What Keeps Chief Data Officers Awake at Night?

A few notes on a Forbes article that delves on CDOs sleeping habits, based on a data integrity trends survey.

Unsurprisingly, the results fall into line with most of the inquiries published.

• Data quality represents a barrier to data integration projects for 82% of the respondents.

• Their teams spend 40% of their time on data cleaning, integration and preparation.

• Only 35% state their staff will trust a data-driven insight in conflict with their intuitions.

• The majority of the survey participants (88%) report that they have difficulties with data integration projects due to a lack of staff with relevant skills.

All these problems are recurring and take us to three issues I’ve been discussing extensively:

1. Data Quality, i.e. data’s fitness for use.

2. Data knowledge, i.e. to manage and control the what’s, where’s, how’s, who’s, when’s and why’s of data.

3. Trust, i.e. the capability to deliver reliable and timely data

On the fourth issue the “lack of staff with relevant skills”, all I can say is that there are never enough skills when those first three issues aren’t properly addressed.

5 Tips to Beat CDO Insomnia

1. Data Strategy - Short and focused, grounded on solid business cases, with committed stakeholders and clearly oriented toward clear measurable business objectives - As any other asset in the organization data’s purpose is to create value, so any data strategy must be oriented towards the organization's strategic priorities and key business objectives.

2. Roadmap - Starting with the definition of a roadmap that materializes the data strategy, relating it to the existing situation and defining the necessary steps to from the AS-IS to the TO-BE status.

3. Data Governance - To manage and control the what’s, where’s, how’s, who’s, when’s and why’s of data.

4. Data quality – Assuring the necessary processes to maintain data fit for purpose, either in a preventive or in a corrective way.

5. Master Data Management – Create a single view for the most critical entities for business, creating a single source for truth organization wide.