It is all about data! – Chief Data Officers are more influential [5 Lesetipps]

Recently the Spanish banking group BBVA announced the creation of a new top management position, Global Head of Data, “to promote the strategic use of data in all areas and businesses of the Group”. With this move BBVA intends to get a single customer view and, consequently, improve customer satisfaction.

The most remarkable fact here is that the Head of Data reports directly to the CEO, which means that this new role is growing in influence and importance. Thus, BBVA clearly wants to make the most of its data and become a “data-driven organisation”. But what are the main benefits of taking care of data quality? What other data-centric roles are going to flourish in 2017?

In BBVA’s case, what is the Head of Data responsible for? Basically, for designing and implementing a consistent data strategy for the entire organisation, enhancing BBVA’s data governance policies, and ensuring that the teams in charge of building data-based solutions have the required resources.

Businesses leverage data to power business opportunities

For those companies that were not founded with “digital DNA” embedded in their corporate structure, the digital transformation is the fundamental pillar on which their growth and future rest. As the entire digital ecosystem becomes more complex, the management board of classical companies has evolved and taken in new people to be responsible for tasks that the CEO and CIO are no longer able to tackle.

To effectively manage large volumes of raw data, to deliver suitable information afterwards, and to be able to answer the question “who owns data?” are key tasks within the digital transformation because, if done well, the competitive advantages and the business opportunities are going to be huge and a deeper understanding of customer behaviour can be gained.

Quelle: Experian — Quelle: Organizations are using their data to increase revenue (61 %) and to provide better customer services (56 %)- Experian

New Roles for 2017

According to PwC, “the thirst for competitive advantage may explain why there has been a proliferation of jobs in the ‘digital C-suite’, from the longer-standing CIO and CTO to newer CXO titles such as chief data officer and chief digital officer”.

Other CXO roles that are on the rise include the chief commercial officer, chief compliance officer, chief diversity officer, chief marketing officer and chief sustainability officer.

What’s next?

However, before creating the CDO’s role just for fun, companies should think about how essential data is in achieving their objectives. If the answer is that data is fundamental, a CDO makes sense.

After making the decision, one thing has to be clear beyond tasks, skills, and acronyms: Only high-quality and clean data can shape organisations for the better. At this point algorithms can gain an important role because the combination of them makes the difference when decoding data.

As a Gartner expert recently said: “the CDO will focus less on data per se and more on the algorithms used to get value out of it. Having data without algorithms is like having a car without gas”.