The good, the bad and the ugly: the world of data is changing

It has never been so exciting to work in the world of data. Twenty years ago, data was relegated to a back-office function. In 2023, it is at the heart of an organization's competitive advantage. Digitization has accelerated the need for IT managers to pay close attention to their data, AI and analytics assets.

Beyond the need to meet business goals to create more engaging customer experiences and optimize operations, technology leaders will see data play an increasingly important role in the evolution of their careers from new and interesting way: according to Gartner, 25% of large traditional companies CIOs will be held accountable for the operational results of the digital business and will effectively become "COO by proxy" by next year.

To succeed, technology and data leaders will need to take stock of the pros, cons, and drawbacks of a rapidly evolving data space.

The good: organizing data is now a value-based organization

Here's the good news: 83% of companies say they have appointed a leader to drive their data strategy. This represents a growth of approximately 700% in 10 years (in 2012, only 12% of companies had Chief Data Officers (CDOs). 70% of these data officers report to the president, CEO, COO or CIO of business, allowing them to focus on what creates business value rather than activities that feel like a cost center.

In addition, technology leaders are now structuring their teams to support the creation of data products. According to Harvard Business Review, it can reduce the time it takes to implement data in new use cases by up to 90%, reduce total costs of ownership by up to 30%, and reduce the risk and burden of data governance.

As a result, nearly 40% of data managers say they adopt a product management focus in their data strategy, hiring data product managers to ensure members of a data product team do not just create algorithms, but rather collaborate in the deployment of the entire company. critical applications.

Disadvantage: Data leaders are misunderstood

While 92% of companies say they see returns on investment in data and AI, only 40% of companies say the CDO role is currently successful within their organization.

Data managers also seem quite depressed: 62% say they feel their role is misunderstood. They highlight the typical problems of fledgling organizations: inflated expectations, unclear charters, and difficulty in influencing.

This tends to frustrate everyone involved: For MIT, Fortune 1000 companies say only half of their chief data officers can drive innovation using data, and 25% say they can't. don't have a single point of accountability for data within their organizations.

The result: Nearly 75% of organizations have failed to create a data-driven organization.

This makes it clear that data leaders need to structure their organization to deliver visible value to their employers, and quickly.

The ugly one"

What's worse is that the average tenure of data stewards is less than 950 days. This compares to 7 years for the typical CEO and just over 4.5 years for the average CIO.

When data stewards don't have the time to create the structure their organization needs to leverage data, everyone loses. Best practices are lost; credibility...