Record Revenues, Shrinking Profits? How Legacy Businesses Can Turn Data Into New Revenue Streams

If your company is hitting record revenues but profits aren’t keeping pace—or worse, they’re slipping—you’re not alone.

Welcome to the shrinking margin trap.

It hits hardest in established, mature industries. 

Costs creep up, customer expectations keep rising, and the pressure to stay compliant never lets up. 

Your top line looks great. 

The bottom line? Not so much.

The good news is, you’re likely sitting on something incredibly valuable: data. 

And you also got what many tech-first startups don’t—longstanding relationships across your entire ecosystem.

That’s a strong foundation for a high-impact, high-margin growth strategy.

Legacy businesses tend to overlook two of their biggest assets:

• Deep, historical data on customers, products, and operations
• Trust-based relationships with vendors, distributors, and ecosystem partners

Here’s the thing—many of those partners are facing the same challenges you’ve already solved. And your data could help them, too.

That’s where monetization starts. Not by selling raw data, but by transforming your internal insights into something valuable for others.

From Byproduct to Actual Product

Let’s be clear—monetizing data doesn’t mean dumping a bunch of raw CSVs on a cloud platform.

It means packaging your internal intelligence into usable tools and services. Think:

• A forecasting dashboard your distributors can use to plan inventory
• Benchmarking reports using your anonymized performance data
• Risk models based on years of underwriting experience

Think revenue, not cost saves.

Getting Buy-In Without the Buzzwords

Executives have seen enough “data initiatives” go nowhere. So if you want support, skip the vision slides.

Don’t pitch it as “monetizing data.” Instead, make it concrete.

Say something like:

“Our partners are struggling with X. We already have Y insight from our data. Let’s build Z solution and offer it as a service—or use it to deepen loyalty.”

You are building a data product, yes. But that’s not the point - the point is to solve real problems, with real outcomes at a higher margin.

Where to Start

You don’t need to launch a full-blown innovation lab. Just start with one use case.

• Find a pain point your data already helps solve
• Sketch out what that solution could look like if it were an actual product
• Pilot it with one or two trusted partners
• Validate the value. If it works, scale it. If it really works, spin it off.

Final Thought

When margins tighten, the instinct is often to look inward—cut costs, squeeze operations, streamline.

But sometimes the smartest growth move is to look outward.

Your data, combined with your ecosystem relationships, could be your most valuable product.

Especially when your competitors are still stuck treating data as an afterthought.

Let me know—have you seen this play out in your industry? Would love to swap stories.

Chaos is Costly. Clarity Pays.

I help legacy businesses turn hidden data into real revenue streams, so shrinking margins become new growth opportunities, not a death spiral.

With 25+ years leading data, AI, and risk transformation at firms like Voya Financial, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, and Freddie Mac, I know how to bridge the gap between data chaos and business impact.

→ Planning an event or need a straight-talking speaker on AI, data, or risk? Book me here.

→ Curious how clarity could accelerate your business? Schedule a discovery chat.