Today, data is the new gold. Therefore a community can profit from data aggregation in order to extract valuable business information.

A closer look at the business model: Instead of having to pay membership fees, members agree to share non-critical business data with the Senat. Of course, Data is a very sensitive topic nowadays. Therefore, it must be reassured that shared data will only be distributed within the community of the Senat.

How will the system work? How will the Senat generate revenue from this business model? On the one hand, general results (i.e. market trends and such) could be shared for free among members. On the other hand, more detailed analysis could be behind a paywall, where members either pay per analysis or they pay a certain subscription fee to access the more advanced analysis results. If however, this revenue stream might not suffice as a substitution for the income generated with membership fees today, further distinctions of client groups might be made to further increase revenue. Additionally, to reduce risk and future ambiguity, this change could at first be rolled out only for the “Junger Senat”. (Edit: Maybe even use a seperate business unit.)

The idea behind:

• building a strong community, free of charge, where every participant benefits from the exchange, aggregation and analysis of data (additionally to the already existing synergy effects of the community)
• develop an alternative revenue stream for the Senat with specialized analysis

What is the goal? The goal is, to not only change the membership model to attract more members, but also to increase the benefit of each and every member.

What are the challenges? The most difficult part will be the acceptance of members to share their data. In today's time, the exchange of data is a very sensible topic and many companies might not be willing to share their data easily. Another challenge would be the development of internal capabilities to address the analysis of the data.

Edit: After reading the comments and looking at other contributions, I suppose it would be beneficial to connect it with the submission of Elias Moser “Senat 2.0”. Implementing this radically new approach in a new separate but connected business unit minimizes the risk that comes with this disruptive approach without interfering with the existing business model. I agree, developing internal capabilities for data analytics is a difficult task but not an impossible one. Further, I think having those capabilities is essential in the future, even without implementing the data exchange model.