trying to

solve as well as signals you’ll discover that will have an impact when you didn’t

think they would.

The external data business analysts need will vary by industry and market.

If you are selling to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), researching

and finding data about them is notoriously hard. SMBs are often privately

held, very dynamic (e.g., whether they are open or closed or have moved to a

new address) and don’t generate much information. You will need to cast the

widest-possible net over different data sources from which to draw signals that

correlate with those of your current ideal potential customer. You’ll be surprised

at the kind of data you will find.

Here are a few examples of external data categories that provide value for

many different use cases.

12 | Practitioners Guide: External Data for Business Analysts

Company Data
Company data refers to the broad swath of information about potential

customers traditionally used by B2B companies in market research and

lead generation, enrichment, and scoring efforts.

Some examples include:

Basic Information Reviews-based Information

NAICS/SIC code Business rating and reviews
Industry Health score
Key contacts (CEO, VP Sales, etc.) Average pricing of businesses
Search trends in the area
Economic Information

Annual revenue

Number of sales

Payroll

Growth and stability indicators

Technology Information

Website traffic and trends

Technology used by the organization

Global and regional website rank

Web presence
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People Data
People data can give analysts a fuller picture of the lifestyles of their

target consumers or B2B customers. Because people data is commonly

collected through cookies, mobile device activity, and social media,

sources can include details about an audience’s location, their number of

devices, and the time they spend in certain apps.

People data also includes information about spending habits, including

the product or service, purchase history and timestamps, and amount

spent. This data indicates customer buying patterns, enabling analysts

to predict when potential customers are ready to make their next

purchase so they can make recommendations and deliver personalized

experiences.

Some examples of consumer data include:

Internet and Social Media Behavior

URLs of social media apps or sites visited

Number of social networks and social mentions

Number of tweets, followers, the accounts followed, and analysis

of tweets

Number of LinkedIn connections and followers

14 | Practitioners Guide: External Data for Business Analysts

Time spent on different social media apps and sites

Interests and sentiments, which can indicate level of brand

awareness

Economic Information Consumer Lifestyle Data

Economic stability Hobbies and interests

Estimated income Social events they’ve attended

Investing interests Tourist destinations they’ve visited

Loan/lending information Social media platforms they engage with

Online spending habits

Credit card usage

Geospatial Data
Geospatial data spans geographical and location-specific information,

providing insights on supply chains, foot traffic, property value trends,

location-based demographics, and more. For example, analysts can use

census data to draw conclusions about a given population's social and

economic status.
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Some examples of geospatial data are:

Demographic Information Business Information

Census and population data Point of Interest data: number of

Age distribution businesses nearby POIs by category

Average income Foot traffic information: number of

Population density visitors to the area, places people

Property Information visited on the same day, duration of

Average property value stay, etc

Average property lot size Tourist attributes: number of

Property characteristics domestic and foreign arrivals and

Rental statistics departures, capacity and demand

Mortgages and loans in area for accommodations, national

Purchasing Behavior revenue generated from tourism,

Regional product affinity unique or seasonal events

Retail spending patterns

Retail turnover

Retail centrality
16 | Practitioners Guide: External Data for Business Analysts

Chapter 5: Why Data Procurement

and Integration is Such a Pain
When organizations lack a formal external data procurement strategy,

business analysts easily end up spending 70-90% of their time vetting

data vendors and wrangling the datasets they purchased instead of

delivering insights. That’s because they’re stuck with notoriously time-

consuming and difficult sourcing tasks, such as identifying, onboarding,

matching, and integrating external data. The good news is, these

challenges can be solved by introducing an external data cloud, which

finally enables the process to scale.

Challenge #1: Managing Data Providers

Business analysts obtain thousands of data products through a variety of

channels, including data brokers, data aggregators, and data analytics

platforms, all of which accommodate different types of models and

use cases. Tasked with managing all the data coming from multiple

external sources — not to mention managing the vendor contracts —

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business analysts have to shoulder an expensive and time-consuming

administrative burden.

To start, businesses need to identify the best vendors for the data they’re

looking for. Then they have to usher the data contracts through multiple

rounds of financial, compliance, and legal approval, which can eat up

several months at the enterprise level. Finally, there’s a chance that by the

time they get the sign-off they need, the dataset in question may already

have gone stale. And that’s just considering internal approval. There’s also

the procurement phase of contracting and negotiating the budget. If you

miss the window at a big company where budgets get set once a year,

you’re out of luck.

