In the first instalment, we scrutinised foundational issues, reporting on literacy, culture and strategy. In the second instalment, we delved into the second strand to report on the interesting similarities in top-down issues with upskilling and retaining talent. Last week, we investigated all things threat, including quality, security, privacy, and generative AI. Join us on the research journey as we shake down the biggest challenges for the biggest leaders in data.
The information in this report was pulled from data leader responses to the question: What are the key challenges to your data function that you are facing as its leader?
OUTSIDE OF THE DATA OFFICE
The final part of this series explains and analyses the greatest challenges for data leaders in 2024, the type of pressures and expectations that originate from outside the data office.
It goes without saying that data leaders do not often get into the heavy details of analytics and architecture; instead, they must champion data to those outside of the organisation, explaining again and again the story, purpose, and value of the data function at all levels. Many things can destabilise relationships with stakeholders rapidly – a board change, a strategy change, budget cuts – and data leaders must maintain and develop these relationships no matter what.
Leaders must be constantly prepared to highlight and re-imbue the value of data to kickstart analytical involvement, and – on the other end of the scale – to manage stakeholder expectations regarding innovation and delivery. It is this gap between BAU and beating the rest that proves challenging for almost half of leaders; the speed of change within the data office is often dictated outside of the data office. Most of the biggest challengers for data leaders in 2024 sit at this threshold.
Stakeholder Expectations and Management (68.8%)
Due to the hype around large language models, AI, and the huge swathes of money surrounding genAI, the wider business expects more from the data office than ever before – particularly controlling risks and pushing innovation.
The responsibility to manage these expectations and glide through these conversations falls squarely on the heads of senior data leaders. It is no surprise that 68.8% of data leaders referenced this as a key struggle – the business and data sectors must speak to each other if collaborative synergy is to lead to better decision-making.
Chrissie Kemp, Chief Data and AI Officer, JLR, stated how she is constantly balancing business demands, stakeholder expectations, and the reality of deliverables: “I am in a constant process of reprioritising an overwhelming demand from the business to ensure we are working on the things that deliver the most value in order to reinvest in our future growth.”
Speed of Change (43.8%)
For data leaders, there is an increasing gap between the focus required of them to streamline BAU processes and foundations, and the pressure to use new tech to innovate and push the boundaries of what is possible further: how can organisations embed new workflow processes when their workforce is under such pressure to deliver, often new generative AI focused initiatives? Nearly half (43.8%) of respondents highlighted this balance as a looming challenge.
Additionally, a handful of leaders mentioned the time-consuming nature of legacy systems which prove difficult to move away from and extract from key areas in the intersection between business and data functions. This works together to impact the speed of change within the data function and across the business.
Maria Vounou, Director of Data Science, Burberry, explained how this challenge can be approached: “Particularly in large organisations, business processes and decision making can be quite convoluted, making the corresponding data management as well as the creation and adoption of data products challenging. Raising awareness and appetite at the Executive Committee level has proven crucial to unlock these situations thus far.”
Demonstrating Value (68.8%)
There is a strong consensus among the data leaders surveyed that the focus area with the highest salience is demonstrating the value of the data function to business leaders – 68.8% of data leaders pin-pointed it as a focus area in 2024.
Amidst cross-industry budget constraints, it becomes even more imperative to demonstrate the return on investment of data initiatives, the data function, and the significance of the CDO role to receive funding needed to make better business decisions.
Some ways of highlighting the value of the CDO function is through staff motivation, clarifying business impact, and encouraging stakeholders to drive requirement by generating use cases.
Gary Goldberg, Chief Data Officer, Trading and Shipping, bp, highlighted the connection between legacy issues that take up resources, and the role demonstrating the value data can have in carving out greater space for use-cases: “My approach to the challenge of legacy issues is to focus on the business value and the innovation impact of cleaning up the legacy. We do not have to fix everything urgently, but by prioritising the most impactful items, we can get the most impact from available budgets.”
Goldberg added: “My team has found new approaches to quantify the business value of data improvements. Among these are a valuation model that allows us to assert a market value on any data set and research into new ways to measure the value of the innovation uplift created by data accessibility.”
Strong leadership and vision are instrumental in showcasing value, and Goldberg provided a quantitative approach to that challenge.
CONCLUSION
The key challenges for data leaders in 2024 can be approached through four relational streams: foundations, people, threat, and influences outside of the data office. In each instance, data leaders reveal to DataIQ that the tide is changing in the data space. It is apparent that a focus on strategy is ebbing, while the threat of outside forces – whether that be stakeholder intrusion and expectation impacting innovation and pressurising the speed of change, or the dangers and delights of genAI – pose a risk to the delicate equilibrium between business and data.
As a result, a focus on literacy and culture has taken a back seat to tackling security and privacy issues. This heightened focus on resilience within the vastly changing digital landscape is a hot topic for 2024. However, the biggest challenge centres around demonstrating value to stakeholders. How does a data leader demonstrate the value of the data function to ramp up budget, visibility and support? How does a leader also spotlight the value of the CDO role? A feature in DataIQ’s top 100 is a great place to start.
