Why data analytics initiatives still fail?
Strong
data analytics is a digital
business imperative — and it all begins with
data governance, the right strategy, and an emphasis on
data-conscious culture.
Data and
analytics remain top priorities for organizations in the digital era, with 37 percent of IT leaders saying that
data analytics will drive the biggest chunk of their IT investments this year, ahead of security and risk management, according to CIO.com’s 2020 State of the CIO survey.
And with that level of spending going toward
analytics, the pressure is on to deliver results. Yet experts in this space say CIOs and their executive colleagues are falling short. “There are challenges in getting these initiatives across the goal line,” says Brad Fisher, a partner and the U.S. leader for
data and
analytics at KPMG.
Following are four key areas that are hindering
analytics success:
Poor data foundations
Statistics from research and advisory firm Gartner confirm that most organizations believe
data is critical, with nearly 80 percent of executives stating in a 2019 survey that their companies will lose competitive advantage if they don’t effectively use
data. Yet Gartner also found that more than half of organizations don’t have a formal
data governance framework and a dedicated budget.
The lack of such foundational elements can stymie organizational ambitions.
“You need to be very intentional. And if you’re not being intentional, you might not see value,” says Roy Singh, a partner at Bain & Co. and a member of the firm’s Advanced
Analytics and Enterprise
Technology practices.
Without a fully implemented
data governance
program, organizations can’t expect to have sound
data hygiene practices in place. They can’t access or integrate the
data they have, as it remains locked away in departmental siloes. They might not even know what
data they need to be effective.
“They have islands of information, and they have parts of their companies doing some of the same types of things. Others have missed the mark because they have dirty
data or they’re grabbing the wrong
data sets or feeding it to their dashboards incorrectly,” says Edward Matthews, an instructor at Boston University’s Metropolitan College and a senior IT security engineer at Partners HealthCare. “These companies think they have decent
programs until they look at frameworks and they realize they don’t.”
Moreover, many organizations don’t have the right foundational technologies to enable their objectives, as they chase tools that might promise big dividends yet aren’t good fits for their own needs, Matthews says. Or, conversely, they stick with tools that don’t enable growth because they didn’t devise a solid strategy from the start.
By creating a strategy for their
data programs—or, better still, a center of excellence—IT leaders can address the foundational pieces needed for success, including
data governance, accountability, ownership of the various
data program components, needed infrastructure, training requirements, strategic objectives, and leadership.
Matthews points to the approach taken by a charity he once worked for as a good example. The organization committed to appropriately funding its
analytics program created an
analytics team and assigned a senior vice president to lead it.
“They were ahead of the curve, constantly researching what capabilities were out there, providing information to the company, which demonstrated their worth. The team grew and adapted; they didn’t lock into particular
data sets and ignore other
data but were constantly thinking of new ways to check their
data, and they were always considering new technologies,” Matthews says. “In this case, the CIO had the foresight to get the team created and hire the right person to lead the team.”
Why data analytics initiatives still fail? – The wrong strategy
On the other hand, organizations shouldn’t view
analytics as a monolithic undertaking, either. Experienced
analytics leaders say they’ve seen CIOs go big all at once—building
data lakes and implementing high-priced infrastructure, for example—to jump-start
analytics projects. They deliver their projects but then find the
technology is underutilized or ignored.
Like any other tech-driven proposition, it’s better to implement targeted solutions that can demonstrate value to the users. “Make sure you’re solving
business problems,” says Dinanath (Dina) Kholkar, vice president and global head of the
business process services and
analytics units at Tata Consultancy Services.
Kholkar started his own firm’s
data journey by targeting an area where a
data project would deliver value and then moved to implement it. This approach allowed the team to clearly define objectives as well as identify the
data and tools needed to meet them. In other words, this approach created manageable, achievable goals capable of generating measurable value. “That then could become a showcase for the rest of the organization,” Kholkar says.
“[The
business units] want to see results. They don’t have the patience to wait for large transformational projects,” he adds. “And they’re OK not getting 100 percent results. If they’re getting 60 to 70 percent of outcomes to start, they’re OK, and then they can get incremental improvements from there. Because when you deliver outcomes, it gets easier to get the next wave of investments. That’s very important to keep in mind.”
Similarly, experts advise CIOs to bring an iterative approach to their
analytics program rather than going in with a big bang tech project.
