PEOPLE
THE RIGHT LEADERSHIP FOR THE DATA ECONOMY
Foster a culture of data from the top and throughout the organization
GLOBAL RESEARCH RESULTS
LEARN HOW TO BECOME A DATA-FORWARD BUSINESS
Just 48% of the executives in our survey of 1,000 business, technology, and data managers say their organizations have created a senior role, such as a chief data officer (CDO), that has responsibility for implementing data strategy. And only 51% have a C-level mandate to become data-forward—where data and insights drive business strategies and decision-making.
This is concerning. Without strong backing from the top, any data-forward strategy and execution won’t deliver what’s required to be a Data Economy Leader.
Executive support is vital to success in the data economy, and is a key attribute of the “people” pillar of being a Data Economy Leader. Remember the three pillars outlined in our report?
PEOPLE
The human touch, and the required skills
PROCESS
How teams are enabled and aligned to drive innovation with data
TECHNOLOGY
The infrastructure that supports your data economy strategy
These three attributes will help you succeed in the data economy, which is about developing and executing organizational-wide data strategies; deploying scalable, extensible, and collaborative technologies in support of these strategies; and easily acquiring, integrating, analyzing, and sharing internal and third-party data across your business.
Here, we look at these three “people” attributes in more detail. What are Data Economy Leaders doing right, and how can aspiring organizations catch up?
THE PEOPLE PILLAR'S KEY ATTRIBUTES
Executive support
Data and analytics leadership
Enterprise-wide data literacy and training
EXECUTIVE SUPPORT
In our research, we identified a group of organizations that demonstrate leadership in their strategic use of data. But these Data Economy Leaders are rare, constituting only 6% of the research sample.
The most senior executives in these organizations are much more likely to mandate the strategic importance of data-driven insights powering innovation than those in organizations at the other end of the spectrum, which we call the Data Economy Laggards.
“We have a C-level mandate to become more data-driven.”
Data Economy Leaders
Data Economy Laggards
A defining characteristic of the Data Economy Leaders is their superior ability to use data to advance the strategic goals of the business. All of them use data to inform all or most of their decisions, while nearly all Data Economy Laggards use data to inform only some or very few of their decisions. Leaders also report stronger financial performance over the past three years compared with laggard organizations.
Data Economy Leaders use data to inform decision-making
Within your organization, what proportion of decisions are informed by data?
Base: 1,000 respondents overall (Data Economy Leaders = 63; Data Economy Laggards = 163)
A mandate to become more data-forward is important. But for CEOs and other senior leaders, it is just the start. “They must be consistent and vocal advocates of the data strategy,” said Bernard Marr, a business futurist and author of Data Strategy.
The CEO does not have to be a data or technology professional, but they should be able to articulate, clearly and loudly, what data-driven insights mean to the business. And the CEO should empower their CDO to implement the organization’s data-forward strategy.
[CEOs and other senior leaders] must be consistent and vocal advocates of the data strategy.
— BERNARD MARR,
Business Futurist and Author of Data Strategy
DATA AND ANALYTICS LEADERSHIP
It is clear that the Data Economy Leaders view the CDO role as critical. But what qualities and characteristics are required for success?
“The CDO must be able to connect the dots between the business domain expertise, the technical expertise, and the data expertise—bringing them all together,” said Tom Mazzaferro, CDO of Western Union. “Having done that, they can help drive business transformation and business results.”
In the past, according to Biba Helou, SVP Enterprise Data Platforms and Risk Management Technologies for U.S. bank Capital One, CDOs tended to focus on managing and governing data. Today, that is insufficient for full participation in the data economy. “The CDO must focus on the business enablement of data,” said Helou. “The data management and governance are obviously important, but the strategic lens of enablement is the key.”
There are so many aspects to providing business users across an organization with data, data-driven insights, and the tools to produce insights. To innovate, this must be the end goal of a CDO, and that person must recognize the importance of an all-in approach to participating in the data economy to acquire data, data services, and data applications.
The CDOs at the Data Economy Leader organizations appear to be connecting the dots:
Say there is strong alignment between business functions and IT on how they source and use data.
Say that IT works closely with other business functions to enhance the tools teams use to manage and analyze data.
Data Economy Leaders strengthen the people pillar
Share of respondents agreeing with statements about data strategy, leadership, and alignment between business and technology regarding the use of data
Base: 1,000 respondents overall (Data Economy Leaders = 63; Data Economy Laggards = 163)
The CDO must be able to connect the dots between the business domain expertise, the technical expertise, and the data expertise—bringing them all together. Having done that, they can help drive business transformation and business results.
— TOM MAZZAFERRO,
Chief Data Officer, Western Union
ENTERPRISE-WIDE DATA LITERACY AND TRAINING
Together, strong executive support and an empowered CDO will encourage the whole organization to understand the value of data-driven insights.
But appreciation and knowledge of what data insights can do are unlikely to develop organically. For that, the organization needs data literacy and training programs.
These are a hallmark of the Data Economy Leaders: 79% have such programs that extend to all employees, and not just to specialist functions. But it is not just the leaders. Most of the organizations in our research (62%) recognize the importance of data literacy and have company-wide programs.
Data literacy for all
Share of respondents who say that their organization has a data literacy program that extends to all employees
Base: 1,000 respondents (North America = 334, EMEA = 333, APAC = 333; Financial Services = 200, Healthcare and Life Sciences = 200, Retail and CPG = 200, Advertising, Media, and Entertainment = 200, Technology = 200)
Good data literacy programs take account of the different levels of data knowledge required by different types of employees and different functions. So they might differentiate between customer-facing employees and executive decision-makers, and between those who just need basic data awareness and those who need more advanced skills.
But organizations also need a core curriculum that is available to all employees. One of its aims should be to develop a common data language—a universal set of terms and definitions that will allow different business units and functions to collaborate.
And building data literacy across the enterprise is about more than a set of training courses. Organizations should strive, for example, to establish a data community in which members share advice, experiences, and outcomes in blogs or other forums. And the programs must include incentives to get involved including recognition of contributions. The best programs make it fun.
These three attributes of the people pillar will help you succeed in the data economy. But mastering the people pillar is not enough by itself. You also need to make progress in our two other pillars of data economy leadership: process and technology.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Find out more about what it takes to be a leader in the data economy by downloading our ebook overview.
