Who Is Responsible For Your Company’s Big Data?

There isn’t a company in existence that couldn’t benefit from using the data it and its customers generate to inform business decisions. Big data analytics can positively impact agility, efficiency, productivity, and other top-line metrics. Companies are well-aware of the potential benefits and are actively collecting all the data they can, but there’s evidence that many aren’t using that data to its best effect, or aren’t using it at all.

While there are any number of potential stumbling blocks along the road to big data success, the lack of an executive team member with authority and responsibility for data collection, management, and analytics is a major source of problems.

Gartner predicts that in response to this difficulty around 90% of large organizations will have a chief data officer by the end of the decade, a significant increase on the 45% that have one currently. But, although the trend of bringing data into the C-Suite is in full swing among large enterprise organizations, small and medium big data users lag behind. The lack of an individual with decision-making power and responsibility for data strategies is preventing such companies from making the most of a valuable resource.

It’s not just that companies aren’t properly exploiting big data because they have no company-wide strategy or oversight, but also that big data can become a liability and a source of harm. So-called dark data is data that a company collects and doesn’t use, or that more seriously it collects without having any clear idea of the content.

Data within a company’s network or on a cloud storage platform that isn’t identified, categorized, and understood should give those responsible for its management sleepless nights, but, in many cases, it doesn’t because there is no one responsible. Individual big data projects have teams with leads who manage the data at the project level, but without oversight higher up the org chart, companies may be exposed to regulatory breaches, security issues, and inflated infrastructure costs. Data can fall between the cracks.

One issue among many is the way in which miscategorized data can cause companies to breach regulatory guidelines or unknowingly expose user data or sensitive company data. The trend towards collecting every little bit of data that might prove useful is not necessarily a negative, but unless someone is responsible for corralling that data and making sure it is stored with the right security and authentication protections, the risk is obvious.

I don’t want readers to think I’m down on big data; I’m a huge proponent of the difference that big data analytics can make to the bottom line and to the way companies make decisions. But, as data becomes ever more crucial to business, companies need to recognize that status by giving someone the power and responsibility to manage big data to its fullest advantage.