As data continues to grow in capacity, its management has become increasingly critical as many organisations struggle to extract business value out of their data, say experts.
Dean Terry, global head, analytics at Wipro says the greatest barrier to data management is the dual challenge posed by rapidly evolving business needs and maintaining high levels of quality and security.
A number of organisations lack a strategic enterprise-wide approach to data governance resulting in lack of visibility and interoperability across the data pipeline, he adds.
Suren Govender, MD at Accenture Analytics, says organisations are faced with a number of data governance challenges like how the obtained data can be stored and used.
Govender believes organisations can overcome these challenges with a sound data management strategy - one that gives them accurate, consistent and timely data they need to comply with regulations, as well as create a competitive advantage.
In some organisations the acceptance and widespread adoption of data analytics have been curtailed by companies not having proper data infrastructure, skills shortage, lack of quality of data in place as well as executive advocacy, says Rudraksh Bhawalkar, practice manager, Africa Region at Wipro.
"In order to harness the power of data in organisations, reskilling and skilling of people is very important as well as having good quality of data."
Plenty of organisations have a great deal of data lying within their mainframes. They are data rich but insight poor, says Bhawalkar, adding although they have all this data, they are not able to get actionable insights.
Govender says as more data continues to emanate at a hyper-speed and from a wider variety of sources, it is important to understand what kind of data is being stored, risks it comes with, why it is being retained and how to unlock its value.
Chief data officer value
This is the role that needs to be played by chief data officers (CDOs). CDOs are critical in putting together data policies and determining what data needs to be processed and for what reasons, says Govender.
Terry says the role of chief data officers has evolved to being the guardians of the data strategy across the organisation.
With ever-increasing volumes of data now available to the organisations, the focus is now on how best the business can derive value, adds Terry.
For organisations that have been late adopters of data governance or have adopted it in silos, CDOs can evangelise the digital thinking at an enterprise level and drive the digital transformation of the organisation, says Bhawalkar.
"The smartest businesses are creating a virtuous feedback loop that allows them to collect data, analyse the data, harvest insights and then make decisions and respond with agility," says Govender.
Some companies are not seeing the analytics returns they've been expecting because of bad metrics, flawed actions and faulty executions, he adds.
Refining the metrics used to measure analytic impact is an indispensable first step, saysGovender.
Bhawalkar says businesses need the right insight for the right user at the right time, through the right data.
The bimodal IT approach serves as the answer for the dual challenge of keeping up with pace of change while also maintaining the required levels of quality and security, he adds.
"With organisations across the world moving towards a customer-centric approach, the need of the hour is both for stability as well as agility; both for traditional as well as hybrid; for strengthening at the core as well as innovating at the edge."
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