DATA LEADERS HAVE A CRUCIAL AND DEVELOPING ROLE

RANDY BEAN INNOVATION FELLOW, DATA STRATEGY WAVESTONE

We are entering the second decade of data leadership roles like Chief Data and Analytics Officer, with companies depending on skilled teams and technology to make sense of the vast amounts of data they collect. These roles, teamed with the rise of AI, prove that using data-driven insights to drive business outcomes impacts across multiple sectors globally; living in the information age, embracing data is critical.

New Vantage Partners, a Wavestone company, have released the Data and Analytics Leadership Annual Executive Survey 2023, the 11th edition of this C-Executive survey, which was first published in 2012.

The survey was launched in response to a constituency of Fortune 1000 business and technology C-suite executives seeking to understand the transformational impact that data and analytics would have on their organisations and the industry as a whole. It contains findings related to data executives from 116 diverse Fortune 1000 and other leading organisations in 2022, with various industries represented – including healthcare and life sciences, retail and consumer packaged goods, media and entertainment, high tech and telecommunications, government, professional sports, and financial services.

TOM DAVENPORT VISITING PROFESSOR, SAÏD BUSINESS SCHOOL

The results show that data and analytics executives report delivering business value from their corporate data and analytics investments with growing optimism as capabilities mature.

“This year, 91.9% of CDO/CDAOs and data leaders stated that their firms had delivered measurable business value from data and analytics investment,” says the report. “The growing optimism of data leaders is reflected in the projection that 98.2% of firms would see a return on their investments in 2023.”

Leadership requires change and investment

“Some of this change has taken place amazingly rapidly,” says Tom Davenport, Visiting Professor at Saïd Business

School, University of Oxford in the UK, who wrote the report with industry thought leader and author Randy Bean. “The Chief Data Officer role has quickly become much more common over time and across more industries, as has the incorporation of analytics and AI into the role, and the prevalence of Chief Data and Analytics Officer.

“There has been a pronounced shift to offence-oriented activities, such as revenuegenerating and business growth activities, during this short period,” says Davenport, with the report citing 61.8% of companies treating offensive activities as their primary focus while defence remains the priority for 38.2%, statistics that have remained fairly constant over the most recent reports.

Randy Bean

TITLE: INNOVATION FELLOW, DATA STRATEGY

COMPANY: WAVESTONE

LOCATION: MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES

Tom Davenport

TITLE: VISITING PROFESSOR

COMPANY: SAÏD BUSINESS SCHOOL

LOCATION: MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES

Executive Bio Executive Bio

Randy Bean is Innovation Fellow of Data Strategy at Wavestone, a global consultancy based in France. He was previously Founder and CEO of NewVantage Partners, a data leadership advisory firm supporting Fortune 1000 clients, which was acquired by Wavestone in December 2021.

Tom Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, the Co-Founder of the International Institute for Analytics, a Fellow of the MIT Initiative for the Digital Economy, and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte Analytics alongside working with a variety of established companies and startups in the analytics and AI space.

“The number of companies reporting measurable business value from data and analytics has grown enormously, and the investment in these resources continues to increase even during a potentially uncertain economic climate.”

“The survey and our own observations indicate that data consumption has become much more of a focus in recent years and that companies are using analytics and AI to deliver value from data,” says Bean, “It’s clear that data is driving substantial amounts of business innovation.”

“A new generation of data and analytics professionals are assuming data leadership roles,” say both Davenport and Bean.

“How ready are leading companies to make the changes and investments required to establish data leadership?”

Attitudes vary across companies

Being receptive and open to the everdeveloping technologies surrounding data is key to success in data leadership roles.

“Becoming a data-driven organisation requires time, persistence, and relentless execution and focus,” concurs Bean. “Those organisations that commit to the course while adapting over time tend to prevail –fail fast, learn faster.”

The report finds 54.2% of the companies state that responsibility for data falls to the CDO/CDAO, while 18.3% presented no single point of accountability within staff – a decrease from 28.4% five years ago. “A relatively small but steady percentage of organisations (12.5%) continue to place corporate responsibility for data within the Chief Information Officer function,” the section concludes.

Despite the rapid changes in data's importance, many companies face challenges in the human side of data. The survey recently revealed that most respondents consider human-related challenges the principal barriers to adopting a data-driven approach.

Moreover, companies have made little progress towards creating a data-driven culture, with less than a quarter of firms reporting success in this area. Though data executives focus on issues such as data modernisation, data products, AI and ML, data quality, and data architectures, the investment in "data literacy" ranked low among their top priorities, with less than 2% of respondents identifying it as a priority.

This raises the question of whether industry stakeholders are “leading the horse to water” but unable to make it drink. Companies need to shift their paradigms towards human issues and invest in data literacy to build a data-driven culture successfully. The low level of the overall success of the Chief Data Officer/Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer function found in the survey could be attributed to this emphasis on nonhuman issues.

“This is not to diminish the actual progress made with data in organisations,” says Davenport. “The survey and our own observations indicate that data consumption has become much more of a focus in recent years and that companies are using analytics and AI to deliver value from data. Data is driving substantial amounts of business innovation.

“In the end, however, the ultimate value of data comes when people use it in decisions and actions. That is both a long game and a difficult one.”