Credit: Stephen Sauer
Surging interest in artificial intelligence has thrust data into the spotlight, catalyzing enterprises to make long overdue process and organizational changes to better advance a data-driven culture.
That, in turn, gives chief data officers and chief data and analytics officers their long-awaited due.
Responses to the 2024 Data and AI Leadership Executive Survey support that trend. The survey, presented at the MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium in July, polled CIOs and data leaders from more than 100 global and Fortune 1000 organizations and clearly indicates that investment in data and analytics remains a top organizational priority.
In the 12th annual edition of the survey, which is produced by Wavestone, 82% of respondents said they are increasing investment in data and analytics in 2024, and 90% are channeling additional funding to generative AI initiatives in pursuit of productivity gains and improved customer experiences, and to free knowledge workers from mundane tasks.
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The growing AI mandate has crystalized the importance of dedicated leadership, with 83.2% of this year’s survey respondents reporting that their organization has an established CDO/CDAO role, compared with just 12% in the inaugural survey in 2012.
“This brings new life to the role of chief data officer — if [the role is] properly defined, scoped, and equipped,” said Usama Fayyad, a speaker on a symposium panel titled “What’s Next for the CDO/CDAO?” and executive director for the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University.
However, “companies that don’t have the right CDO, organization, and scope definition are going to be in trouble,” said Fayyad, who is also founder and chairman of Open Insights, a data strategy consultancy.
Cast into the spotlight, CDO/CDAOs have plenty of work to do to advance the data and analytics cause. Only slightly more than half (51%) of respondents to the Wavestone survey currently categorize the role as successful and established. Less than half (42.6%) said they feel confident that they have a winning formula for data and analytics culture, and 48% identified their company as a true data-driven organization.
“The importance of a CDO is clear when what you could do with data is not matching what you are doing with data,” Fayyad said. “You need someone someone with understanding and vision to drive the capture, management, and availability of data and the types of data.”
Wanted: A holistic, scalable data structure
With generative AI typically accessible to users across business functions, it’s crucial that data leaders establish a companywide approach and holistic data structure that scales across the enterprise as opposed to one-off or siloed implementations.
Further, data and AI initiatives should be deployed in the service of solving specific business problems as opposed to the more common scenario of greenlighting a technology initiative just to stay abreast of current trends, panelists said.
The panelists offered the following advice to help data executives ensure that AI and generative AI have maximum business impact.
Embrace an agile mindset. Even the most robust and well-planned strategies, technologies, and business goals are bound to evolve, given the pace of change and range of moving targets. “A quality CDO should be able to react to whatever is coming at the business at any point in time and be nimble enough stay abreast of leaders as they shift focus,” said Ronke Ekwensi, who was the inaugural CDO at T-Mobile and is now the company’s vice president of data and AI education.
Clear the way for orchestration and execution. Success rests on having the right internal structure that allows CDOs to execute and enact change, not just play an advisory or governance role. Building out a data strategy is important, but in many ways, it’s the less-complex part of the equation, according to Amy Lenander, CDO at Capital One. “I don’t think strategy alone is the real differentiator or competitive advantage in most cases,” she said. “It’s critical that the structures and incentives are set up in an organization so that you can execute on that strategy.”
Cultivate change management prowess. As demand for data intensifies, it becomes incumbent upon CDOs to step up their role in upskilling the organization and reorienting employees to understand — and fully embrace — what’s required to advance a data-driven, decision-making culture.
“This isn’t a role that typically comes out of the CDO, but you have to think in terms of how the business operates, what’s going to change, and bringing the workforce along through all those changes,” explained Todd James, chief date and technology officer at 84.51°, a retail data science media and insights business and a wholly owned subsidiary of The Kroger Co.
