Business groups inside organizations express their disappointment with IT in terms of data and analytics in a new survey that looks at priorities and areas at risk for failure.
The business sides of organizations today are recognizing the importance and value of data and analytics in competing in today’s market, but they feel like IT organizations have not stepped up to the task of providing what’s needed to put data and analytics to work.
That’s one of the primary conclusions of a new report from The Hackett Group that examined priorities at organizations in 2020. There’s a level of dissatisfaction with what organizations are getting in terms of data and analytics from their IT organizations. There’s a gap between what’s expected and what’s being delivered. But is that really IT’s fault?
The Hackett Group study surveyed 200 leaders in several key areas within organizations, including IT, HR, finance, operations, and global business services. What it found was that those leaders in non-IT functions believed that although the business had invested a lot in data and analytics, the IT organization had not provided the value that should come from those investments.
More than half of study respondents said that advanced analytics initiatives have fallen short of their expectations of benefits, and half reported the same letdown for data visualization. The report found that only chatbots have been a bigger disappointment among digital initiatives. The research recommends that IT bring greater urgency to improvements in these areas or risk an escalating criticism from corporate leadership.
Michael Spires, technology transformation principal and practice leader at The Hackett Group, broke down the disconnect between IT and everybody else for InformationWeek.
As with so many technology problems, it’s actually a cultural problem, he said.
“We believe that this is not just an IT function but a joint function between IT and the business," he said. IT manages the data and provides the tools, but the business side often runs different business processes and produces data in different systems. When you have different business units managing differently and different geographies managing differently, it's very hard to normalize the data.
"You are going to struggle as an IT organization to manage that data effectively," Spires said.
The Hackett Group study, which is due to be released at the end of February, identifies analytics as one of the largest growth areas for organizations, but also one of the biggest weaknesses.
