This chief data officer is breaking down silos, one at a time
Ursula Cottone has no formal background in technology. Over the course of a nearly 20-year banking career, she has worked in just about every area of the business, including including branch management, lending, commercial banking, investments and large-scale technical projects. Just not information technology.
But in her role as chief data officer at Citizens Financial Group, Inc. — better known as Citizens Bank – that experience gap has actually been an advantage. Like many CDOs, she has found that the toughest job isn’t changing technology but attitudes. “Silos get created around type of data,” Cottone said. “Bringing those silos together to think from a customer perspective has always been a challenge.”
To break down barriers, Cottone has focused on “understanding the culture and learning what the pain points are. Helping people with pain is a great way to break down silos,” she said.
And she’s seeing success. One marketing analytics project combines all the data the bank has about individual consumer customers into a single view. The bank then invites those customers in to review their accounts and recommend the best products and services for their needs. “That’s been a big win for us,” Cottone said.
Citizens Bank isn’t alone in working to overcome organizational resistance to new practices driven by data. NewVantage Partners LLC, which specializes in helping enterprises implement big data initiatives, has seen this scenario repeatedly, said Chief Executive Randy Bean, who joined Cottone for a recent interview on theCUBE, SiliconAngle Media’s mobile live-streaming studio. “We assume that technology is the primary challenge, but organizational alignment, business alignment and business process change are the biggest obstacles” to becoming a data-driven organization, he said.
The rise of the CDO has generated considerable interest as organizations increasingly consider data to be their most prized asset. The number of CDOs in the Fortune 500 has grown from a handful five years ago to more than 300 today. But there is little commonality in the way the position is defined, its place in the reporting structure or the skills that are necessary for success.
For example, the CDO role at Citizens Bank is on a peer level with the chief information officer, with both executives reporting into the chief operating officer. That’s just fine with Ursula Cottone. “Reporting to the COO is perfect. It gives you an enterprise-wide view,” she said.
When NewVantage asked big data practitioners for their views on reporting structure for its fifth annual Big Data Executive Survey, the responses were all over the map.
