Ignore Data at Your Own Peril, Latest Alation State of Data Culture Report Suggests

Research reveals 74% of CFO’s don’t have the right investment approach for data and analytics

Ignoring data leads to business missteps. That is the bottom line according to the latest Alation State of Data Culture Report, released today. An eye-opening 97% of data leaders report their companies have suffered the consequences of ignoring data — either missing out on new revenue opportunities, poorly forecasting performance, or making bad investments.

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“The organizations that learn from data faster understand their customers, innovate, and sense markets quicker and more clearly than others”

Enabling organizations to use trusted, governed data to make informed, data-driven decisions can lead to process optimization and increased revenue opportunities. Ironically, data leaders are frustrated that despite the material impact data and analytics have on their businesses, 74% claim their CFO’s do not invest enough in data and analytics. The disconnect introduces performance risk for organizations, when compared to competitors who utilize data and analytics to better improve operations and serve customers. The report states that 89% of organizations that fell short of their revenue goals blame their CFO for not investing enough. Using the State of Data Culture Index, companies with a top-tier data culture are most aware of the risk (73%) of disruption from competitors who are able to use data better; low-tier data culture companies, for whom the risks are even higher, are the least aware of this risk, at only 44%.

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Produced by Wakefield Research for Alation, the leader in enterprise data intelligence solutions, the Alation State of Data Culture Report provides an assessment of the progress enterprises have made in creating a data culture, the challenges they face in embracing data-driven decision-making, and the progress they have made in leveraging data to drive business value.

More than half (56%) of data leaders say their data culture has improved in the past year, and attribute that success to a number of factors:

• Technology: 54% cite investment in new data tools, like data intelligence and data catalogs
• Data governance: 48% cite that improved collaborative data governance builds trust in data
• Data literacy: 51% of all data leaders are fostering a data culture through formal learning and development programs to increase data literacy
• No more gut instinct: More than half, 54%, report that c-level executives almost always rely on data, as opposed to gut instinct, which is a 20-point improvement over last year

“The organizations that learn from data faster understand their customers, innovate, and sense markets quicker and more clearly than others,” said Satyen Sangani, CEO and co-founder, Alation. “Companies that invest in data and build a culture of data literacy do well. Those that don’t, fall behind. Companies need to transform how they make decisions and how they work to incorporate data into everything they do. They have to build a data culture.”

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