Where are you on your data maturity journey?
In a couple of weeks’ time, I’ll be honoured to speak at the Adobe EMEA Summit in London. And I’ll be especially honoured to do it alongside one of our long-term clients, Tim Coleman of the Defence Recruitment Group (DRG), who run recruitment for the British Army.
Station10 and DRG have developed a fantastic relationship over the many years that we have worked together, and have established a deep trust. But we have also always recognised that the data transformation programme that we have been going on has been a journey. Tim and his colleagues have had the wisdom to recognise that collecting and using data more effectively was not a magic wand to deliver an overnight success, but a journey that would enable growth, and deliver value along the way, but that you have to put in the groundwork first before reaping any rewards. Rather like anything in business, in fact.
The value of data within a business is something I frequently get animated about! I was speaking with a CFO of a major retailer recently, who said that this company was 2 years into a 5-year data transformation programme, being led by the CTO. They were concerned about the amount of money they were putting in, and he wasn’t sure when he would get any value back, because he wasn’t seeing any yet.
It became clear to me during this conversation that not everyone recognises where they are on their data maturity journey, and often that’s about communication; I’m sure the retailer is seeing some results after 2 years, but perhaps the CFO has unrealistic expectations of the scale of them at this point, because he hasn’t been shown where the business is on the data maturity journey.
And it occurred to me that this was an important gap in the data market. We have years of experience of understanding how data transformation programmes work, and that there are building blocks that build value along the way, and what sort of challenges businesses will be facing at each stage. While it’s great that we have that knowledge as consultants, we can share that knowledge in different ways, and that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to be part of every conversation.
That’s why we’ve built out a Data Maturity Assessment tool. This allows our customers to answer a series of straightforward questions about where they are on their journey, considering a range of different areas, from data collection, to insight, to governance, and provides a clear set of proven recommendations for what they should be doing next, based on our years of experience.
We are very excited about this, and will be launching the Assessment at the Adobe Summit in London on 8th and 9th June; indeed, we have created a special version of the Assessment for Adobe customers.