We are witnessing a new industrial revolution driven by data. Using the Internet, mobile apps and the Internet of things (IoT), we are generating data at a dizzying pace. The European Commission predicts a 530% increase of global data volume - from 33 zettabytes in 2018 to 175 zettabytes by 2025.
No wonder that companies bend over backwards to get the most of the data they have, in order to discover its full value and potential. And data analytics systems have become key tools influencing or even driving companies' most important decisions and processes.
As Andrew Wilson, CDO of Microsoft said during CIOFEST, our flagship community event of the year:
Adapting to the data economy is one of the key and absolute measures of what will make business successful in the future.
On Tuesday, March 15, CIONET brought together more than 500 digital leaders from top companies, who shared their advice on how to effectively leverage data to shape business strategy and foster a company culture. The event was moderated by Hendrik Deckers, and featured panels of distinguished speakers from around the world.
The keynote speeches were delivered by:
Daniel Dines, Founder & CEO of UiPath,
Andrew Wilson, CDO at Microsoft,
Paul Cormier, President & CEO of Red Hat,
Melissa Evers, VP Software and Advanced Technology Group at Intel.
Andrew Wilson was interviewed by our special guest, Louisa Perry, Head of Practice, Digital & Technology at the Savannah Group.
On the country panels (Germany, UK, Belgium, Poland, Italy, and Iberoamerica), we discussed local insights on managing and generating value from data assets.
All our speakers agreed that data is the new fuel for a modern enterprise. And data analytics is absolutely fundamental for them not only to survive but also develop and thrive in this new data driven world.
Over the last few years, we've seen explosions in the ways in which data is created and consumed. Yet, data by itself isn’t useful. In order to deliver value, data must be organised, searched, combined, and processed.
So how to make data more manageable and generate added value? Make better use of automation and AI - answered the CIOFEST speakers.
According to Daniel Dines the robots (RPA) can do repetitive work better and faster than humans. They are able to understand what’s on a screen, complete the right keystrokes, navigate systems, identify and extract data.
People spend a lot of time curating data but our robots are capable of navigating different systems, gathering data from the user interface, he said.
From his point of view, it is not the technology that is the major constraint for companies to use automation, and thus, being more data driven. "The problem is the deployment,” said Mr. Dines. “You need to identify the right processes to automate. This is one of the bottlenecks. But once you do that, you create a pipeline of opportunities.”
Paul Cormier of Red Hat agreed that automation can play a capital role in data analytics. However, he added:
this is not possible without an upfront understanding of an architecture and a plan on how to approach it.
The challenges of the CIOs
Ensuring that an architecture is laid out is one of the biggest roles of the CIOs, according to Mr. Cormier:
I think they need to really focus on finding the data that exists within their organisations, where it's located, maybe centralise it, make sure it's clean and usable, and then figure out how their applications can best make use of it, no matter where they're running.
As Mr. Cormier noted, the thing that's exploding in the market right now is a concept of hybrid. Hybrid means that the customers have cloud applications that continue to run on premise. They have some applications that run in one cloud provider and other applications that may run in different cloud providers.
For Melissa Evers of Intel, the biggest challenge CIOs of many companies are facing now is the consolidation of data.
They have to figure out how not only to harness the data they have, but also to look for those zones of dark data, where they are not leveraging what they could because it is in legacy systems, or it is isolated in parts of the manufacturing floor that are not yet connected, etc., said Ms. Evers.
And there are other emerging trends and challenges that have the potential to be disruptive and introduce new ways of thinking about business models and the power of data. These are: Web 3, blockchain, security challenges, the role of AI and ethics, among others.
Daniel Dines and Andrew Wilson agreed that CIOs need to work together hand in hand with business leaders and CEOs to be able to properly address all these challenges.
Data modernisation
Yet, as our panellists pointed out, dealing with data is not simply a technological question. It is a reflection of the company’s culture, of its view on its relationship with its customers and employees.
