'Firms who aren't moving towards being data driven are either sunk or sinking,' says Dunnhumby

Jason Nathan, group MD for data at Dunnhumby outlines the importance of having a data strategy

Organisations need to move towards being data driven now, or risk going out of business.

That's the opinion of Jason Nathan, group MD for data at Dunnhumby, the data science firm created by Tesco to manage and analyse its retail data.

"Organisations who haven't put into place a sequence of events and talent to become data driven are effectively sinking or sunk," said Nathan, speaking at a Computing event.

Also speaking at the event was Bob Tulloch, technical director at Walnut Medical, a research firm. Responding to an audience question around how to convince a business to invest in data, Tulloch said that initiatives must have board-level sponsorship.

"These sorts of initiatives have to come from the top down," said Tulloch. "It was Steve Jobs at Apple, for instance. It has to be someone who believes in it. There will be headwind. There will be lots of middle managers who won't like it. They'll see it as taking away their power."

Gopal Sharma, practise head (global), strategy and architecture and Liaison Technologies, explained that it's important to make a compelling case for change.

"You need to step out and say this is what good looks like. These are the pain points which need to be addressed. You need to recognise the poitics of your organisation and understand which approach is likely to work, and the right time to bring it up.

"Don't try to do it all at once, instead narrow down the initiative down to one use case or one outcome," Sharma continued. "It has to have a value which people will see. Some of the resistance you'll see, will be from people who are not ready to lend their name to the project, as they'll say what is the liklihood of it failing?"

Tulloch compared board members to children.

"Hopefully there's a part of the organisation who are aware of the value of data who you can use as a benchmark. Treat upper management like children. Make short, sharp statements followed by a massive reward," he added.

Nathan admitted that not all successful firms employ a full-bodied data strategy however, using Primark as an example.

"There are a couple at extreme end, like Primark, who are proud that they don't use data, they make a virtue of it. They say that all the savings they make by not investing in data is passed on to the consumer. You'd hope that's actually true, but even for them I'd say the boat's sunk," he concluded.