Business leaders failing to align strategy with data

BUSINESS STRATEGY is rarely aligned to data while few business leaders consider data a strategic asset, research commissioned by big data analysis group Rosslyn Analytics has found.

The survey of 600 UK business leaders found that less than half thought that data was considered a strategic asset, suggesting there is still some way to go for the importance of data to achieve widespread recognition, the British technology company said.

“It’s shocking that most organisations continue to make decisions without data,” said Charlie Clark, CEO, Rosslyn Analytics. “In today’s age of intelligent, self-service data technologies, there is no excuse for data not to be in the hands of decision-makers.”

When asked to identify the biggest barriers to using data, the single biggest challenge cited was that data was from too many sources and of different types. Poor quality of data was cited as the second biggest challenge to data being used within the organisation, while only 40% of respondents believe their organisation effectively exploits its internal data to gain competitive advantage

Product data was considered, on average, the most valuable, while information around customers was was rated as second most valuable type of data; financial data and spend data were seen as third and fourth most valuable respectively; “employee data” was seen as least valuable of the data categories.