5 Priorities For Chief Data Officers
Chief data officer (CDO) is on its way to becoming the next hot job, but according to IBM, many companies aren't quite sure what this new role is all about.
"About two-and-a-half years ago we saw the emergence of the chief data officer, but organizations are struggling to understand what CDOs do, where they put that role within the organization, and what these executives are responsible for," said Glenn Finch, global leader for technology and data, IBM Global Business Services (GBS).
About 25% of Fortune 500 companies now have CDOs in place, and more are being hired every day, according to Finch. To give companies a better sense of direction, IBM recently surveyed 37 CDOs from across healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, retail, and manufacturing organizations. This "on the ground" experience was combined with expert perspectives in an IBM study published Thursday that asserts that the addition of a CDO to an executive team supports greater focus and optimized use of data.
[Want more on the CDO role? Read Why The CDO May Steal The CIO's Lunch.]
IBM's research finds that CDOs are being tasked to drive innovation and optimize use of data in five ways:
- Leverage - finding ways to use existing data.
- Enrichment - augmenting data by combining internal and external sources.
- Monetization - finding new sources of revenue tied to data.
- Protection - ensuring data privacy and security.
- Upkeep - managing the health of data under governance.
"CEOs are saying, "I don't want you to just move and store data better, I want you to figure out how to create a new business model,'" said Finch. "Every CDO we spoke to had at least one monetization request."
IBM's take agrees with Gartner's view of the CDO role, although the latter associates enrichment and monetization more with media and Internet giant CDOs and protection and upkeep more with banks, insurance companies, drug giants, and telecommunications companies. The latter have often seen that governance, compliance, discovery, and privacy challenges aren't being adequately addressed, as they've had instances in which they couldn't respond to regulators or were stung in legal cases in which they couldn't produce information subject to legal discovery.
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Doug Henschen is Executive Editor of InformationWeek, where he covers the intersection of enterprise applications with information management, business intelligence, big data and analytics. He previously served as editor in chief of Intelligent Enterprise, editor in chief of ... View Full Bio
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