Foster A Data Strategy Around Literacy And Culture To Create New Business Value
Part of the “ Enterprise Data Strategy ” series, which explores the importance of leadership and accountability in directing an overall data strategy tied to business outcomes.
Many regard data science as the very future of business. The implication is that modern business competency is grounded in the attainment and use of meaningful insights culled from enterprise data. These outcomes can be either strategic or tactical, but for most organizations, they are the difference between leading an industry and becoming an also-ran.
Becoming data-driven, however, isn’t something enterprises can simply buy. Having the right technology is key. But achieving high effectiveness in data science across an organization requires proactively cultivating not only deep data literacy but a corporate culture that genuinely embraces data-driven decision-making and performance – from the line worker to the C-suite.
Compounding the challenge, organizations are ever more awash in data, where nearly boundless untapped opportunities lie. But these opportunities are inaccessible, more due to dearth of talent than having the tools to reach them. Because of the rise of countless data warehouses, data lakes, and increasingly vast database “estates,” now fueled by connected devices and other high data-generating sources, today’s enterprises are often drowning in this data. They are then unable to wield it effectively to meet their operational or strategic needs.
In short, to overcome these challenges and seize the urgent competitive opportunities, organizations must develop an enterprise data strategy . The strategy must be defined and infused into the organization by a chief data officer (or those assuming the role), supported by the leadership team, and realized in close conjunction with other parts of the organization. These teams must care about the outcomes (the lines of business) or can help deliver the supporting culture change (HR, corporate communications, and operations leadership).
The real challenge, therefore, is mostly not in the technologies or the growing volumes of enterprise data, but in the human skills, talent, mindset, and behaviors within the organization.
Consequently, data literacy is a cultural, education, and technology support topic of high urgency for organizations wishing to drive performance. Today’s industry benchmarks and emerging techniques now enable organizations to make data science literacy and a data-driven culture core not just to their data strategy but to their core business strategies.
Figure 1: Shifting culture and building skills for a data strategy is an enterprise-wide effort.
In fact, CXOs are clamoring for better understanding of everything from customer behavior change to cyclical challenges in their business. Data can unleash insights that allow strategic decisions to be made faster and every operational process to operate quicker, better, and less expensively. Consequently, data strategy must be fostered as a core plank of digital transformation.
However, if realizing data literacy and a data-driven culture were as simple as defining a vision, setting prioritizes, and identifying talent, then more organizations would be farther down the maturity path. Instead, several key roadblocks have to be overcome with real commitment.
Challenges to realizing an enterprise data strategy
When building data literacy and shifting to a data-driven culture, two primary obstacles must be overcome:
Dearth of data science skills/talent. The reality is that external hiring will be insufficient to ensure that the entire organization has the data science competencies required to have meaningful enterprise-wide impact. Demand today for data science skills greatly outstrips supply.
Untapped or inadequate culture change capacity. Most organizations aren’t activating the sufficient resources they already have to drive culture change (e.g.
