18 Reasons why your organisation needs a Chief Data Officer (CDO)

2 Comments

June 25, 2012

My fellow Global Business Information Management colleagues Marc Zimmerman and Jojy Mathew have co-authored a thought provoking article on the critical need for a Chief Data Officer (CDO) in the modern day corporation.

The emergence of the CDO

In reality, this emerging role which sits alongside the CCO (Chief Customer Officer) and the more traditional C-level executive profiles (COO, CFO, CIO, CMO and CRO as examples) is applicable to any modern.

18 drivers for CDO enablement of the information-centric business

Global operations are typically complex, disparate and often inefficient in their approaches to information management (IM).
Critical information is siloed
Siloed information impairs enterprise level reporting, decision-making and performance optimization
Aggregated information is required by certain business functions, but not readily available
Business and IT neither talk the same language, nor have a common understanding about information management, causing a considerable knowledge gap to exist with regards to critical data elements for the enterprise
Information management budgets and program focusses are siloed
Enterprise information is semantically disparate
The information management needs of multiple “owners” across the enterprise must be rationalized
Decentralized IT organizations that operate independently within individual business units, add complexity and challenge
Business perceives IT as being insufficiently agile to meet ad hoc information needs
Business and IT can’t agree who actually owns the data
Data context is critical to consumers, but often lacking
Operationalization of information management projects at the enterprise level is a difficult challenge
Regulatory mandates make effective information management no longer optional
Data quality must be operationalized across the entire organization to assure the efficacy of the information that business users consume
Firms need to become information-centric enterprise
Successful transformation of an organization into an information-centric enterprise requires a designated champion from senior management to educate and guide the company in operationalizing strategic data plans
Strategic thinking and decision-making is needed on the issue of whether data should be centralized or distributed

CDO Recruitment is simply the beginning of the journey...

I encourage each of you to read the article regardless of your particular vertical sector as the article not only discusses each of these drivers in further detail but, also moves on to discuss the means to establish a CDO Office, corresponding Data Management Organisation (DMO) and, in addition, provides the underlying rationale for becoming increasingly information-centric in our dealings at the corporate level.

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Simon Gratton

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2 Comments Leave a comment

kpadinja:
June 27, 2012 at 5:55pm

Even though I believe Past performance is NOT an indicator of future success, just having a CDO will not solve the problem, Many years ago we created the role of CIO to bring the alignment between business and IT, and we know how that has gone.. and now there are talks about the future of CIO role..
While I agree with all the drivers and the rationale, I firmly believe this new CDO role should be a Business Role and not an IT role. If there is one fundamental problem that has to be addressed before all other problems has even a chance of even being solved it is #11 "Business and IT can’t agree who owns the Data". That is the fundamental problem.. We all agree that Data has value and are the crown jewels of the enterprise.
Let’s assume you are a plumber or an electrician and go to a customer’s house to do some work, and you notice the house is unkempt, dirty, unorganized and cloths and things laying around, now would you care? What if it was your own house? Ownership especially of things that are valuable is important. For hypothetical reasons let us say that you are a good plumber and decide to clean up the house while you were there..Do you think the house will remain like that for a day or a week? It is going to go back to the same unfortunate state as it was soon. Another analogy that we can make is of a house where the owner is living, and a house that is leased, the situation may be a little better but still, can you as a custodian make fundamental changes to the house? Hence data ownership is fundamental to the heart of the problem. I think it is well established that Business should own the data and IT is the custodian of that data, and if that is the case then this new CDO role should be a Business Role.. Once the ownership issue is settled then comes Governance, now if you can get these 2 covered, everything else will fall in place automatically.
One key thing I thought missing was Information or Data Protection (Security), I feel it should have been a driver too, even though you have the CISO position for some time now (not that it has improved the Security in most organizations!), I am not against the C level positions.
My point is we are just looking at the symptoms and treating them, and not the fundamental root cause of the problems.(organizational culture?), We need to go back to the drawing board or need to think anew and act anew, as Abraham Lincoln told the United States Congress on December 1, 1862
<i>" The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." </i>
disenthrall - what a beautiful word!
"we must rise with the occasion" and not "we must rise to the occasion" (amazing use of language to communicate!!).

sgratton:
June 28, 2012 at 3:12pm

Great points!
I absolutely agree that the CDO role alone is insufficient and as such, thats why I intend to discuss the underlying DMO (Data Management Office) as a means to garner organisational, political and financial alignments with the express intent of managing information as an asset.
Without the CDO C-level engagement and relationship, there is unlikely to be a 'single voice for information as the corporate asset'.
Also, I agree it resides within the business (not that I believe that IT is separate to the business in the information age), and, am seeing evidence of this role being a business role rather than an IT role with tier-1 corporates putting COO rather than CIO profiles into the remit.
Thanks for your input.

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