Given the above, a company may not be able to operate, be agile, flexible or successful, unless it modernises its approach to data. That modernisation has a whole series of characteristics around making the data available, transparent, accessible, and well governed.
This brings us to data democratisation - a real game changer according to our speakers. Because, when you allow data access to any tier of your company, it empowers individuals to use the data in their decision making.
The democratisation of data is a huge phenomenon. Putting the power of all that data into the hands of individuals, but in a way that includes security and privacy controls, is a major shift and changing the way any organisation is going to work. Adapting to the data economy is one of the key and absolute measures of what will make business successful in the future. Which is why there has never been a better time to be the technologists helping them do that, said Andrew Wilson of Microsoft.
“It is only if we are working together to build off of one another and build on the brilliance of the engineers that have come before us, that we can meet the challenges of tomorrow,” concluded Melissa Evers of Intel.
Highlights from the local discussion panels
The German stage
The panel consisted of: Dr. Anke Sax - COO & CTO at KGAL GmbH & Co. KG (KGAL), Sandra Rauch, CIO & CDO at Omnicare and Arlene Buehler, CIO & CDO at DB Cargo AG. The discussion was moderated by Tobias Frydman of CIONET.
Our panellists, three Digital Leaders from three very different industries, i.e. healthcare, rail cargo and financial services, were in full agreement about the enormous opportunity that the data economy offers their organisations, such as:
- the opportunity to deliver intelligent and thus, better care and a more coherent patient-focussed health system;
- the opportunity to become more customer-centric; to deliver cargo services that are more efficient, faster, cleaner and more sustainable by building data ecosystems across the industry;
- the opportunity to develop new products and deliver tremendous value to customers from the treasure trove of data that exists (a.o. in banks).
The panel went on to explore approaches to achieve the advantage that the data economy promises, from starting big (work-back from the strategic goals of the enterprise) to bottom-up (search-out the wins where data can make an impact).
On the question of who owns the data strategy in the organisation, the panel agreed that data is owned by the organisation as a whole but as a discipline, it lies between IT and the business. Thus, the role of the Digital Leader is one of a custodian - to orchestrate the use of data to create value for the organisation.
The discussion ended with an appeal from the panellists: the role of the CIO/CDO/CTO must go beyond technology. It is to create value and to drive true transformation for the organisation - so support each other to be agents of change, be loud and make your voice heard.
The Belgian stage
The panel featured: Bram Somers, CTO at Belfius, Jan Smedts, Deputy Chief of Staff at the Office of Minister President of Flanders & Adrian Samareanu, Global CDO Volvo Financial Services. The discussion was moderated by Daniel Eycken of CIONET.
The keynote speakers on the Belgian stage approached the topic of the data economy from three completely different angles. All three had a unique story to tell on their mission on how to make all their stakeholders harness value from data. But at the end, their stories proved to be very complementary.
“We will never sell customer data,” claimed Bram Somers, CTO of the Belgian Bank Belfius. According to Bram, a bank and insurance company is data driven by design. Still, it cannot simply monetise on data as this would be in conflict with its core mission. Yes, a bank is still about money. And 92% of money is held electronically. It is data. But a bank is about data and trust. The bank therefore does not see it as its mission to monetise on the data, but rather to use the data to reinforce this trust, to work on convenience (CX and personalised services) and innovative products - integrating data from external ecosystems where appropriate - at the service of its customers.
Data becomes the heart of the business, not just the brain,” dixit Adrian Samareanu, global CDO of Volvo Financial Service. “Without a (cohesive) strategy, not much value comes out of data. It requires a bold move from playing ‘defence’ to playing ‘offence’, going from using data for supporting the core business (financial services), to unlocking data to untapping new business models, new customer experiences or services.
And that is exactly what his company has been doing: what used to be a car and truck manufacturer is becoming a data company. But this was, according to Adrian, not a done deal as of day one. Its relevance had to be proven to the whole organisation. Adrian finished his presentation with a strong take away talking about the ‘zero dollar truck’. To quote Adrian: “There will soon be a day where the value of the data a truck is generating, will be higher than the cost of the physical truck”, indicating that we are close to the tipping point at which the virtual world becomes more valuable than the physical one.
