Excerpted from Beyond the Hype.
Never before have companies had access to so much data from so many sources and the sophisticated technology to store, manipulate and make use of data for decision-making and the creation new data-centric businesses. While big data holds great potential, companies are unlikely to realize that potential unless they have a data-literate organization, executive and functional leaders willing to invest in and use data and analytic tools, and engineering experts and data scientists with in-depth knowledge of machine learning, data visualization, predictive analytics and other new approaches to distilling actionable insights from data. Some things that companies should consider when building analytics capabilities across the organization:
Start at the top. Companies face a variety of strategic, operational and cultural challenges to adopting big data approaches and tools. These can be overcome only if the board, CEO and senior executive team embrace the possibilities of big data. Senior leadership must direct big data resources to the most meaningful issues of the business and promote a culture that places quantitative analysis at the center of business decision-making. Further, they should consider the organization’s data as both a key asset and a source of value creation.
Leaders must ensure that engineering teams can implement and exploit big-data-related technologies and that business heads can evaluate the opportunities to use data-driven insights to improve the business. Organizations also need data-savvy functional and business executives who are both able to evaluate and define the opportunities where data-driven insights could most impact the business and willing to integrate big data into business processes. In data-rich functions such as sales, customer service, operations and marketing, analytic abilities will be especially critical.
Bring in the experts. A key constraint to extracting value from big data for many organizations is the lack of data science and engineering expertise. The complexity of data analytics requires individuals with years of academic or R&D experience. In addition, the most valuable data scientists also have in-depth domain knowledge, which can take years to acquire.
Organizations that view big data as a competitive advantage will need to hire data scientists to extract meaningful insights from the data, technologists to build and incorporate new technologies and engineering leaders who can build and train big data teams. Unfortunately, there is a small pool of experienced talent. These executives can be principally found in a handful of high tech companies, IT services firms, startups and some progressive IT and analytics organizations in larger institutions. Not surprisingly, the competition to recruit these individuals has become increasingly intense, and the top talent wants to work on the most exciting challenges — companies with the most interesting data assets or the most innovative technology and tools.
We are seeing the coming of age of new roles such as “chief data officer” (CDO) and head of analytics reporting into the C-suite, as organizations strive to give more prominence and influence to these specialized technical leaders. Yahoo! named a chief data officer in 2004, one of the first companies to do so. Today the position is increasingly found at a broad range of companies, federal agencies and city and state governments. The CDO is generally responsible for defining the strategic priorities for the management and use of data throughout the enterprise, including new business and performance improvement opportunities.
Drive data literacy throughout the organization. Forward-thinking companies are putting plans in place to enhance the data literacy of employees at all levels of the organization. Employees across functions will be required to interpret and use big data-generated analytics; organizations, then, will have to improve their ability to hire, assess and develop individuals who are quantitative and who can integrate new processes for decision-making into their daily activities.
In addition, many businesses will need to develop and implement new tools that distill insights from the data into actionable information for employees. This means going beyond collecting data and actually managing the incoming information, from within the company and without. Organizations will need to adopt require a culture that is willing to implement new practices throughout the company to deal with a constant flow of actionable intelligence.
Learn more about the fundamental requirements for achieving the full potential of big data.