CDO IBM

Big Data and Analytics
ibm.com/ibmcai | ibmcai.com
Your chief data officer:
Re-imagining the business of data

2 Your chief data officer: Re-imagining the business of data
Data and analytics have ignited transformation across
industries. Data-driven organizations can re-imagine
their businesses to help them gain a significant
competitive advantage.
Manufacturers that once sold commodities can now
deliver smart solutions and monetize the associated data
streams. Retailers can design personalized, interactive
and omni-channel experiences to better serve consumers.
Government agencies can build smarter cities that
improve the quality of life for their citizens.
Because of the immense opportunities, a new role is
emerging in the C-suite–the chief data officer (CDO).
As an agent of change, CDOs are mobilizing their organi-
zations around an enterprise-wide data strategy,
activating the use of data in new ways, and building
more data-driven cultures.

1
How do we drive personalization in our web
and mobile applications? How can we improve
the customer experience when customers use
all of our channels? How do weather patterns
affect sales at my stores? Will unstructured
data help us improve our ability to predict risk
and fraud? How can I use data to reduce
operating costs?
Organizations worldwide are struggling to answer questions
like these with a heightened sense of urgency as they race to
remain relevant and stay ahead of market needs. CIOs, COOs
and other business leaders are all working individually to tackle
their pieces of the larger organizational goals.
But many organizations are finding that this piecemeal
approach does not create the transformational value that big
data and analytics promises.
Because everyone is responsible for data and analytics, there
is no cohesive strategy and no single point of accountability.
Consequently, data is often left unused or sub-optimized. It
remains in silos, and analytics are often performed by function
instead of fueling organization-wide discovery and innovation.
Decisions continue to be made based on intuition and
experience, instead of analytical insights.
In response, a new role is emerging–the chief data officer
(CDO). By 2015, Gartner projects that 25 percent of
large global organizations will have a CDO.1
Many white papers about the CDO focus on the important
topics of data governance and the application of technologies.
However, our interviews with multiple CDOs and non-
CDO executives suggest a broader mandate: guiding how
their organizations architect, analyze and act on data. To do
this, CDOs must become an agent of change promoting a
data-driven approach.
To better understand this growing and evolving role, we
conducted in-depth interviews with CDOs along with CEOs,
CIOs and other executives who are contemplating or have
established this role for their organizations. Across all
interviews, we found recurring themes:
• Obstacles to establishing the CDO role
• The value the CDO role brings:
–– Ability to envision a data strategy
–– Activating real change for the business
–– Transforming the culture
• CDOs’ expertise in building data-driven organizations
Study participants represented a broad range of industries,
including consumer electronics, financial services, government,
healthcare and telecommunications.2
By sharing their insights, study participants provided valuable
input for companies wrestling with how to fully leverage
their data for innovation. Participants discussed both why a
CDO was critical to transforming the culture of their organi-
zations and how to create this new position.

What’s standing in the way of establishing
the CDO role?
The need for the CDO role is currently under deliberation,
much like the roles of the chief marketing officer and even the
CIO were in years past.
CDOs and non-CDO executives we spoke with highlighted
four organizational barriers they faced as they established the
role within their organization.
Overwhelmingly, the territorial stance on data ownership was
viewed as the greatest challenge. As one banking CDO said,
“People are very opinionated and have strong emotional
attachments to their data, because it drives how they get their
work done.”
The belief that the work was supported by existing roles and teams,
such as the CIO and individual business units, and budgetary
pressures also created organizational resistance. Some
respondents conveyed their peers’ uncertainty about the
CDO’s value and where funding would come from. As one
insurance operations leader shared, “There is still the
perception of: What does a data officer do that IT can’t?”
Those organizations already in the hiring phase expressed the
difficulty in finding candidates who possessed both the technical
and business skills required for the position. CDOs translate
business executives’ needs and goals into working solutions.
A successful CDO must not only understand the technical side
of data and analytics, but also imagine new ways of combining
or using data to accomplish business objectives.
2 IBM Center for Applied Insights
“ Conceptually, people under-
stand the need for –and
generally agree with–having
somebody responsible for data.
The difficulty comes when it
hits sacred cows.”
– Banking COO
A telecommunications CDO explained the challenge this way:
“The CDO role requires that mix of technical skill and
business knowledge, which is a difficult combination to find.
A lot of folks go deep and become a data scientist or data
architect. A successful CDO has to maintain those technical
skills while also leveraging business skills.”
Why a CDO?
What we found most significant was that while respondents
were vocal about the organizational barriers, all emphasized
the necessity of overcoming those obstacles given the
enormous value a CDO offers. They cited three essential
capabilities that only a CDO could deliver:
• Envisioning and directing an overall data and analytics strategy
for the business
• Activating change by using data and analytics to deliver greater
value and impact the business
• Transforming the culture to one that is analytically driven
“ Sometimes these things are very
episodic. And episodic won’t
give us competitive advantage.
A CDO should help us in a
systematic, institutional way.”
– Insurance CIO

