Fragmentation is putting the brakes on data-driven culture

Despite pressure to become 'data-driven', C-levels are struggling to act quickly on the insights available.
12 November 2019

Are businesses acting on the data at their fingertips? Source: Shutterstock

Businesses today are under pressure to be ‘data-driven’ in all aspects of decision-making. 

If a business doesn’t have a Chief Data Officer in the boardroom, questions would be asked, it seems, about their approach to leadership and bid to stay relevant. But, as businesses are told to leave gut instinct behind in favor of hard analysis, just how effective are businesses in acting on the data at their disposal? 

According to new research on 375 European organizations by the IDC, commissioned by Domo, the majority of companies are not leveraging the ability of analytics tools and practices in a way that’s providing real value to business direction. 

The research revealed that just shy of three-quarters (74 percent) of businesses were “facing obstacles”. C-suite leaders across those businesses, for the most part, cited data fragmentation as a key barrier— 57 percent said that siloed data results in a lack of visibility across business processes and, in turn, a “poor decision-making culture.”

These struggles in making their businesses truly “data-driven” come amid the stress of delivering impactful digital transformation strategies. 

While they might have the data, and the tools to interpret it into meaningful insights, embedding the culture to act on them effectively seems to be what’s lagging. 

Amid to the tos and fros and of on-boarding new tech and practices across disparate areas of the business, two-thirds (65 percent) of leaders found it tough to react fast enough to dynamic market conditions and innovation opportunities, and open themselves up to critical risks. 

Close to half said getting all the right stakeholders to agree on the decisions that affect the business was holding things back. More than a quarter (28 percent), meanwhile, said they didn’t understand the implications of their decisions owed to a lack of visibility across the business. 

“Leaders are facing unprecedented amounts of pressure from technological, social and regulatory forces. It’s no longer about driving digital transformation in vertical stacks, but rather horizontally across the entire enterprise,” said Ian Tickle, Senior Vice President and General Manager for EMEA at Domo. 

“However, when data is stuck in silos across the business it hinders new and efficient ways of working, and ultimately stalls digital transformation”. 

If your business is struggling with digital transformation and becoming a fully-fledged, data-driven enterprise, there’s some consolation in that the IDC predicts it will be an entire decade before most businesses are completely “digitally-transformed.” 

By 2029, 75 percent of European organizations will be what the IDC called ‘Digital Native Enterprises’, those who have embraced full digitization of business processes, products, and services, and are able to react quickly and accurately on data insights in dynamic market conditions. 

True Digital Transformation isn’t just about creating a ‘digital outside’ to your organization: leaders must consider every business element, investing in reinventing their data, expertise, and workflows to create advantage,” said Tickle.