Aboitiz Data Innovation (ADI), the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) unit of the Aboitiz Group today announced the launch of Parlay, a data exchange platform that will help further accelerate the organization’s digital transformation goals.  On Parlay, businesses from across the Group’s various industries can share and gain unparalleled access to data from businesses across the industrial spectrum from power to banking and financial services, manufacturing, land, infrastructure, and food to name a few. The first phase of Parlay’s roll out will be focused on sign up of group businesses, with the aim of opening Parlay to external organizations as part of a second phase. Through Parlay, businesses will have unparalleled access to data sets from some of the region's largest corporations to inspire possibilities for creating new opportunities or tackling challenges ranging from financial inclusion to emissions reduction by comparing and exploring data from other sectors to solve problems in a way that is more straightforward than ever before.

ADI aims to simplify the complex world of data to advance the over 100-year-old company’s digital transformation journey by operationalizing DSAI across all business units. These efforts are part of the Group’s ‘Great Transformation’ plans to continue making the company more resilient and future-ready to respond to challenges and capture opportunities and growth in an increasingly digital world. With APAC accelerating towards a digital society where it is estimated that at least 1 billion people will access digital services, data will be critical to meeting this demand and creating more equal opportunities in places like the Philippines and beyond. Data sharing enables infinite possibilities for tackling business, economic, social, and environmental challenges through new perspectives, patterns and synergies that can be identified through the comparison of different industry data sets.

While many organizations agree on the benefits of data sharing, its adoption remains low across the region due to a number of challenges. Data kept in silos, complicated and lengthy legal procedures and concerns around the loss of control of the data being shared have been cited as the main barriers to data sharing adoption - all of which Parlay addresses. With a secure open platform and search functions, standardized data sharing agreements and the choice to either be a data subscriber or sharer that controls who can and cannot have access to your data, Parlay enables the safe and secure sharing and consumption of all types and categories of data from a myriad of industries onto a single user-friendly platform.

The idea behind the platform is to create a place where businesses can come to for inspiration and to visualize new possible creative synergies by exploring data from other sectors. Comparing data enables businesses to find new approaches to solving problems that have hampered economic and social advancement in the region. Take financial inclusion for example, where data sharing can help banks and other financial institutions create and apply alternative credit scoring models to provide loans and other financial access to the unbanked or those with limited credit history by rethinking what alternative data can be used to assess eligibility.

Dr. David R. Hardoon, Aboitiz Data Innovation Managing Director, emphasized, “Data is the business of the present. With Parlay, we’re really excited about providing a place where you can exchange the reams of data you have collected for something even bigger and better — an infinite number of possibilities. Ultimately, on Parlay we want users to engage with data of all kinds and leave inspired to do everything from creating new products and services to rethinking business models and ways of working to tackling challenges that can improve people’s lives.”

“Everyone involved in the creation of this platform has seen first hand how challenging the facilitation of data sharing can be and we really wanted to eliminate these barriers to make it possible to share and access data from across sectors - starting with our own businesses across the Aboitiz Group. Every company’s data is incredibly valuable, but that value increases when you are able to compare that data, identify new patterns and see your industry or challenge from a completely different lens. The possibilities are truly endless and we hope to see more companies exchanging data to do everything from providing hyper personalization, to streamlining customer journeys to helping drive financial inclusion, feed communities and enable a greener and more sustainable future,” he added.

Parlay was developed in partnership with Harbr, a data sharing and commerce platform that enables data innovation through collaboration. Parlay was built on a Harbr platform with the objective of creating a centralized place to manage, share, and collaborate on data products across the AEV portfolio through automated data sharing agreements, the enablement of secure multi-party collaboration and connecting of datasets to generate new insights.

Harbr’s Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Anthony Cosgrove comments, “Harbr was built to power the world’s data products and enable real-time collaboration to unlock insights and value in data. We are delighted to partner with ADI and AEV in their goal to bring together different companies in diverse industries to work on data together and deliver business as well as real world outcomes to millions of people.”

Parlay is currently being used by companies across the Aboitiz Group’s key business units with external organisationz from the public and private sector invited to join pilot programs on Parlay in a second phase with the aim of signing on more companies onto the platform over time to continue better facilitating the exchange of data across industries, companies and geographies. It is also a flagship initiative that is part of taking Aboitiz Data Innovation further in its goal of making lives better and easier by making data less monolithic and turning it into a valuable resource that can help businesses digitize and create new products and services to increase accessibility for the wider community.
Learn more about Aboitiz Data Innovation and Parlay at https://aboitizdatainnovation.com/