3
Envisioning and directing strategy Activating change
CDOs provide a single point of accountability to create and
promote “data integrity, reusability and protection.” They
prioritize the “greater good” across the organization, even
when that may not be the easiest or quickest approach for a
particular business unit.
Study participants felt that risk emerging from data manage-
ment, quality and integrity issues would be the “catalyst
elevating the CDO role to C-level.”
Respondents likened the CDO to a “conductor,” “quarterback”
or “navigator.” CDOs provide strategic guidance, designing and
coordinating an enterprise vision for how the organization will
treat data as an asset.
Executive sponsorship and mandate also empowers the CDO
to deliver an enterprise-wide view of data and analytics to
uncover patterns and valuable new insight about customers,
markets, organizational processes, and compliance. One
government CDO emphasized that “the true worth of modern
analytics comes when you free the data from underneath the
silos that collect it.”
Finally, CDOs develop a holistic, systematic approach to
managing data and analytics–enabling reuse and simpler
integration of data across the enterprise. Driving a
consistent, strategic approach, CDOs and non-CDO
executives agreed can help provide “a sustainable, ongoing
competitive advantage.”
A fundamental differentiator for CDOs is their ability to act
as a bridge between the data and the business opportunity.
They can go beyond traditional data efforts to help find new
value and support a new basis of competition. Their work can
help uncover quick wins that provide an immediate return
on investment, while creating a platform that delivers long-
term value.
For example, CDOs do not just look at existing data. They
work to find and mine new internal and external data sources,
combine data in new ways, and ask questions that help
their organizations unearth new insights and perform in
competitive markets. CDOs and non-CDO executives
surveyed felt other business leaders were too often focused
on day-to-day priorities and could not address the magnitude
of the effort required to better leverage data and analytics in
addition to their other responsibilities.
Most important, study participants agreed, was the CDO’s
ability to help their organizations get closer to customers. By
identifying innovative ways to leverage data–especially new
data streams from mobile and social technologies–CDOs
can help their organizations better understand the customer
experience, predict customer behavior, and, ultimately, build
deeper customer relationships.
Explained one insurance CDO, “After interrogating the
CMO’s database, I started to tell them things that they had
absolutely no idea about. ‘This is what your customer looks
like. This is the sort of product that they’re going to buy.
And this is how they’re likely to behave.’”

“ The whole reason you want a
chief data officer–whether you
articulate it or not–is because
you desire to be more evidence-
or analysis-based in the way you
make decisions and respond to
market stimulus.”
– Banking CDO
How CDOs are building data-driven
organizations
The addition of the CDO to the C-suite is important to help
organizations gain sustained and transformational business
value that big data and analytics can offer. As a central data and
analytics leader, armed with both technical expertise and
business know-how, CDOs are uniquely qualified to help their
organizations fully capitalize on their data.
CDOs envision and direct an overall data and analytics strategy
for their organization. They can activate change by using data
and analytics to positively impact the business. And they can
transform their organization’s culture from intuition-based to
analytically based decision making.
Transforming the culture
CDOs can also accelerate the shift from intuition-based
decision making to analytically driven decision making. Study
participants underscored that this is the CDO’s biggest
challenge and greatest opportunity to make an impact on the
business. Individuals may have an inherent bias based on their
previous experiences and often rely on intuition when making
business decisions. A CDO shifts the focus, providing the
empirical data that can correct subjective biases.
As one insurance CDO explained, “I was brought in really to
change the way that the business works, moving us from an
intuition-based organization to hear what the data is telling us
and help the business understand the commercial value data
can bring.”
Integral to this cultural transformation is the CDO’s work
to reframe the use of data and analytics from “projects with start
and end dates” to a “way of life.” Study participants cited the
CDO as the best choice to put into production a plan and
platforms and solutions that enable sustainable approaches
and reusability of data across the organization.
“ The whole concept behind
this CDO role is determining
innovative ways to leverage
the data that is available
within the company”
– Telecommunications CDO

