eee Tm Pele MOuute-1e:
Can Demonstrate Value
MIT IDE visiting scholar Thomas Davenport
shares his insights.Add an “A” to the CDO title.
Taking responsibility for analytics and Al allows CDOs
to demonstrate value, particularly if insights lead to
actions that boost employee satisfaction, enhance
customer relationships, or improve supply chains.
CDOs don’t need to have extensive data analytics
knowledge to embrace these responsibilities, given that
the role is largely focused on business rather than
technical details.2.
Embrace data products.
Packaging a combination of data, analytics, and Al to
solve a business or customer problem is a proven way
to create value and maintain it over time. To bolster
such efforts, tap data product managers to oversee the
entire process and serve as a liaison between business
leaders and the data and analytics teams.3.
Measure and document results.
You can’t value what you don’t measure, and the CDO
contribution is no different. CDOs can enlist finance
to help certify the value of various data initiatives. “It’s
hard to get a whole lot of documented ROI from just
data and data management, and Al and automation
often just point to time saved,” Davenport said.4.
Build relationships with
business peers.
While you can’t convince everyone of the value of data
and analytics, seek out other leaders who see it and
can serve as champions for key data products. Once
they're on board, they can become change agents and
help win over the rest of the organization.5.
For low-maturity organizations:
Zero in on a few use cases.
Targeting a handful of strategic use cases — for
example, supply chain optimization or customer
next-best action — and getting them done successfully
will demonstrate value quickly for companies that are
relatively new to the data game.6.
For high-maturity organizations:
Build out analytics/Al infrastructure.
More-experienced companies need to focus on
initiatives at scale. This means creating reusable datasets
and features to reduce data scientist busywork and
prioritizing large-scale re-architecting of data platforms
to meet the needs of a robust data and analytics
pipeline. Whatever the approach, demonstrate value
every step of the way.7.
Focus on governance without
the baggage.
Making it easy to do the right thing with data will
encourage people to make decisions that protect data
privacy and comply with regulations. The best approach
is “governance by design,’ which builds guardrails into
data architecture and systems. Marketplaces and
catalogs, along with reusable assets, will help promote
data practices that deliver value.8.
Create a data-driven culture.
This last objective might be the hardest: In a
NewVantage Partners survey, only 21% of firms
reported that they have a data-driven culture, and it’s
not for lack of effort.
Most companies miss a beat on culture because they
focus on data literacy alone instead of taking a targeted,
multifaceted approach that leverages culture-oriented
professionals, Davenport said.