Data-driven organizations achieve data maturity by adopting transparency in measuring their data and analytics (D&A) strategy. Overlooking data culture can have a detrimental effect on an organization’s ability to harness insights and drive business success in the digital age. A resilient data culture denotes more than just an organization’s ability to manage, store, analyze, and repurpose data for mission-critical activities. In the generative AI era, it could mean the sophistication of data foundations examined through the lenses of governance, privacy, compliance, and security. Data governance programs, for instance, remain a major challenge for organizations in terms of adoption and measuring their effectiveness in the overall context of digital transformation. The latest report on the data culture model published by Alation found only 26% of surveyed organizations have a widespread data governance model. However, nearly two-thirds of organizations (70%) entrusted their data teams to address the gaps in the data governance program in 2024 to specifically comply with their data and analytics (D&A) strategy.
Alation has identified LEADERSHIP as one of the four pillars of the data culture maturity model.
Others are:
- DATA SEARCH AND DISCOVERY
- DATA LITERACY
- DATA GOVERNANCE
In this article, we will highlight the key takeaways that CIOs and D&A teams can derive from Alation’s State of Data Culture Maturity Report.
Organizations Lack Initiative Related to Search and Discovery Tools
All successful Chief Data and Analytics Officers (CDAOs) have one thing in common — they have a phenomenal strategy to generate high-impact data and analytics results for critical business operations. Building a strong data culture is the top priority of most CDOs.
According to a McKinsey report, “modern analytics capabilities are mostly isolated from the business, resulting in an ineffective analytics organizational structure.” In 2018, a dysfunctional data culture model without an embedded analytics strategy could lead to either over-centralization or decentralization of different data models. Both pose big risks to the organizations, especially if these are AI enablers or users.
Alation’s 2023 report has found organizations lag in their adoption of data search and discovery tools.
More than one in five respondents mentioned data search and discovery tools are widely unavailable in their organizations. Easy access to Search and Discovery tools empowers D&A teams to make faster and more accurate decisions.
What are the repercussions of not adopting best-fit Data Search and Discovery tools?
According to a McKinsey survey, 14% of C-level leaders spend 70 percent of their time making decisions. In most cases, these decisions are based on inefficient models. This inflates the cost of decision-making. Reliable data search and discovery tools improve the accuracy of the decision-making, with added layers of compliance and privacy guarded by a strong data governance framework.
While 15% of respondents say most of their departments use data search; only 12% said no departments use data search. 11% of respondents say data search is an enterprise-wide application.
This gaping hole in the adoption of search and data discovery tools impacts decision-making.
Alation found:
- 18% of respondents are “not confident” in the data they can discover
- 64% are only “somewhat confident”
- 18% are “confident” in the data they can discover
Creating a Data Culture for AI Use Cases
Data-driven organizations use data culture programs to accomplish goals faster in AI marketplaces. Business value creation is the number one goal for organizations for D&A strategy. In contrast, creating a data culture and AI use cases rank second-lowest and lowest, respectively in the report.
In any organization, AI and machine learning applications can supercharge success by 30%. In such a scenario, combining data culture programs with AI and ML integrations can improve the quality of institutional knowledge, leading to better human-machine intelligence for decision-making.
Julie Smith, Data & Analytics Director at Alation, spoke to me about the role of data culture in AI-driven organizations. Julie said, “Data Culture is a complex creature at the heart of which lies the ability for employees to easily find, understand, and trust data, making their jobs easier. The various facets of a strong data culture are there to enable this. Whether it’s a healthcare company or financial services, the fundamental importance of confidently leveraging data for decision-making doesn’t change. They may operate in different regulatory environments, but this desire remains a constant. Our research shows that data professionals report a lack of metadata context and data duplication as two of the most substantial obstacles to a thriving data culture. Creating an organization with discoverable and trustworthy data is the key to unlocking the benefits of the strong data culture required to run a successful, AI-driven organization.”
