Christine was recently appointed chief data officer (CDO) in a retail organisation in the UK to develop a data-driven strategy. Her predecessor was mainly focused on supplying data to the business, but Christine knows the real goal is to drive business value from the data and analytics programs by providing insights based on the data.
“The benefits of a data-driven culture is to examine and organise the data with the goal of better serving one organisation’s customers and consumers,” says Alan Duncan, vice-president analyst at Gartner. “It also bolsters and speeds up business decision-making processes.”
To establish a data-driven culture change in your organisation, engage with stakeholders to secure buy-in and ongoing support in treating data as an asset — not data as a byproduct.
CDOs need to show leadership in three areas of influence: business value, cultural change impacts and ethical implications.
Identify and communicate the business value of data
Most executives admit that their organisations mismanage their information assets, leading to missed business opportunities and undue expense. CDOs must measure information’s key quality attributes, which include accuracy, validity, usability and its relevance to key business processes. At the same time, they need to determine the actual impact on business KPIs to better prioritise and support information asset management initiatives.
Create an information catalogue to showcase to business stakeholders what data is available to the organisation. CDOs can then show what both its internal and external datasets are used for, allowing CDOs to identify (with their business partners) opportunities to use existing data in more innovative ways.
CDOs must act as catalysts in the business model by identifying the areas of business change where they will obtain the most value from data, then tracking the accruing outcomes and benefits.
Address the cultural change impacts of a data-driven approach
As part of establishing a data-driven culture, CDOs should be responsible for the culture change to support the transformation. But they cannot simply tell people to change their culture — they must inspire people to believe that change is necessary. To address and influence culture change, be explicit about how data influences different styles of decision making. Some strategic decisions are highly uncertain and are reversible; others are necessary and irreversible.
In addition, CDOs must be clear about how to engage with data. Work with business stakeholders to clarify and reframe business problems. Review those problems in terms of explicit outcomes, with definitions of targeted business roles, decisions and impact on business moments.
