According to a recent 2017 study report Data
Never Sleeps. Think for a moment what happens in the digital world every
60 seconds...Twitteratti send over 450,000 tweets, Netflix
Users stream over 69,000 hours of video, LinkedIn gets 120+ new
users, 103 Million spam emails are sent and 15 million text
messages get transmitted. This shows the amount of data is booming
like never before. The phenomenon is not just about the social world outside the
organization's boundaries but also within. Almost every medium to large
enterprise has an intranet, financial systems, social interaction system,
employee self-service system, HRMS and also systems to log user digital
actions 24x7.
All
this means more active data, more archived information and more possible (Sic!!)
insights pouring in from machines and the avalanche of data is becoming
overwhelming and unusable and untapped for many organizations. The problem
statement for the leadership is how to manage the vast data they possess, how
to manage the use of data, data ethics and possibly derive tremendous value
from the data or the insights that can be gained from that data.
Make Way for The Chief Data
Officer, CDO in short. These are the new kids on the block in the
organizational hierarchies. However, by 2020 Gartner sees more than 90% of
organizations will have a CDO on their payrolls. There are surely data
managers and data scientists who are looking at data consistency, integrity and
data access issues today but when you need to tie up the place of data in your
company strategy, have to understand the competitive advantage that data
brings, when you need to bring it up in your C-Suit discussions then the role
has to scale up many notches to dwell on strategy, management of
processes, ethics, security and so on. This led to emergence of the
role of Chief Data Officers.
A CDO has several buckets of
responsibilities in their portfolio where to go with the data, what
to do and why do what you do with it, Also how
to do and what not to do with the data.
Where
and Why: It is all about the
strategic focus. Data strategy helps to bring this direction.
The quest is ... data could eventually be of value, should be secure
and could serve as a competitive advantage. Data strategy is about deciding and framing
policies, governance processes and clarity on how to manage the data through
the organization. Boundary spanning rules and governance
processes which means how data is treated within the organization as
well as how customer and partner data is treated in a safe, secure and
confidential manner. This set of where and why responsibilities
are the most critical as every value creation and value leverage possibility
that the data has and is not understood will lead to inefficiencies and
potential loss of customer experience enhancement as well as loss of possible
downstream growth and profitability enhancement. Data systems are no longer
back end invisible IT systems that the old world paradigm understood. They are
a critical strategic lever today
What and How: With
strategy in place the CDO focuses on execution aspects of the strategic focus.
Key would be to understand what kind of data will the organization capture and
what purpose. The CDO and team also focus on how the manage the data with right
set of processes and guidelines and channelize the way the data is generated,
captured, stored, accessed and archived. The CDO organization guides the adoption
of right tools and frameworks to ensure data integrity and also channelizes
their right and effective use through various models of engaging among data
processors, data valuators and data users.
There are huge sources of data today in
many organizations and it is important to understand how to pull all this data
from different sources and what data to process to what extent so that it can
be used effectively for getting customer insights, business insights as well as
market insights.
What
Not To Do, Why Not To Do These span across the ethics and
value system in handling the data. Integrity is a technical realm while ethics
about use and handling of data is more in the values realm. Values Thinking is
the new mantra when it comes to driving decisions around sharing of data, usage
of data and access. Data privacy regulations and data governance are integral
part of the role of the CDO. Data lying around insecurely is like your bank
locker kept open when no ones around and you hoping no one will take what is in
there. Assets get retired periodically and it is important to understand where
and how to handle the data therein. In the past much of this data would get
lost for ever in the maze of technological grass lands. Some organizations used
to leverage the data they have collected by selling them outright and now the
CDO's have to take a careful look as to whether such configurations are in
conflict with national and regional compliance guidelines and within the legal
framework.
SKILLS & CAPABILITIES LANDSCAPE
According to a 2017 study at University
of Arkansas over two thirds of CDO's had at least one masters degree and about
16% of them had PhD Or Doctoral level degrees. About half were qualified in
computer sciences, engineering or Information sciences while about a third were
postgraduates in Business Management.
Data officers may start with about 10
years of expertise around the Role of the CDO would need a blend of business
understanding, strategic thinking, and good understanding of technology. They
should be good at the ability to influence and also drive change programs.
On the technical side, they will need
strong design development and validation skills to work with applied analytics
models including descriptive, predictive and prescriptive models. Collaboration,
Interpersonal skills and Communication are three underlying factors that one
would need to look for across the spectrum for the CDO role.
The CDO must also possess strong
leadership, be able to move cross-functional groups in a unified direction as
well as be able to move business executives and stakeholders.
It will be one of the key roles that we
would continue to see emerging as the months go by and every mid and large size
organization will have a Data Officer or a CDO organization in the years to
come making it one of the new transitioning entities that will establish a firm
foothold in the organizational landscape of tomorrow
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