In the data business, the prize positioning that everyone seeks is to become integrated into client workflow. Having achieved this enviable goal, publishers know that extraordinarily high renewal rates are certain and profits are assured, because clients in effect are dependent on these workflow products to do their jobs and sometimes to run their entire businesses.

Workflow integration is assumed to be a B2B thing. After all, consumers don’t have workflow. Or do they?

I got thinking about this after having read several articles suggesting that Amazon may be considering getting involved in the sale of financial products such as mutual funds, perhaps even offering a robo-advisor service that would use software to manage the investment portfolios of their customers. This is a big, scary thought for online brokers and investment managers. And while Amazon hasn’t yet made any concrete moves in the financial services area, it’s a big, juicy target for Amazon, a company not known for its timidity or lack of ambition. As several industry observers point out, Amazon already has made moves into the massive and regulation-heavy pharmaceutical industry, seeking to become the nation’s pharmacist, with potentially even grander plans beyond that.

What allows Amazon to even consider entering the financial services market? It’s the fact that Amazon has a massive consumer platform. Many people consider Facebook a platform too, yet Facebook isn’t launching online pharmacies and the like. What makes the Amazon platform different is that it is a commerce platform.

Of course, Amazon is no ordinary commerce platform. It wants to sell you everything you need and deliver it to your door. It even will automatically ship its customers consumable products on a regular schedule. Amazon has also built a strong brand based on fast shipping and low prices. And because Amazon has so deeply embedded itself into the lives of its customers, delivering remarkable product breadth along with remarkable convenience, Amazon has achieved -- wait for it -- consumer workflow integration.

This takes me full circle. Does Amazon’s success with B2C workflow integration suggest big opportunities for those with B2B data products that have deep workflow integration to become commerce platforms? I am not convinced. The Amazon journey to success was long and expensive. It also started by delivering something unique and valuable: a universal bookstore. My guess is that most B2B data products, even if deeply embedded, can’t really transition to becoming commerce platforms. Their usage is too specialized, as are their audiences.

Deeply integrated B2B workflow products driven by data may look like platform opportunities if you squint enough. But if you squint too hard or too long, you’ll end up needing glasses, and you can find a great selection of them … on Amazon.