Top five questions for Chief Data Officers in 2019
It’s the time of the year to step back, evaluate what worked, what did not and what to do differently to make things better personally and professionally. The same applies to businesses.
In the age of digital transformation and heightened levels of compliance, success hinges on one of the most valuable tangible resources that can give businesses a lasting competitive advantage over rivals:trusted, business-ready data. Here’s why.
For any business model to work, it must meet its buyers’ needs profitably and responsibly. That hinges ontrusted dataabout who customers are, their needs, current satisfaction, dissatisfaction points and rivals waiting a click of a button away. It’s important to have a360-degree, unified viewof customers’ data from any touch point.
Digital transformation is enabling organizations to achieve continuous or breakthrough operational improvements. Ideally, they’re doing both at the same time if the business has organizational ambidexterity.
Questions organizations ask are related to satisfying clients’ needs more profitably: reducing or avoiding cost, reducing operational or compliance risks, charting a new course with new value chains, or applying different business models and innovating. Success depends on streamlining data operations with integrated data flow among all business functions, providing a complete and consistent business view to business functions at any point in time. Business functions will continue to create information islands that are a function of the organizational structure. Businesses should find out how to integrate and have a master view of data.
The pace of the business has exponentially increased and will continue to accelerate at an unprecedented rate. Buyers have many options in front of them, and the barriers to switching to a competitor are getting lower. How fast you meet your buyers’ needs with no trade-off on quality, price, or personalization hinges on not only how much you know about them, how lean and agile your operations are, and how fast you can use your data to support the business.
To act at the pace of the business, data should be governed throughout its lifecycle, meaning that it’s discovered, cataloged, turned into business terms, protected, in compliance with regulations and yet ready for any immediate business use. Success relies on how modern your data and application architecture are and how much you can automateusing technologies such as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence(AI).
