For many companies, data takes center stage in tech strategies. Business leaders use data-driven insights to perform decision-making.
The data-driven approach requires an emphasis on securing data and analytics leadership. While not every business may need a chief data officer, leadership in data and analytics can however help the enterprise use data as an asset and develop a modern approach to planning.
Some companies embed data analytics into every role to fuel data literacy. When data literacy is widespread, every employee is capable of analyzing a data set, drawing conclusions and making informed decisions!
It used to be that data and analytics was hidden inside the bowels of the IT organization producing reports. Nowadays, it’s front and center—and you better believe it.
Data Science and Analytics are offered regularly in webinars. And the question always comes up what the participants will take home and how the companies, the participants are working for, are going to benefit.
What I am excited about is that if we take the business value of analytics seriously, we learn to love the excitement as we move from dashboards to data visualizations—not to mention the descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics. If the enterprise takes data science and analytics seriously, the management has no shortage of business intelligence and data analytics tools at its disposal.
How a chief data officer (CDO) fits into the organization depends on business needs. A CDO may create data-based forecasts to enable enterprise-wide profitability or develop key performance indicators to help business units understand the consequences of their decisions.
Leveraging such tools will make measurable contributions to businesses. For example, companies can maximize an impending opportunity, mitigate future risk, meet deliverable milestones, gain a competitive advantage and much more. My sales arguments for taking part in these webinars always are that businesses can improve their planning, forecasting, budgeting, time forecasting and value driven planning.
Again, from dashboards to data visualization helps business to run simulations, plans and analyses in a very visual and intuitive manner. It supports the use of cases across various departments and functions and is designed keeping in mind the analysis and decision-making needs of business users and executives.
CDOs think strategy, beyond what a middle manager or frontline operator would decide. The value of data pushes data and analytics leaders closer to business units and core functions—and finally to higher profits.
If business leadership understands the role of data and analytics, if decision-making is central to business success, you’re probably doing the right things. But if those things are not quite working well, then a chief data officer is exactly what you should be looking for!
Technology and data leaders need to take a step back and look at the big picture. Finding fellow change leaders, building systems that adapt to business change and inserting data into decision making serve as the foundation of data strategy.
Three ideas should be considered when prioritizing data analytics in business decision-making:
Don’t do it alone
The painful truth of data and analytics is that no tech leader can go at it alone. Business units need to realize they need data and that data can be applied to solve problems across sales, procurement, logistics, marketing and more.
Data leaders /CDOs have to build those alliances to successfully implement analytics strategies. Find those partnerships by scouting out other leaders who are not happy with the way things are and have decided to stop doing things the old way; then, pitch them on how data analytics fits into the change they want to make.
Look at their dashboards, costs, risks and opportunities for innovation to establish a shared vision of how to solve their problems with data analytics and data visualization.
Take the tech landscape seriously
Planning data and analytics opportunities requires an eye to the future on upcoming technology opportunities.
Right now, we are in the middle of significant change to move to cloud, the collision of data science with capabilities and the growing demand for AI. We live in a world of necessary and continuous innovation.
Success with technology relies on doing the right things with the tech, not just implementing the newest offerings. The awareness of what’s next prepares the business for necessary adaptations.
Extend the data’s influence
With relationships across business units in place, CDOs and technology leaders can take the profound opportunity to extend influence and integrate data and analytics into business processes.
We cannot just build a data analytics infrastructure and hope it will be used. Data Officers can seek out opportunities to insert data analysis into formal business processes and share data success stories across the organization to influence others on its effectiveness.
At the same time, please give humans credit where it’s due. Although we as data and analytics practitioners can work to educate business users about what can be automated, we need to ensure we have the right governance model to decide whether it should be automated or left to human decision-making. I like the second option, of course.
Is it time for you to hire a Chief Data Officer as they deliver value? Should your staff participate in our webinars on data science, data analytics and data visualization and deliver value too? Let me know. I am glad to assist. contact me at hjschumacher59@gmail.com |