Our third speaker, Jan Smedts, deputy chief of the cabinet of the minister-president of Flanders, is the architect of the concept of the data utility company, the ‘intelligent platform for data exchange’ that will be implemented in Flanders in the two years to come. The government of Flanders is promoting connectivism as an innovation strategy. Innovation is no longer based on inhouse information and knowledge. Information loses its value at great speed. Access to information is therefore key. Companies and individuals must be open to share ideas and redefine the concept of competition. They must realise that increasing market share is not contradictory to sharing knowledge and ideas. This creates the needs for open standards controls and trust. And that is exactly the mission of the new data utility company, whose mission Jan summarised as follows:
Just as water, electricity and cable have been developed into high performance and standardised networks, data must also be easily accessible, standardised and secure in the coming years, so that our citizens, society and economic actors can count on it for innovation and new services.
The Polish stage
The panel featured: Ewa Szmidt-Belcarz, CEO of Empik, Magdalena Jończak, VP of UPC, Piotr Markowski, CEO of Corab and Kamil Konikiewicz, Head of Data Science at Allegro. The panel was moderated by Bogumił Kamiński, Associate Professor at the Warsaw School of Economics.
Kamil Konikiewicz said that one of the biggest challenges in data management is defining the role of IT: "It is critical to the success of data-driven initiatives, whether the IT has a supporting role in the organisation or to some extent it is competing with analytics-focused teams."
Building on that, the speakers focused on data democratisation and a growing role of data storytelling in order to grow the business. “What is needed is not only the ability to read data, but also to draw conclusions from the data and to be able to communicate these conclusions,” said Magdalena Jończyk.
Magdalena Jończyk and Ewa Szmidt-Belcarz emphasised the growing role of automation in data management, especially in businesses which deal with huge amounts of data, often flowing in real time, and when the customers need to get the right information immediately.
In the context of data monetization, Piotr Markowski said that he would be interested to see new business models which would be built on selling a company’s unique skills or products that are built on data.
The speakers agreed that good collaboration between business and IT is key for companies to be more data driven. “Both sides need to understand and support each other, and they need to be one team,” said Ms. Szmidt-Belcarz.
The British stage
The panel featured: Phil Jordan, Group CIO at Sainsbury's, David Jack, CTO at dunnhumby, Sanjay Patel, SVP & Group CIO at Tate & Lyle, Gavin Mee, Managing Director Northern Europe at UiPath, Martin Bellamy, CIO atHouses of Parliament Restoration & Renewal and Dr. Mark Powell, Partner, Head of Data & Analytics at EY. The discussion was moderated by Roger Camrass of CIONET.
All panellists agreed that data is irrelevant unless we know what we can do with it.
Phil Jordan of Sainsbury’s gave a few examples of how to successfully manage data. He has used Snowflake to build a cloud-based data platform which has led to some significant innovations within the business. He also democratised data access across the brands.
Thanks to the advanced data analytics, Sainsbury’s was the first supermarket which during the pandemic identified disabled vulnerable customers and prioritised delivery for them. “We did that using our own data,” said Mr. Jordan.
More success stories can be listed, yet, according to Mark Powell, 85% of major data programs fail to deliver the value that they were expected to deliver. “The time from starting to getting value out of it for the business is so long, that nine times out of 10, it just grinds to an economic halt. The problem has been that people have not looked enough around understanding the value that you can derive from the insights you could generate, and then go back to the data.”
Gavin Mee noted that if data is not used well, it can be a big cost to the business:
A lot of the data that companies want to harvest in order to drive their modern digital economy has to come from legacy. And this is where automation is used, and has grown to be such a key trend over the last three to four years.
And this trend is going to grow further in coming years. “We want to develop, using very complex AI algorithms and other technology, a concept of semantic automation. So, for example, a self learning robot will start to realise what an invoice is, and then differentiate invoices,” said Mr. Mee.
