Data leaders want their CEO’s to invest more in data and analytics

Research from data solutions firm Alation has revealed that executives are have fallen behind in making necessary investments in data and analytics.

According to the report, only 18% of data leaders expect to receive the full amount of funding they say is necessary to get or stay ahead of the competition in data analytics, even though almost all (98%) say it is needed.

Alation’s State of Data Culture Report proved there to be a correlation between a strong data culture and an organisation’s ability to reach or exceed revenue goals.

Over 600 data leaders across the world participated in the study, with the report finding that organisations with a ‘top-tier’ data culture remain the most likely to meet or exceed their revenue goals, with 90% achieving their goals over the past year.

However, 66% of data leaders believe company leaders are the biggest obstacle to getting necessary funding, with 42% saying the C-suite do not keep to their promise to invest in programmes that help drive data culture.

Additionally, only 29% of data leaders are confident that their CEO knows that there’s a link between investment in data and analytics and staying ahead of the competition. The report states that this suggests there is a strategy gap where C-level executives will promise to invest in data and analytics, but will look over it as a priority.

“If these organisations fail to recognise the power of data-driven decision making, and don’t fund data and analytics initiatives properly, at best they’ll introduce significant risk to their organisation; at worst, be disrupted by competitors their threaten their existence,” said Alation CEO Satyen Sangani.

Core areas data leaders said they would like to see investment includes data catalogs (87%), which they believe to be essential, creating data processes (44%), creating an inventory of existing data (43%), and fixing data quality issues (38%).