Are Large Organisations Taking Advantage of their Data Assets?

Enterprise size organisations are continuing to tinker with how they leverage data and use it as a strategic advantage. IDC recently reported that organisations in the APAC region successfully analyse 2.5% of the data that sits within their business. This key statistic highlights a modern challenge for organisations.

Chris Drieberg, the ANZ Pre-Sales Director for Hitachi Vantara, believes the challenge sits within the original fabric of companies, that have traditionally retained the silos between technology and the business.

“We speak a lot about knowing what your data is for, and where it will be collected, however the organisations I’ve spoken to are split right down the middle,” Drieberg said at a recent executive roundtable session.

“There Is the business on one side, and technology on the other. For some unknown reason, each “side” thinks they have ownership of the data, and neither want to collaborate.”

Drieberg went on to explain that this lack of unification around data management is what is stalling business from using key data-points. Some of the ones identified by the group included customer information, purchasing trends, as well as product segmentation, to the competitive advantage of the organisation.

“If you take an insurance company, there are several key customer data-points that need to be uncovered to service the customer in a personalised way. The traditional structure in which IT has been delivered will not uncover this; we have to be more active.”

Drieberg believes culture is critical to driving the right conversation around increasing an organisations “dataops advantage”.

“If we go back to that word “culture”, these ‘data innovation’ need to come from a very senior level in our organisation if it is going to be adequately supported.

The why and the where, and all of these data-related discussion points, can avoid being siloed that way.”

Drieberg’s primary piece of advice to the group was to ensure that organisations get the culture right from the onset.

“You need to get the very first step right when you start talking about data-driven culture. What do those words mean in your organisation, and where does that tie in with your business strategy?

I almost find it’s a mix of improved risk control, better operational efficiency, and insights that drive sales, but where the balance between those is will differ between organisations.”

Data-management is vast becoming one of the world’s most innovative niches of the technology industry. In a recent report by CB Insights which showcased Unicorn companies around the world, 16 of these came from the data management and analytics industry, with an additional 47 classed as artificial intelligence organisations.

Inversely, large enterprises ar. A recent report by Accenture and HfS research stated that of the CIO’s they surveyed, the uncovered that between half and 80% of their data is unstructured or mostly inaccessible.