This year, Enterprise Data World (EDW) took their conference to the Omni Hotel in Atlanta, GA. EDW examines the latest trends in the world of data—especially in regards to data governance and data quality. This event focused on leveraging data as an asset and bringing IT and business users together to make better decisions for their enterprises. The keynote speakers focused on the emergence of the Chief Data Officer (CDO) within organizations, the importance of having a foundation of high quality data, data modeling, and much more.
My three main takeaways from Enterprise Data World 2017 were:
- Data governance is a huge focus area for most of the organizations in attendance. While some companies have a blueprint already aligned, many of these companies are just starting out with these projects. Through talks with some of them, these programs are often stemming from poor data quality and the importance of good data moving forward.
- Now is the time for creating an alignment of business users and the IT department at your organization—and that’s where the CDO comes in. Generally, IT has ruled the data world and has all the keys to wherever the data is being held. This has put business users at a disadvantage, not being able to make swift, agile moves with the data that they need access to. We are seeing a lot of companies incorporating the role of the CDO to help bridge the gap between the two departments, making decisions and communication flow more easily between departments.
- Many companies have not used any kind of data quality in the past and now bad data is costing them money. Understanding data quality is usually not typically on senior leadership’s mind when revenue and profits are up—even though it might be a major issue. The people in charge of data must prove their case and show why and how they can improve the data to help drive even more revenue moving forward.
We enjoyed meeting the wide array of people who stopped by the booth and made some new friends in the process! We look forward to seeing everyone again at next year’s conference to see the steps these companies have made in their data initiatives.
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