Enterprises not getting full value from their data
According to a new report, 73 percent of IT leaders are still struggling to transform data into delivering significant business value.
The survey of 150 UK IT leaders by cloud consultancy Appsbroker & CTS finds 91 percent have a specific mandate from their board or executive team to make their organization more data-driven and data-centric.
Businesses are using less than two fifths (39 percent) of their 'data brain' -- with 69 percent admitting to hoarding data in data lakes and using just a fraction of it. 88 percent of organizations say they face hurdles to becoming data-driven, with the top ranking issues being IT and data complexity, legacy systems, and a lack of skills and resources.
In addition 87 percent of respondents think empowering citizen developers will help businesses overcome the data skills gap, but 81 percent say they lack the skills and know-how to enable data citizens.
These problems using data do have a significant effect. 39 percent of respondents confirm they have overspent or underspent on projects. Also 37 percent of respondents say they have made decisions based on inaccurate data, and 36 percent believe they have made inaccurate forecasts -- although the true amount could be even higher. 31 percent have suffered customer complaints, 31 percent have delayed product or service launches, 27 percent have missed reporting deadlines (including businesses from heavily regulated sectors such as financial services), and 25 percent have missed revenue opportunities.
Matt Penton, head of data and analytics at Appsbroker & CTS, says, "Leaders are using data for big business-defining decisions, so they’d better be confident that information is right. Reporting bad numbers can have very serious and public repercussions, and customer complaints can quickly lead to churn. Unless you're selling grated unicorn horns, customers can and will go elsewhere. These are the tangible costs that can sink a company when data is used ineffectively."
The full report is available from the Appsbroker & CTS site.
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