CDO role undergoing rapid transformation

Busi­ness­es are increas­ing­ly plac­ing the chief data offi­cer (CDO) at the hub of their oper­a­tions, with a respon­si­bil­i­ty linked to all func­tions, as the depen­dence on infor­ma­tion and data-dri­ven deci­sion-mak­ing increas­es.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the CDO role is becom­ing broad­er and less tech­ni­cal as it begins to require a full appre­ci­a­tion of the total busi­ness pic­ture. In many firms, smarter tools are tak­ing out some of the com­plex sci­ence for­mer­ly required.

Where­as only a few years ago CDOs would typ­i­cal­ly be expect­ed to have a high­ly tech­ni­cal back­ground, they are now emerg­ing from myr­i­ad parts of any large-scale busi­ness. CDOs now need to know far more about broad­er busi­ness con­texts, strate­gies and risks than would have been required a decade ago.

“Data today is not just ‘cus­tomer data’, it’s every­thing in a busi­ness, and that’s why the role is chang­ing,” explains Mark Hinds, chief exec­u­tive at soft­ware firm Poly­mat­i­ca, whose plat­form enables firms to visu­alise vast swathes of data almost instant­ly. “At a very senior lev­el, the CDO needs to be some­one who under­stands the busi­ness, equip­ping teams with the right tools, and ensur­ing data acces­si­bil­i­ty is excel­lent and sim­ple.”

CDOs often now orig­i­nate from a back­ground of mar­ket­ing, sales, prod­uct man­age­ment or else­where with­in organ­i­sa­tions, not only from tech­nol­o­gy. Yet they face the same chal­lenge of mak­ing sure their teams are prop­er­ly equipped to under­stand and act on data, so many are choos­ing sys­tems that help non-experts make the most of infor­ma­tion.

This acces­si­bil­i­ty is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant giv­en the rise of “cit­i­zen data sci­en­tists”, who are reg­u­lar employ­ees mak­ing savvy use of data to trans­form effec­tive­ness. Gart­ner esti­mates that by next year, cit­i­zen data sci­en­tists, who do not have a deep tech­nol­o­gy back­ground, will pro­duce even high­er vol­umes of advanced analy­sis than CDOs. It is essen­tial they have the acces­si­ble tools to suc­ceed.

“A cit­i­zen data sci­en­tist is some­one who is rel­a­tive­ly numer­ate and has prob­a­bly worked with some basic dash­board­ing tools, but they’re pri­mar­i­ly a busi­ness per­son,” Mr Hinds explains. “These peo­ple are look­ing at things from a strate­gic per­spec­tive and need to be able to inter­ro­gate data to inform their deci­sions.” Polymatica’s sys­tem enables busi­ness­es to derive answers from data quick­ly, regard­less of whether they have data-sci­ence exper­tise or not.

B&N Bank, one of Russia’s largest com­mer­cial finance firms, uses Poly­mat­i­ca soft­ware to mod­el data from its mar­ket­ing cam­paigns and has seen a 34 per cent increase in response rates after incor­po­rat­ing the system’s mod­els into its work­flows.

Mr Hinds says finan­cial ser­vices firms are par­tic­u­lar­ly keen on using data to inform their mar­ket­ing efforts, with the aim of reach­ing cus­tomers with the most per­ti­nent offers dur­ing key moments of their lives, such as when they have just bought a house or become a par­ent.

For many firms, ana­lyt­i­cal speed is of the essence and they want visu­al­i­sa­tions of data in sec­onds rather than hours

For many firms, ana­lyt­i­cal speed is of the essence and they want visu­al­i­sa­tions of data in sec­onds rather than hours. Inter­na­tion­al cos­met­ics com­pa­ny Mary Kay uses the sys­tem to save time in com­pil­ing sales reports, enabling it to focus on find­ing the most valu­able insights rather than try­ing con­tin­u­al­ly to derive analy­sis from the raw num­bers and unstruc­tured datasets. After dis­cov­er­ing which prod­ucts are most pop­u­lar in dif­fer­ent areas, Mary Kay has opti­mised its col­lec­tion and aver­age order val­ues have increased by 15 per cent.

Across indus­tries, with smarter tools, data queries can be answered almost in real time. As com­pa­nies place their suc­cess on tar­get­ed use of infor­ma­tion, they need the right sys­tems that enable staff through­out depart­ments to work quick­ly and effec­tive­ly with data.

To unlock the pow­er of your data to improve oper­a­tions and meet cus­tomer needs, regard­less of where you sit in your organ­i­sa­tion, please vis­it polymatica.com