5
As the diagram below illustrates, there are many paths CDOs
can take to build a data-driven organization. The decision
on which path to pursue will ultimately depend on each
organization’s current state, specific business challenges and
top priorities.
For more information on this study and articles on how to
build a data-driven organization, visit:
ibm.com/services/c-suite/cdo/
How to be an agent of change for the data era
• Make the case for
organizational change
• Create a singular
data vision and unify
data goals
• Motivate people around
you and the data strategy
to achieve quick wins
• Provide data know-how
to solve speciﬁc
business challenges
• Showcase early wins
• Uncover new insights
and new ways to
use data
• Align efforts to
organization’s
top priorities
• Establish trust in the
data and end-to-end
platforms – to
build reliance
• Scale analytics and
speed delivery by
enabling consumers
of data and insights
Envision Activate Transform
About the IBM Center for Applied Insights
ibm.com/ibmcai
The IBM Center for Applied Insights introduces new ways of
thinking, working and leading. Through evidence-based
research, the Center arms leaders with pragmatic guidance
and the case for change.

Please Recycle
About the authors
Glenn Finch is the Global Leader for Technology and Data
in the IBM Global Business Services Strategy and Analytics
Practice. Glenn’s emphasis on business analytics and optimi-
zation is focused on the most challenging and transformative
engagements that IBM undertakes. Those engagements have
leveraged broader customer centricity and experience work
across the customer acquisition, management, and servicing
processes. He has over 25 years of consulting experience across
industries such as banking, insurance, and telecommunications.
Glenn can be reached at glenn.f.finch@us.ibm.com. Connect
with Glenn on LinkedIn.
Cortnie Abercrombie is the Emerging Roles Leader for Big Data
& Analytics at IBM. Her career has focused on inspiring
and inciting innovation and action using data and analytics at
a multitude of companies and industries including: Verizon,
Citi, NTT and IBM. With one of the most unique roles
in the industry, Cortnie is a passionate advocate and
evangelist of Chief Data Officers, Chief Analytics Officers
and Chief Data Scientists. Cortnie can be reached at
cortnie.abercrombie@us.ibm.com. Connect with Cortnie on
LinkedIn or Twitter @cortnie_cdo.
Caitlin Halferty is a senior consultant with the IBM Center
for Applied Insights. In this role, she conducts research
on emerging business and technology trends for forward
thinkers and innovative leaders. Prior to joining the Center,
Caitlin consulted with clients on four continents and led
cross-functional global IT and business teams to deliver
organizational change, infrastructure systems and enterprise-
wide technology platforms. Caitlin can be reached at
caitlin.halferty@us.ibm.com. Connect with Caitlin
on LinkedIn.
Contributors
Ellen Cornillon
David Jarvis
Angie Casey
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2014
IBM Corporation
New Orchard Road
Armonk, NY 10504
Produced in the United States of America
September 2014
IBM, the IBM logo and ibm.com are trademarks of International Business
Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both.
If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first
occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or TM),
these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned
by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may
also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. Other
product, company or service names may be trademarks or service marks
of others. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at
“Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml
This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may
be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every
country in which IBM operates.
The performance data and client examples cited are presented for
illustrative purposes only. Actual performance results may vary
depending on specific configurations and operating conditions.
THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED
“AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF
NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according
to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they
are provided.
CIW03090-USEN-00
1Gartner. (2014). By 2015, 25 Percent of Large Global Organizations Will
Have Appointed Chief Data Officers [Press release]. Retrieved from http://
www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2659215
2Twenty-three qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted in the
United States and Europe (United Kingdom and Netherlands) with both
CDOs and non-CDOs. Respondents included 14 CDOs or individuals
responsible for the CDO role; seven executives seeking to establish a CDO
role within their organizations; and two executives from organizations that
had already hired CDOs. Participating organizations were in one of nine
industries: insurance, mobile, financial services, government, banking,
healthcare, telecommunications, consumer electronics and transportation.

CDO IBM

More Related Content

What's hot (18)

Similar to CDO IBM (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

CDO IBM