Four ways data strategies are evolving to enable business growth

Digital transformation means removing the data silos

As organisations seek to harness information to maintain and grow competitive advantage, the importance of developing a clear data strategy is becoming increasingly evident among enterprises. Yet despite data and analytics being identified as a leader in investment priorities for CIOs in recent years, Gartner recently found that nine in ten (91 per cent) organisations globally have not yet reached a 'transformational' level of maturity in this area.

Large enterprises are typically dependent on legacy software and systems alongside newer, nimbler cloud applications. Indeed, in the same research Gartner reports that on-premises systems are still prominent globally, accounting for up to half of new deployments, depending on the use case, while hybrid environments make up between 26 and 32 per cent of the total. It is these hybrid environments - in which data silos are often an issue - that have held many organisations back and reduced their potential to benefit from the wealth of information at their disposal.

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These obstacles have typically stood in the way of enterprises seeking to leverage data to drive business development. But as the summer of 2019 draws to a close and we start to look towards next year, we will see many large organisations close the gap on the smaller, more agile players and evolve in terms of how they're using data to their advantage.

I predict that we'll see four key pillars as part of this change:

The chief data officer will become pervasive

Forrester found that over half (51 per cent) of organisations had employed a CDO last year, with another fifth (18 per cent) planning to do so. Two-thirds of the CDOs were appointed between 2016 and 2018, indicating a sharp rise in the requirement for data leaders in recent years.

With CSOs, CIOs and CTOs progressively strained in their roles as part of the wider digital transformation and security tests, the CDO will be tasked with orchestrating and defining a business' global data strategy. The amplified significance placed upon this role within organisations is a clear indication of large businesses benefiting from a greater understanding of - and placing more of a focus on - data as the architect and enabler of change.

Having a platform that can underpin this movement, irrespective of database, applications or systems being used ensures all areas of an organisation can benefit from the insights data can provide.

Data centralisation will become more widespread

There are already concerted efforts to bridge any organisational data silos, placing an onus on centralising data to achieve the ‘Holy Grail' of one single source of truth across an organisation. While this has long been - and will continue to be - an industry challenge, reducing the silos across companies will enable them to unlock access to insights, improve customer experiences and maintain data protection regulatory compliance.

Today, the average enterprise relies on over a thousand cloud software applications - each of which require access to real-time data - from Salesforce to NetSuite to Google Analytics. Yet many lack a platform that can take this data, analyse it in the context of where it resides and deliver impactful, insightful information in one, centralised location. Achieving this will support the regular delivery of insights when maintaining compliance with data protection legislation.

Firms will monetise data more effectively

By leveraging the data they already analyse and/or manage, enterprises will source and unlock new opportunities for their existing businesses. This will enable them to develop innovative business models and drive new revenue streams.

Urban Airship, which helps some of the world's best-known brands leverage mobile, has enabled its moderately data-savvy marketers to run queries, explore new ways to look at data, and answer difficult questions armed with information. This has resulted in its clients being able to react to changing trends faster, experiment with new ways of reaching customers, and to quickly evaluate and improve on efforts - reducing the friction between insight and action.

GDPR is getting real

Last year, IT leaders were justly committed to ensuring their organisations were compliant with GDPR. The typical drivers behind this were around eliminating the risk of the significant fines, and reputational damage, associated with being publicly announced by a regulator as non-compliant.

Now that more organisations are compliant with GDPR (or at least working towards it), leaders can look to use their more streamlined data-sets to improve processes and glean insights into their employees, customer base and other key stakeholders to improve decision making.

That said, the work isn't done yet. Businesses must ensure they remain GDPR compliant today and moving forward. This means the development of a long-term data governance and analysis strategy, in which analysts can still provide their organisation with game-changing business insights - while maintaining compliance with regulation for the long haul.

An easier process. A clearly defined strategy. New business openings. That's the modern approach to analytics data-led businesses should consider. I predict we'll see more of this as we move deeper into the year and beyond - and those that embrace such a culture will steal a march on their competitors, gathering market share and unlocking more growth opportunities.

John O'Keeffe is VP of EMEA at Looker