Benefits of a chief data officer (CDO)

Woman as chief data officer ensuring data quality

Research shows 85 percent of organizations see data as one of the most valuable assets for their business, and as organizations move up the ranks toward an optimal enterprise-wide data quality management program, they need a leader. A leader who can pave the way for their team to achieve that data dream state, a chief data officer (CDO).

Over half of data-driven organizations have a chief data officer in place today. As financial institutions begin to digitally transform and retailers innovate their e-commerce experience, the volume of customer and product data may begin to overflow.

CDOs can control the influx of data, ensure relevancy and accuracy, and inform the enterprise how to become data literate to drive insightful decision-making.

Mike Kilander, global managing director of data quality Experian says in our 2020 Global data management report, “While the business wants to be agile and informed by data, this level of distrusted data often leads leaders to fall back on making decisions by gut instinct rather than by informed data insight. In fact, we have consistently seen over the past several years that people believe almost a third of their data is inaccurate.”

When you have a CDO sitting at the table, you have a leader and team to steer your company away from inaccurate data through consistent validation practices and enterprise-wide data management, relieving your current data debt and mitigating any future risk.

With trusted insights, a CDO can help democratize your data and influence the usage of trusted information from the top down; from executives to IT to business users, like marketers, risk managers, customer reps, and operation analysts. This puts your enterprise in a position to be fully data driven.

Benefits of having a chief data officer look like this:

Data becomes dependable, relevant, and actionable for the business to use for various initiatives like improving customer experience, streamlining operations, and preparing for compliance regulations.
Business becomes data literate and your non-technical users know how to read, write, and argue with data while sharing department strategies, when you have a leader teaching the ins and outs of data.
Culture begins to shift when you implement a trusted data management program and make data enablement a key focus within the next 12 months (57%).
Data management program thrives when there is a leader and team supporting this large initiative. With a user-friendly approach to data management, you will notice greater adoption across the business resulting in a greater return on investment on your data efforts.
Data debt begins to lessen when you take the steps to clean your information and evaluate your management processes, saving you time, costs, and resources.

With a CDO leading your data efforts, you have more security and confidence that your customer, product, and operational data is constantly being monitored for accuracy. In turn, your organization will feel equipped with the knowledge and insights to leverage trusted evidence to drive business initiatives.