Our definition of what a Data Asset was
A data asset is a piece of data, such as an address or a customer. It can be a single, simple data field e.g. the postcode of a customer’s home address or it can be a complex data item, for example a calculated value for, say cost inclusive of VAT.
A data asset will have (for example), the following:
| A Description | A human understandable (and meaningful) definition e.g. the postcode of a customer’s registered contact address |
| A Value | The contents of the data item, in the correct format e.g a postcode field might have ‘BS16 7DF’ |
| A Data Type | The field type for the data item, where it is held, for example Text, Decimal, ENUM, Currency, Floating, Integer e.g. our Postcode field might be stored in a Text field |
| A Source | Where is the data item captured, created or sourced from? e.g. a CRM system, a 3rd Party Data Feed |
| An Asset Type | Is it a ‘raw’ type e.g. a data field directly captured during, say, customer onboarding Or is it a ‘derived’ type e.g. Customer Age based on calculating differnece between Customer’s Date of Birth and a specified date (e.g. Today) |
| Categorisation | A Data Asset might also be classified as to whether it can be shared with 3rd Parties, has restricted visibility, or is Personally Identifiable Information (PII) |
| Validation Rule(s) | The definition might also notes rules to validate the data item e.g. range of acceptable values, calculation rules or dependencies on other data items |
Full Metal Aardvark 