Big data is a big opportunity for CIOs. An IDC white paper, 'The CIO's Chance of a Lifetime: Using Big Data and Analytics as the Ticket to Strategic Relevance', reveals that today's data-intensive world provides CIOs the opportunity to support business objectives in a strategic, outcome-oriented way. Sponsored by SAS, the study surveyed 578 IT, line of business and analytics managers and executives.
Although big data and analytics are fundamentally transforming business, many respondents struggle to calculate - or even articulate - their value. While 95% saw benefits from analytics, only 31% could actually measure that value.
A disconnect exists between IT and lines of business (LOBs). IT is frequently seen as a roadblock rather than an enabler to analytics, leading LOBs to develop workarounds and "shadow IT" approaches. Specifically:
* LOBs see faster time to ROI from analytics than IT.
* LOBs are actively working with chief analytics officers, while IT is less connected.
* IT is less involved in setting analytics strategy than it believes.
* LOBs are less satisfied with their collaboration with IT than the reverse.
"Individual departments are gathering data and using departmental analysts to cobble together some semblance of an analytics strategy," said Tony Hamilton, global marketing consultant at SAS. "But this approach fails to achieve a single customer view or an accurate assessment of where the business is and where it needs to go.
"When IT and business align, wonderful insights emerge. And when you distribute and scale those insights in the right context to the right recipients, new business opportunities arise. The CIO has a fantastic opportunity to lead both the business and technical conversations, allocating proper resources and establishing an enterprise-wide approach to gathering data, integrating it and ensuring its integrity."
Analytics finding a home - but not in IT
Some 38% of organisations said the majority of their analytics staff reside in a centralised analytics group outside IT - that figure would have been close to zero five years ago - with 21% saying that group primarily determines analytics strategy.
Organisational culture a stumbling block
The survey also found that the culture of an organisation creates significant stumbling blocks. Organisations must overcome resistance by top management, organisational silos and the IT-business disconnect to maximise the benefits of analytics.
IT part of the problem, not the solution
There were large differences between LOB and IT viewpoints when it came to how helpful IT is in the analytic process. Specifically there was a 14% variation between IT and LOB respondents as to whether IT is the primary analytics strategy developer. IT was 10% more satisfied with collaboration around analytics than LOB. Perhaps most tellingly, nearly twice as many IT respondents believe IT decides on analytics project funding.
For more information on how big data and analytics can drive CIO value, read: http://www.sas.com/en_us/offers/14q1/cio-chance-lifetime/register.html.
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