An internal data marketplace is the missing handshake between builders and consumers. Following these critical steps for building a marketplace will empower both sides of that handshake and ultimately lead to better data products and better business outcomes.
The way businesses handle data has evolved dramatically over the past two years. While centralized operations used to be the norm, evolving business demands have led to decentralization, spurring the rise of internal data marketplaces. These marketplaces bring structure to data management, offering a unified platform to set publishing standards, ensuring discoverability, and controlling access – without the inefficiencies of siloed data.
Unlike external marketplaces, which prioritize monetizing data or sharing it with third parties, internal marketplaces are all about making data accessible, usable, and valuable across an organization. By reducing redundancy in data product development and streamlining collaboration, internal marketplaces help teams move faster, make better decisions, and unlock new insights.
But how do you build an internal data marketplace that actually works – one that’s built for scale, innovation, and business impact?
To get the most value out of an internal data marketplace, organizations need to be clear about their goals from the start. Who is the marketplace serving? What problems is it solving? Without a clear understanding of its purpose, even the best marketplace will struggle to gain adoption.
10 Essential Elements for a Strong Internal Data Marketplace
An internal data marketplace serves as a bridge between data engineers and data consumers, enabling data products to be easily published, discovered, and provisioned across user groups. Many organizations confuse data catalogs with marketplaces, so let’s break it down:
- Data catalogs are designed for builders.
- Data marketplaces are designed for consumers.
Understanding this distinction makes it easier to define the key capabilities a marketplace needs to deliver real business value.
Once you’re clear on the goals and audience, the following components of an internal data marketplace are essential for success:
- A formal publishing process where data engineering teams can formally make their curated data products available in the marketplace for consumption.
- Clear publishing criteria that set the standard for what data products get published.
- Ongoing monitoring and approval workflows to ensure data quality, relevancy, and governance.
- Defined ownership for published data products – both from a business value and compliance perspective.
- Holistic metadata that is meaningful and helpful to the consumer, rather than irrelevant metadata from data catalogs that’s too in-the-weeds. This separates the sausage from how it’s made: again, data catalogs are for builders, and data marketplaces are for consumers.
- Powerful discovery capabilities so consumers can find what they need quickly. With the advent of GenAI, users should no longer have to search for specific terms but rather describe their use cases and be presented with relevant results.
- Access controls to ensure only the right users can see and use specific data.
- Auto-provisioning tools so consumers can query and quickly gain access to data – without manual bottlenecks. Ticketing systems where administrators eventually run grants erode trust and create data consumer frustration.
- Compliance audits with periodic access reviews and recertifications. In addition, at-a-glance reporting of which consumers have access to what data and why can help proactively address issues or risks.
- Built-in feedback loops so data engineers can improve future data products based on real user needs.
- A set of questions to monitor return on investment (ROI) that are customized to your goals and based on inputs like user activity.
See also: Data Sharing & Marketplaces: Enabling the Data-Driven Enterprise
Why It Matters: The Business Value of Data Marketplaces
When these elements are in place, your data engineering team(s) will clearly understand what to build, how to protect it, and how to measure success. Ultimately, this will allow them to deliver more business value and drive ROI.
With a formal and user-friendly environment to find and access data, data consumers will also feel greater autonomy and satisfaction in their ability to drive insights. When data is more trustworthy, discoverable, and accessible, companies are better able to define their priorities and goals. Data consumers can then provide feedback on what they want – and receive what they need when they need it.
Ultimately, an internal data marketplace is the missing handshake between builders and consumers. Without it, companies risk scattered, underutilized, and siloed data. With it, they enable smarter decision-making, drive innovation, and get more value out of their data investments. Following these critical steps for building a marketplace will empower both sides of that handshake and ultimately lead to better data products and better business outcomes.
