Only 19% of respondents with a CDO office in their companies (41%) rate it at a high maturity level
If companies limit their data and analytics experts' tasks to services for projects, they lose momentum in digital business transformation. Companies that make their strategic decisions with the support of a Chief Data Officer (CDO) place greater emphasis on the customer experience and drive revenue growth. BearingPoint's CDO Survey provides insights into the reasons for appointing CDOs, their roles and responsibilities, the structure and functioning of CDO offices, their stage of development, and their biggest challenges.
Most companies appoint CDOs to increase competitiveness and address challenges with data governance, while data security concerns are less important.
In the consumer and production industries, organizations appoint CDOs primarily for business factors and deriving better business insights using data and analytics. These highly competitive sectors typically have low margins, and innovation is necessary to launch new products and improve operational efficiency.
Unsurprisingly, in both the financial and public services sectors, issues with data quality, regulatory compliance, and overcoming challenges with data management and governance are the main reasons to appoint CDOs.
When it comes to responsibilities, CDOs primarily focus on enabling their business partners with access to the right data, support with data governance and compliance reviews, and help with the evaluation of analytics platforms. To their external clients, they mostly offer advisory and consultancy services.
Chief Data Officers need to shift the focal point further up the data value chain. Data availability, quality, and security are basic requirements; however, data leaders are expected to spend more time on data exploration and creating actionable business insights while playing a crucial role in promoting the data culture across the organization.
Tomas Chroust, Partner at BearingPoint
A lack of talent is still an issue, but cultural challenges and low data literacy are the biggest obstacles to a CDO's success. The most successful CDO teams bridge the gap between technical and business stakeholders by advocating data-citizenship.
The survey confirms the general communication challenges between business and data-savvy stakeholders: a lack of data literacy is the top challenge CDOs face when increasing the value of data and analytics, said 65% of respondents, alongside cultural resistance to change (56%) and a lack of talent (49%).
While data scientists and engineers play the principal roles in today's teams, data translators (there are fewer) also play a crucial role in using data storytelling to engage and influence stakeholders. The two main challenges, poor data literacy and cultural resistance to change, highlight the need for such roles to bridge the digital divide between business and technical stakeholders and expedite the journey to an insights-driven company.
The maturity of CDO offices is currently low, with only 19% of respondents indicating having reached 'managed' or 'exemplary' setups.
19%
Only 19% of respondents with a CDO office in their companies (41%) rate it at a high maturity level
From an organizational perspective, different setups are possible from a centralized to a decentralized CDO organization. The survey reveals that companies can reach high maturity levels using various organizational models. It is the specific business context that determines the choice of a suitable organizational model.
Organizations with a CDO prioritize differently, putting more weight on customer experience and driving revenue growth, while business transformation is an essential driver for all respondents.
CDO offices are impactful change agents driving the data-driven transformation and increasing their company's competitiveness. In most companies, there is a significant potential for improving the setup and ramping up the CDO team. Moreover, they should be composed of technical experts and change and communication specialists who speak and understand the business lingua.
Over the years, BearingPoint has successfully helped many companies set up their CDO office and has taken existing offices to the next level. We actively assist CDOs in defining their data strategy, increasing their team setup maturity, and defining and implementing analytics use cases that bring impactful success throughout the company.
Contact us to start the discussion on how to transform your business into a data-driven enterprise and bring your data and analytics capabilities to the next level.
BearingPoint’s CDO survey assessed the setup and maturity level of companies’ CDO offices in Europe and Africa and included a total of 116 respondents. Run in the summer of 2020, the survey provides insights into the reasons for CDO appointments, their role and responsibilities, CDO office setups and modus operandi, maturity level, and the main challenges encountered. Responses were reviewed from diverse industry segments such as financial services, production industries, public services, and consumer industries.