Your Data is Expensive. Here’s How to Make It Valuable.
How our 'IMPACT' framework prioritizes pragmatism & why we focus on 'Achievability' first (instead of 'Money').
If you’re in marketing, you’re likely drowning in data. You have analytics, CRM data, ad platform data, and a dozen other sources. But are you getting real value from it?
My name is Rick Dronkers, and I’m the founder of Data to Value.
Based on our work with clients across the world, I’ve seen a fundamental misunderstanding in the market. Companies invest heavily in collection and reporting, but they miss the most critical step.
We believe data-driven marketing isn’t about having perfect data; it’s about making better decisions, faster.
Here’s a look at our core philosophy and how we help companies move from just having data to using it as a strategic asset.
The Hard Truth: Your Data Has No Intrinsic Value
Let’s start with a provocative idea: By itself, your data has a negative value.
Think about it. You pay for the technical and HR costs to capture it. You pay to store it. And you assume massive risk factors related to security and privacy.
Data collection has no intrinsic value. Data transformation has no intrinsic value. Even those “insights” have no intrinsic value by themselves.
Value is only created when somebody or some system takes an action based on that data. This “activation” step is the only part that generates a return, yet it’s the part that is most often forgotten.
No Action, No Value
The Traps We All Fall Into
Because the activation part is hard, we tend to get stuck in common traps:
The “Waterfall” Method: We think in a linear way: Collect Data -> Analyze -> Transform -> Data Science -> ...Magic? This rarely works and often ends in projects that die before delivering value.
The “Silver Bullet” Solution: We look for a technology solution that promises to solve all our problems with the click of a button. It never does.
The “Perfection” Wild Goose Chase: We get stuck trying to get “perfect” data, optimizing for 100% accuracy instead of moving forward with 70% and taking action.
The reality is, our industry is built on a foundation of People > Process > Technology, in that order. You can’t buy technology to fix a people or process problem.
Our Approach: Think Like MacGyver
To break out of these traps, we need to think iteratively. We need to be pragmatic. We need to think like MacGyver.
Instead of building a perfect, multi-year data palace, we focus on “duct-taping” a solution together to prove it works. We focus on one simple, powerful concept: Closing the Loop.
Our model is a continuous cycle: Collect, Transform, and Activate.
Most data projects get stuck between “Transform” and “Activate.” Our entire methodology is designed to force that activation step, to close the loop as quickly as possible, and then do it again.
Data is just the gasoline. You still need a driver, a crew, and a car to win the race. Our job is to get your “minimum viable” car on the track and finish a lap.
How We Prioritize: From Ideas to IMPACT
We start by helping you move up the Data Maturity model—from Hindsight (What happened?) to Foresight (What will happen?). But we do it with a relentless focus on pragmatism.
It starts with a simple prompt:
“We hope to achieve {{improvement}}, by implementing {{data}} and use it in {{channel}} to do {{use_case}}.”
For example: “We hope to achieve improved return on ad spend (improvement) by implementing profit data (data) and use it in Google Ads (channel) to do profit-based bidding (use case).”
This simple sentence clarifies the goal. From there, we score these use cases using our IMPACT Framework:
Importance: How important is this to your strategic goals?
Money: What is the expected monetary impact?
Potential: Can this use case unlock other use cases?
Achievability: How easily can we develop and deploy this?
Confidence: How confident are we in our estimates?
Time to Value: How quickly can we build this?
Here’s our secret: While it’s tempting to chase the biggest Monetary value, we often push clients to prioritize Achievability and Time to Value first.
Why? Because closing a data loop is hard. Closing small loops is easier than closing big ones. We believe in getting a few reps in, building team confidence, and proving we can deliver. That momentum is what ultimately allows us to tackle the big, complex projects.
The Real Goal: Making Better Decisions, Faster
“Better” is a hard thing to define. It implies you know exactly where you are and exactly where you want to be. Often, those goals are vaguely defined and there are various opinions on what goals specifically mean to whom.
“Faster,” however, is something we can control and align on...
We are huge believers in the Jeff Bezos memo:
“Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had.” - Jeff Bezos
In marketing, most decisions are reversible, two-way doors. If you’re wrong, you can just stop it or revert it with minimal consequence. We should be optimizing for a framework that allows us to make faster decisions, not perfect ones.
This is where our hypothesis-driven approach comes to life. Instead of “Doing,” we “Test / Try.”
If it works, we Scale and Learn.
If it fails, we Reverse and Learn.
In both cases, we learn. We get new information that feeds the next evaluation, and the loop gets tighter. This is how you build a real data-driven culture.
Our Operating System: SOSTAC
To manage this entire process, we use the SOSTAC framework:
Situation Analysis: Where are we now? (This includes quantitative data and subjective surveys of your team’s data literacy and confidence.)
Objectives: Where do we want to be?
Strategy: What do we need to get there? (People, process, tech.)
Tactics: What does that look like specifically? (This is where the IMPACT framework lives.)
Action: How will we ensure we make it? (Our project management and delivery.)
Control: How will we measure progress?
This framework is our commitment to transparency and our way of ensuring that every piece of technical work is tied directly to a business objective.
Who We Are
We are Data to Value. We were founded in 2019 and are a fully remote team distributed across Europe and working for ambitious marketing teams around the globe.
Our core promise is simple: You work with Senior Consultants ONLY. We don’t hire junior consultants. We believe our clients deserve to work with experienced experts who can not only build the technical solutions but also guide the strategy.
We’re a team of pragmatists, not purists. If you’re tired of data projects that cost a fortune and deliver nothing, let’s talk → https://dtv.nu/explore