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Strong data-driven leadership is required to steer on data culture roadmaps to exceed revenue goals
The role of data culture in business success is pivotal in a modern digital organization, according to Alation. 25% of respondents say they have a “strong” data leadership at their organization.
What is data leadership?
Alation defined data leadership in its report. “Data leadership is defined as an understanding of the value of data by leaders who set the D&A strategy at the organization,” as per Alation.
When organizations navigate data-driven landscapes in competitive markets, they seek data stewardship that breaks the ceiling and takes the strategic imperative to de-localize knowledge. 64% of respondents cite localization of data knowledge as a major challenge in their D&A initiatives. 51% of respondents lack the user skills and training required to successfully nurture a data-centric mindset within their organizations.
Once addressed, strong leadership will drive agile innovation to gain a competitive edge in the market and beat revenue goals, even during uncertain scenarios.
Good news: Alation states that 89% of respondents with strong data leadership say their organizations met or exceeded revenue goals in the past year.
We asked Julie, what role do CIOs and CISOs play in aligning data culture with the existing cloud modernization goals?
Julie said, “There has to be an alignment of data strategy with business strategy. But oftentimes, neither strategy addresses the change management needed, with data culture playing a pivotal role. The people play second fiddle to the technology aims, but it is the people whom you need on your side to ensure that your strategy embeds itself. With that in mind, it is critical for CIOs to acknowledge and champion data culture. They must make it a feature in existing and planned projects, including cloud modernization or similar digitization projects.”
Relationship between data governance and data culture maturity
Data-driven organizations can’t opt out of data governance.
But, what is data governance?
According to Alation, data governance is an approach that defines “how data assets are managed to ensure trustworthiness and accountability, including compliance with policies and regulations.”
The emergence of data culture models is heavily influenced by the recent introductions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)in the EU and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CPAA) in the US. In the last five years, CDOs have ensured their organizations have a heightened focus on data governance to safeguard their enterprise resources as well as customer privacy.
Alation found:
- 70% of respondents shared that their organizations are focused on improving governance in the coming year.
- More than half of respondents (56%) describe the direction of their data governance strategy as “offensive” (enabling data usage to support business growth).
- APAC-based organizations lead in the adoption of data governance as an enterprise-wide approach.
- Only 10% of North American organizations expressed enterprise-wide data governance adoption.
As data becomes more valuable, organizations invest in establishing comprehensive frameworks to ensure data integrity, privacy, and compliance—not just to pass audits but to drive value.
We asked Julie, why should companies focus on privacy, risk, and compliance frameworks to define their data culture.
Julie answered, “Our research shows that more than half of data professionals describe the direction of their data governance as offensive rather than defensive, meaning the focus is on enabling data usage rather than protecting the business against risk. There needs to be a middle ground, particularly as new regulations around data use and AI lead to more complex compliance needs within data departments. As organizations look to adopt AI-driven processes across their business, the data culture they build must focus on arming employees with an understanding of the privacy and compliance implications of AI tools to avoid risk. Alation supports the transparency and clarity needed around these aspects. With an intuitive environment in which to seek out data needs and then be alerted to the regulatory implications they may contain, all within a few clicks of each other, the importance of these considerations can be reinforced to the appropriate level.”
And, that’s a wrap…
Alation’s survey could enable CDAOs to establish a strong, compliant data culture as a means to thrive in the current digital age. If AI-driven analytics fuels digital transformation in an agile environment, having a data culture ensures your D&A teams are best qualified and equipped to make the optimum use of available data and analytics. Focus on data literacy, data leadership, skilling, and literacy are pillars of strategic data culture that allow organizations to measure and re-engineer their data infrastructure for search and discovery across all departments.
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About the report:
Alation, Inc., the data intelligence company, today released The State of Data Culture Maturity: Research Report. The report is based on responses from 292 data professionals across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America to understand where data culture maturity stands today – and where it’s going.
