The relevance of the study is due to the growing interest of researchers and practitioners in the issue of attributing data to an asset, resource, and production factor. This trend is determined, on the one hand, by the increasing role of data for economic activity in general, and, on the other, by the gradual institutionalization of the term “data economy”. It should be noted that with significant variability of interpretations (as a new stage of economic development, as part of the digital transformation, as a management system), most researchers note a characteristic property: data is considered as a key asset and resource of the economy. Of particular interest is the use of data in industry in view of its large-scale digitalization and its system-forming role for the country’s economy, while the resource base is the basis for the functioning of enterprises. The purpose of the study is to determine how data as a resource is used in the company’s activities and what are the features of such a process, as well as to understand how industry representatives approach data in their activities in practice, to what extent data is a key resource, and what factors influence such correlation. The research methods include analysis and synthesis, systematic and comparative approaches, questioning the management level of industrial enterprises in the Rostov region, statistical (processing the results obtained) and econometric (building a binary logit model based on the questionnaire data) methods. The results of the study demonstrate that data in modern conditions is actually used in industrial enterprises as a resource, indirectly participating in the process of creating a product or service, enhancing the efficiency of using other resources. The specifics of industrial data as a resource, the effect of their use for the enterprise are revealed, the need for the formation of operational and strategic contours for the use of data as a resource in the activities of enterprises is determined. It is emphasized that the heads of industrial enterprises who participated in the survey are more likely to attribute data to a key resource if the degree of readiness of their enterprises to invest in data is high, as well as with the systematic use of data for managerial decision-making. The scientific novelty of the current study lies in the approach to data as a resource base for industry, with an emphasis on the direct involvement of data in the creation of products and services, as well as in the empirical assessment of industry representatives' opinions on evaluating data as a key resource of an industrial enterprise. The practical significance of the study is determined by the possibility of applying the conclusions obtained by the management of enterprises to revise approaches to data as an economic asset, to move from fragmentary data collection to their integrated use in production through the business processes of the enterprise and the formation of a strategy for their application in order to optimize production activities. The key conclusion of the study is that data is used as a resource in the activities of industrial enterprises, but their potential has not been fully exploited due to a lack of understanding in practice of the usefulness of data for production, the lack of a methodological basis for evaluating them and accounting for their contribution to the cost of enterprises, which is also reflected in the theoretical plan – the lack of an approach to data as a resource base for industry. In this regard, the areas of further research should cover the development of methodological aspects of data inclusion in the industrial resource base, the formation of a resource approach to data, the determination of the value and value of data, the development of data management systems in the enterprise, as well as the tightening of institutional mechanisms for regulating property rights and the creation of data markets.