What’s Hampering Corporate Efforts to be Data-Driven? by Michael Essany.
Michael summarizes a survey from Terradata that reports:
- 47% of CEOs, or about half, believe that all employees have access to the data they need, while only 27% of other respondents agree.
- 43% of CEOs think relevant data are captured and made available in real time, as opposed to 29% of other respondents.
- CEOs are also more likely to think that employees extract relevant insights from data – 38% of them hold this belief, as compared to 24% among other the rest of respondents
- 53% of CEOs think data utilization has made decision-making less hierarchical and further empowered employees, as compared to only 36% of the employees themselves.
- 51% of CEOs believe data availability has improved employee engagement, satisfaction and retention, while only 35% of the rest agree.
As marketing literature, Terradata’s survey is targeted at laying the failure to become “data-driven” at the door of CEOs.
But Terradata didn’t ask or Michael did not report the answer to several other relevant questions:
What are the characteristics of a business that can benefit from being “data-driven?” If you are going to promote being “data-driven,” shouldn’t there be data to establish being “data-driven” benefits a business? Real data, not the power point slide hand wavy stuff.
Who signs the check for the enterprise is a more relevant question than the CEOs opinion about “data-driven,” IT in general or global warming.
And as Humpty-Dumpty would say, in a completely different context: “The question is, which is to be master, that’s all!”
I suppose as marketing glam it’s not bad but not all that impressive either. Data-driven marketing should be based on hard data and case studies with references. Upstairs/downstairs differences in perception hardly qualify as hard data.
I first saw this in a tweet by Kirk Borne.