What it takes to achieve data excellence
The amount of data generated worldwide every day is both daunting and exciting. To put it into context, YouTube reports that a staggering 4.5 million videos are viewed every 60 seconds. And by 2030 it’s been predicted that nine in every ten people aged six and above will be digitally active – surmounting to greater and greater amounts of data.
The exponential growth in data has led to an increasing number of Chief Data Officers (CDOs) joining company boards to help structure business’ understanding, management and use of data. This is because in many cases organisations aren’t yet using their data to its full potential.
Our recent study, Data Strategy and Culture: Paving the way to the Cloud, surveyed data decision makers and found that only 32 per cent of data teams could extract all the insights they need.
Often, data teams are battling a lack of efficiency because a robust data strategy and data culture have not been firmly established from the get go. This is a mistake that can significantly impact future business success and hinder the pursuit of genuine data excellence. It’s more positive therefore that our research also discovered that 83 per cent of respondents say work is being done to establish a data-driven culture in their organisation.
To achieve data excellence, its essential that an organisation cements a data-driven culture, with a clearly led data-driven strategy. It must also have clarity on who is leading and managing the strategy and culture. 74 per cent of decision makers agree that data strategies are driven at the board level. More than half (55 per cent) believe that strategies should be driven by a Data Centre of Excellence (CoE), or an Innovation Lab. A CDOs ability to feature and drive both is a major reason behind the rise in firms creating this position in their organisational hierarchy.
Establishing a CoE can be the catalyst to achieving the shift in culture that a data-driven strategy demands, bringing together employees and stakeholders with a single source of truth.
For bigger organisations, this compromises a dedicated team of data scientists, data engineers, data architects, visualisation analysts, workflow integrators, delivery managers and more. For smaller organisations, this would be scaled down: assigned members from different business units work together on data projects in an agile manner as well as delivering on their everyday responsibilities.
The end goal is always the same – building relationships and proving the benefit of data for every department. By controlling how data is managed, interpreted and used organisations can make more informed decisions across the business from a centralised source.
Having this company-wide approach is imperative. With everyone aligned the business can grow to its full potential. Data democratisation as part of an organisation’s data strategy goes a step further via a sustainable plan for employees of every level to access data relevant to their role.
This level of buy-in across an entire organisation drives real cultural change by turning data analytics into a day-to-day contributor to the business rather than a perceived business function. And in time, it helps all employees to make better decisions and uncover new opportunities. 80 per cent of decision makers in our survey believe that opening up access to data has a positive impact.