Business analysts have to jump through these hoops just to onboard a

single source of data because the procurement process runs strictly on a

per-vendor basis. Buying one source of data is hard enough. Now imagine

multiplying the process by 10 different vendors.

18 | Practitioners Guide: External Data for Business Analysts

Challenge #2 - Data Preparation, Matching,

and Enrichment
Unfortunately, purchasing the dataset is just the beginning. Once

analysts have the dataset in hand, they now must prep, match, enrich,

and integrate it with internal data. This is where business analysts report

spending the vast majority of their time. Data cleansing is an essential

step with no easy manual solution.

When the same records appear in multiple instances across data sources,

business analysts need to consolidate them by hand. Sometimes they

just need to line up rows or columns from one dataset with another, and

everything falls into place. But often there’s a conflict, and analysts need

to aggregate and triangulate between the different sources to determine

the correct details for a particular record. For example, if there is no

common address listed for a company’s headquarters, business analysts

may have to do approximate fuzzy text matching, or leverage search

engines to see which addresses the company website references.

Doing this data cleansing work upfront helps assure that data is clear,

complete, and accurate. But it’s no guarantee that the data will stay
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that way. Data vendors may start using a less reliable source. Quality

can decline, even if data was previously accurate. In the absence of an

external data platform to automate the process, auditing, explaining, and

spotting errors in external data requires constant vigilance and manual

correction.

Even when business analysts successfully identify and purchase the exact

data they need, data preparation challenges multiply when organizations

use or mix multiple sources — which is exactly what they should do to

achieve the most complete results.

The Benefits of Working with an External

Data Platform
External data platforms like Explorium offer a single touch point for

external data procurement, so that instead of wrangling 50 data sources

and several different vendors, business analysts need only work with one.

Explorium condenses 70%-90% of the time spent on administrative

data preparation tasks into a fast, seamless process, ensuring that

procurement, contracting, approval, cleansing and harmonizing only

20 | Practitioners Guide: External Data for Business Analysts

needs to be done once. Not only have Explorium’s data sources been

curated for quality and reliability, they form a single, collective catalog, so

organizations don’t have to pay for access to each one separately.

Explorium’s datasets are intercompatible, so business analysts can

essentially treat them as a single resource, lifting out only the features

they need to enhance and augment existing datasets, or combine

them into brand new datasets. Working with ready-to-use data enables

business analysts to prototype models, build solutions, and deliver insights

in a fraction of the time.

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Conclusion: About Explorium

Explorium's External Data Cloud connects you to the world's best data

sources, all on one platform. It automatically discovers thousands of

relevant, impactful data signals and uses them to generate insights that

go beyond your data, like Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) or disruptive GTM

motions. The data is ready immediately for predictive analytics—no data

wrangling, matching or integrating required.

Explorium removes every roadblock to finding and acquiring external

data. With faster, better insights from their models, marketing and sales

organizations across consumer goods, fintech, insurance, retail and

e-commerce can increase revenue, streamline operations, and reduce

risks.

Sample Explorium use cases most relevant to business analysts include:

1. Market Segmentation

Explorium seamlessly matches, integrates, and enriches the data you

already have with multiple external data sources. Upload your internal

data, and the platform delivers additional insights, such as your potential
22 | Practitioners Guide: External Data for Business Analysts

customer’s employee demographics, existing tech stack, and financial

profile. The more sources you add to your dataset, the more the system

uncovers and suggests other relevant signals. Audience segmentation

enables you to understand the salient characteristics of your best

customers, leading to more successful modeling. Accessing the world’s

best data vendors from a single platform and examining thousands of

relevant attributes to enrich accounts, improve lead and account scoring,

enable businesses to identify the right opportunities that meet their

needs.

2. Predictive Models - Lead and Account Scoring

Using Explorium’s prediction engine, business analysts can use external

data to build models that help marketing teams predict their customers’

next moves. They can easily access the most impactful enrichments,

source them into Salesforce and quickly pinpoint the most valuable leads.

By enriching accounts and contacts, sales teams are properly equipped

as they target accounts. Financial performance indicators, size and

industry are usually the three things taken into account for traditional lead

scoring and segmentation. Now, business analysts can use a variety of

signals that provide new, important and meaningful information about a

company.
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3. External Data Purchasing

Traditional methods of buying external data are drawn-out. They involve

different purchasing factors depending on the use case, and require

legal reviews of vendor contracts to make sure liabilities are in place if the

data proves inaccurate or non-compliant. As an end-to-end platform,

Explorium automates everything from data discovery, data matching, and

integration.

Try Explorium for free today