data is not yet strategic for many organizations. While many success stories confirm data can add enormous value, most organizations still struggle to build data into their Business strategies and, conversely, to align their data efforts to the needs of the Business.
But when integrated properly, data can accelerate many business strategies by improving the processes and empowering the people needed to execute them. This starts by having the right conversations — by seeing through all the complexities, finding common ground, and establishing priorities on which everyone can agree. To do this, leaders and data experts should focus on looking at data and strategy through the lens of six “value modes,” or ways that companies can derive value from data. These value modes include improved processes; improved competitive position; new and improved products, stemming from better customer and market data; informationalization, or building data into products and services; improved human capabilities; and improved risk management.
Thirty-five years after Robert Waterman’s observation in In Search of Excellence that companies were “data rich and information poor,” little has changed. For sure companies are “data richer,” having exponentially more data at their disposal. But they are still information poor, even as leaders have implemented a wide array of programs aimed at exploiting data. Most still struggle to build data into their business strategies and, conversely, to align their data efforts to the needs of the business. There are a host of reasons, from lack of talent to unreasonable expectations to culture. Solving these problems is essential for those that wish to unleash the power of data across their organizations.
It should come as no surprise that data is not yet strategic for many organizations. Business is already complex enough: When setting a company strategy, there are customers to satisfy, competitors to fend off, uncertain regulatory environments to accommodate, and skills gaps that must be closed. Plenty of great ideas — including carbon neutrality, diversity, social responsibility, new technologies, and yes, data — compete for resources and attention. Many success stories confirm data can add enormous value, but it is hard to know where data fits.
How organizations actually view their data assets is all over the map. Managers use it every day, even as they don’t fully trust it. Many find basic statistics confusing. People are rightly proud of their decision-making capabilities and see little need for better analytics or AI. They recoil at the thought of some sort of central oversight to their data, yet are stunned when a data issue creates unforeseen risk. While they know that privacy and security is important, no one has ever made their accountabilities explicit. And they realize that becoming a data-driven organization involves adapting their culture, which is difficult and time-consuming. It is little wonder that data is still far from the business strategy mainstream.
The data side of the business is no less complex. There is no shortage of great opportunities and demands, from analytics and artificial intelligence to data quality, monetization, privacy, small data, and security. Still most data work is of a keep-the-lights-on variety, such as adding new fields to databases, aligning systems that don’t talk, defining metadata, putting low-level governance in place, implementing business intelligence systems, wrangling data to feed machine-learning algorithms, and so on. All require business participation, but those who work with data have trouble engaging the business on these tasks, never mind strategy. When the business does ask for better data controls, data experts may lack the skills or business connections needed to drive an idea forward. The result is that data activities are too low-level, short-term, and poorly connected to business strategy.