“It needs to be an interactive and experimental exercise where IT,
business, and
data all work together in an agile mode, where there’s high-velocity interaction between those three groups, where they’re able to run experiments and test hypotheses,” Singh says.
Brian Hopkins, vice president, and principal analyst at Forrester Research, points to a retailer that created a three-year
data strategy built on adding investments every year rather than leaping into the
program with a single upfront investment—an approach that recognized the need to continually add and improve.
“[This company] discovered that, like digital, once you start on an
analytics program you shouldn’t stop. You invest every year in advancing your
data strategy,” Hopkins adds.
Moreover, these iterative investments need to be driven by evolving
business needs—and not by new
technology capabilities as they come onto the market. Organizations should build
analytics capabilities
business case by
business case, incrementally expanding their
data program by adopting more advanced tools and enabling more users to tackle increasingly complex problems.
“The CIO needs to think of it as an iteration, in fact, many iterations. They’re going to have to continually check [their
data program] against the market and what their company is trying to accomplish, try new tools in parallel to what they’re using to test them out, and then to be able to jump into a new tool if they think it can provide new information,” Matthews says.
Why data analytics initiatives still fail? – Failure to balance freedom and control
Despite big investments in
analytics initiatives, executives say they’re still falling short in reaping benefits. In its
Big Data and AI Executive Survey 2020, NewVantage Partners found that 74 percent of the 70 companies polled see
business adoption of
big data as a continuing struggle.
Failure to recognize and respect different user needs is one factor driving that high figure, according to Singh, who sees some
data leaders allowing every
business unit within their organizations to pursue its own
data strategy without establishing organization-wide standards—an approach that creates inefficiencies and leaves many user groups floundering without any support.
Other organizations go to the opposite extreme by centralizing everything, which prevents savvy
business users from scaling up quickly and the organization as a whole from reaching the
program’s full potential, Singh says.
But IT leaders who recognize the need to create an
analytics program balanced between those two extremes—and that can adjust to users’ differing needs within their organization—are the most successful, Singh explains.
“You need a hybrid of being completely centralized and completely decentralized, and the balance between the two will change over time, maybe starting more centralized at first,” he adds.
Singh points to the approach taken by one particular utility company. As its leaders invested in
analytics capabilities, they recognized that the energy trading group had extensive experience with
data science, so they built a self-service platform that adhered to the organization’s
data governance standards and
technology requirements. But they also recognized its safety division was less experienced with
analytics, so they crafted a strategy for those users that featured more centralized support.
Shortchanging the need for culture change
Still, executives need to devise more than just a holistic
data program that’s aligned with strategic goals. They also need to change the culture of their organizations so that users embrace the use of real-time
data-driven insights and actually view engagement with
data as the norm.
“This is a shift in the entire
business paradigm, and organizations need to plan for that change,” says Tata Consultancy’s Kholkar.
Most organizations aren’t doing that. According to the NewVantage Partners report, only 38 percent of surveyed companies have created a
data-driven organization and only 27 percent believe they’ve built a
data culture within their firms. Further, 91 percent said people and process challenges are their biggest barriers to becoming a data-driven organization.
Nassar Nizami, executive vice president and CIO at Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health in Philadelphia, has been maturing the
data program at his institution by addressing
technology needs, such as standardizing
data and
analytics tools and managing the
data warehouse, and aligning the
data program’s priorities with the organization’s overall strategy.
But he went further, driving the required cultural shifts in part through the creation of a training
program called Jefferson
Analytics Community (JAC). Its tagline is, “Trouble getting
data? You don’t know JAC.”
“In creating JAC, our vision was to create a federated model of governed self-service
analytics driven by operational owners,” Nizami says. He adds that the objectives were to increase user adoption of
analytics tools, transition from a “
data-rich” organization to a
data-driven one and promote self-service
data—goals meant to increase productivity and decrease turnaround time.
Fisher says other CIOs and their executive partners need to follow suit by moving their
analytics program from “a great standalone effort that generates insights” into something that’s integrated in processes so that users see it as
business as usual.
“Users don’t know or care what all the
data sources are or how cool the
data science is,” Fisher says. “They need to walk into their office or punch it into their phone and get the information they need to do their job. So it needs to look and feel like an application. That is something that the CIO uniquely understands.”
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https://www.cio.com/article/3269012/why-data-analytics-initiatives-still-fail.html