Data has been claimed to be the new oil of the 21st century as it has seen to be able both to improve the existing products and services as well as to create new revenue streams for its utilizing company with a secondary customers base. However, while there is active streams of research for developing machine learning and data science methods, considerably less has been done to understand and characterize data business activities in the software-intensive companies. This study uses a multiple case study approach in the software-intensive embedded system domain. Four large international embedded system companies were selected as the case study subjects. The objective is to understand how the case companies are developing their activities for successful utilization of the data. The study identifies six distinct stages with their own challenges. In addition, this study serves as a starting for further work for supporting software-intensive embedded system companies to start data business.