In terms of overall design of digital transformation projects, Mr. Bellamy believes that any substantial data program may benefit from a ‘hub and spoke’ model. How it looks like in practice, he went on, is building a central team of those creating the new analytic enablers reporting to the CIO.
In this model, the hub can give you the tooling and the expertise, but in terms of getting the real high value insights and making them work, that must be the CIO engaging the practitioners doing the jobs that really matter to the organisation. They understand how the business is done – generally better than the CIO team will – but they don’t often have the expertise in data analytics. So, look to end up with a model where data science teams are working in the business with the full support of everybody and access to data and tooling that the centre can bring, but driving from within the business. And be prepared to experiment!
Yet, CIOs are starting to be concerned about the war for the data science talent they need to make these ambitious uses of their extensive corporate data work.“We’re struggling to retain our best developers and our best infrastructure people, but I think all of us are struggling to keep good people in roles at affordable salaries,” said David Jack of dunnhumby.
Sanjay Patel, Group CIO of Tate & Lyle, agreed: “We have to get a supply chain of human beings have these capabilities filled who we have to start growing at a young age. But I don’t think it’s just down to government or education or academia to do this: as business leaders, we also have to take accountability here.”
The Iberoamerican stage
To collect the Key learnings and best practices of a region as wide as Ibero-America, we had six digital leaders who discussed the main challenges and strategies to unleash the power of data.
David Colorado, Area SFE Project Leader EURISA at Abbot, recalled the importance of data for decisión making and outlined three key vectors to extract that value from data, which are
(1) knowing what decision we need to make (2 ) to be able to integrate data from different sources, centralizing them in a single data warehouse and thus, making company areas avoid taking decisions based on different data, and (3) data analysis and visualization, to make data user-friendly and easy to interpret.
According to David, the challenge is not only to distribute the right information at the right time, but also to the right people and in the right format.
Gil Villalpando Gutierrez, IT Director of the Attorney General's Office of Guanajuato, spoke about the new models of data exploitation, especially in a sector as regulated as the public sector. The adaptation of data mining methodologies combined with AI has allowed them to generate very accurate indicators and study models, including facial biometrics. And how could it be otherwise, he stressed the importance of raising awareness among employees, especially those who are less analytical,
for a correct data capture, showing them the use that will be made of them and their impact on the company.
Lyzbeth Cronembold, Founder & CEO of Changers Digital, noted the amount of data and information that companies store, and the importance of analyzing the maturity of the company, when it comes to finding and effectively translating all that information into value. for those who have to make decisions. He added that the entire company must be data literate, so that the user areas can create their models on Sandbox platforms, while the role of IT should focus on guaranteeing the privacy, security, accessibility, governance and transparency of this data. In any case, "the data governance model, whether hybrid, centralized or decentralized, must be defined based on the maturity of the company."
Alonso Yañez, VP & CIO of Walmart Mexico & Central America pointed out the importance of being clear about who owns the data, the area responsible for generating, caring for and operating the data. In fact, he recommends "dividing the part of Infrastructure and data repository and the part in charge of processing, intelligence and analytics”. Regarding data security, his organization assumes that it is impossible to protect everything, and therefore, we must identify the most sensitive.
Luis de Mena, Mobile Integration Director at CaixaBank, points out that
technology is what truly unlocks the power of data, and since it is advancing so quickly (many times ahead of our strategic plans), Caixabank Tech has chosen to organize itself in function of these technologies, with an area exclusively dedicated to Advanced Analytics, for example, or specialized areas in all that technology that supports Marketing (MarkTech).
He noticed the enormous volume of data handled in the organization (300 M logins in a month) and that allows them to analyze the response to the MVPs to reconfigure the next steps, creating a new loop: Strategy - development -data-feedback-development-strategy, with a data-driven iteration.
And finally, Goyo Gómez, Global Account Manager at Celonis, spoke of the need to be efficient in all processes related to data, and for this it is necessary to "know how to prioritize systems to be efficient and address a process mining strategy, incorporating automation".