The digital DJ

According to Gartner, organisations need to be digitally remastered in order to cope with the disruptive forces of digitalisation. The analyst firm also believes that 2017 will see 25 percent of businesses taking on a new role, that of the chief data officer (CDO), to effectively manage and control data, playing a pivotal part in ensuring compliance and digital innovation.

"We're shifting from the second era of enterprise IT and industrialisation, which has been all about making things safe and efficient, towards the third era of digital innovation and data," says Dave Aron, VP and Gartner Fellow. "There are all these amazing new technologies and social trends related to the digital world and the challenge now is to find digital leadership. It's a business answer to a technical question: how does our business or government agency thrive in an increasingly digital world?"

Data has become the golden ticket hidden within the Willy Wonka of customer engagement and corporate growth. With it, the business has the potential to harness information that will drive processes, save money and boost the quality of products and services.

"In order for businesses to be successful, they need to acquire and retain customers while looking for ways to increase business with existing clients," says Nicholas Leighton, enterprise account executive, Digital Marketing, Adobe Systems. "Customer data allows companies to understand what their customers like and prefer, and to predict their needs. They can use this information to ensure that their products and services are positioned in a way that maximises customer engagement."

"Yet Gartner has estimated that the poor quality of data costs the average organisation $13.5 million (R165.3 million) per year and that data governance issues are on the rise. Deloitte adds that the rate of change is getting exponentially faster, with the 2000s seeing small, cheap devices becoming widely available with processing power that exceeds the supercomputer of 15 years earlier.

"Digital is an era," says Rob Latham, of Deloitte Digital Africa. "This takes the internet and not only deepens its levels of service, but suddenly offers it in places and on things that we never even considered five years ago. The CIO has been thrust to the forefront of the organisation and has to see what's on the road ahead, and probably what's also around the corner. It's possible to see the impact of exponential increases in digital capabilities through the failure of US companies to adapt. The average age of an S&P 500 company has dropped from 70 years in 1960 to five years in 2015. Digital Darwinism has taken the scalps of some major brands, including Palm, Kodak and BlackBerry. In their place, we see extraordinary companies that rise quickly, such as Facebook, Google and Uber."

The CIO is under increasing pressure to ensure that the organisation is agile enough to leapfrog technologies and solutions and keep up with the constantly evolving demands of the market. From compliance to connectivity, it's a demanding space and this is where the CDO role should slide into place, offering a rich support to the CIO while undertaking the challenge of eking out the value in data.

Gartner has estimated that the poor quality of data costs the average organisation $13.5 million.

"The CDO is one of the most challenging functions to successfully deliver against inside a competitive organisation," adds Latham. "It requires an intimate blend of technology across both the old and the new generations, strategic thinking with a strong emphasis on innovation and business transformation, and an intimate understanding of marketing and consumerism."

As elegant a role as that of the orchestra conductor, the CDO can potentially blend a symphony of business outcomes that will drive sales and improve business performance. It's also a role that's not seen as entirely necessary in the South African context, according to Adobe's Leighton and Mark Walker, IDC's Associate vice president of Sub-Saharan Africa.

"If there's a good relationship between the CIO and the CMO, there should be no requirement for a CDO as it creates an additional management layer that may not be necessary," says Walker. "The CIO doesn't have the power to remaster the decks and the CDO is such a new position that it's not proven as yet, rendering them relatively powerless to lead the charge."

Leighton adds: "For some businesses, employing a CDO may be overkill in the short term. Small to mid-tier organisations that haven't traditionally leveraged data should start with a few individuals with an understanding of data."

It's possible to see the impact of exponential increases in digital capabilities through the failure of US companies to adapt.

However, Leighton also points out that one of the biggest issues in South Africa relates to finding individuals with the right levels of skill to analyse the data while having enough understanding of the business to advise on how to use these insights to improve results.

"New skills are needed, some fairly exotic, that most organisations don't have yet," says Aron. "One of these is the notion of digital anthropology, which looks at how technology fits into the lives of customers and employees and how to fit experiences to match.

"This is the time for technology to come to the person rather than the person entering the world of technology." The digital decks are not necessarily in need of the CDO to remaster their brilliance - this can be resolved by richer relationships between the CIO and the CMO.

However, there does need to be an uptick in skills development that allows for organisations to tap into the core of digital and wield it to their benefit.

This article was first published in Brainstorm magazine. Click here to read the complete article at the Brainstorm website.