In their own words, CIOs share their opinions about IT’s role in turning data into opportunity.

When discussing data, I have heard CIOs describe IT’s role as “the bank. Like a bank’s relationship to your money, we keep your data safe, and we deliver it to you how and when you want it. But we don’t tell you what to do with it.” 

I have also heard the opposite: “As CIO, it is my job to craft our company’s data strategy and educate executives about how to use data to grow our business.”

Which is it? Does IT provide the tools to support their business partners’ data needs? Or are CIOs data strategists in their own right with the skills and influence to turn data into value? 
As I always do when I find myself confused about such weighty issues, I recently turned to my most trusted of IT advisors, The Heller Report community, to help me understand this better. Thank you for this wealth of intelligent responses!

Question:  What is IT’s Role in Turning Data into Opportunity?

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Shawn_Eftink"If you want 'a seat at the table' of strategic business planning, moving beyond a steward of data is imperative. You must dig in and understand the desired business goals and operational processes driving data creation; then use your skills in out-of-the-box thinking to establish creative ways of leveraging data to meet business objectives and/or identify opportunities. Though ensuring data is available and protected is critical, the real business value is in the actual data."

Shawn Eftink
Director of IT,Gill Group
former CIO, Technology and Networking Inc.
 

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"In most businesses, data is growing rapidly. But what it is not being done is the prioritization of data to know the business value of specific data points. IT's role can be interpreter to business units as to what data exists and possibly its potential value to the organization. The questions that need to be asked to turn data into an opportunity are determined by how the organization handles change, and who they empower to make changes."

Barbara Wilson
Information Services Officer, Denver Metro Wastewater Reclamation District

 

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Kevin_Horner"Since the beginning of IT organizations, the IT leader and the IT organization has minimally had the role of envisioning and demonstrating what is possible. At a minimum, IT professionals have that role relative to data. Culture, maturity and salesmanship will determine if the IT organization is able to take additional steps. The best of the best will take the "art of the possible" and turn that into a revenue and profitability impacting business."

Kevin Horner
President & CEO, Mastech
former CIO, Alcoa

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Alfonso_Razzi"I think IT's role in turning data into opportunity is closely linked to the level of maturity of the organization to deal with data. In younger organizations or in organizations which don't yet have a mature culture to deal with data, then IT's role is to manage the cultural change required to turn the organization toward using data and seeing the value hidden behind it. In organizations where there is already a deep culture of dealing with data, then IT's role is less on the change and more on the delivery."

Alfonso Razzi
CIO, CityJet

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Lalit_Panda"The role of a financial planner/ investment advisor. Collates pertinent information, educates and proposes an investment plan, with the ultimate decision being that of the investor."

Lalit Panda
Managing Principal, Versento
former CIO, Tronox

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Rob_Zelinka"The business of traditional IT is dead. IT cannot be positioned to simply provide tools. They must drive innovation and navigate the company through uncharted waters. Hence the reason why the CIO is more of an innovation or integration officer than an information officer."

Rob Zelinka,
Head of IT, PROS

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"Both. IT always needs to supply the tool sets and infrastructure to business partners. Doing that successfully (better/faster/cheaper/secure) gives the CIO the 'street-cred' to then take the next step and use their unique position within the enterprise to directly create value from the organization's information."
John Nordin
Angel Investor, Consultant
former CIO, KAR Auction Services

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 Luke_Wimer"In most companies the CIO organization is the one with the view across the company that can synthesize current and future data needs. Going beyond tools and support to share insights and create data analytic capabilities in other parts of the organization is a good way to maximize a company's progress in using data. So the CIO needs to lead the conversation, facilitate dialog with interested groups and partner if the organization has assigned a data leader outside of IT. IT running analytics on their own risks going off track, so the best stance is as experts  -  champions to motivate or prompt adoption and growth."

Luke Wimer
EVP, Global Operations, MoneyGram International

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Carol_Fineagan"As a business partner and strategic advisor, the CIO is in a great position to know both the data and business objectives well enough to provide insights and direction on the highest value data. IT and business goals should be one and the same, to ensure that data captured and presented is timely, relevant and actionable."

Carol Fineagan
CIO, FranklinCovey

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Mark_Hoffman"They say knowledge is power … but that is incomplete. Applying knowledge is truly where the power comes from. About a year and a half ago I asked my team to implement a dashboard that pulls data from our service center telephony system as well as our ticketing system. Some amazing results came forth. First, our instincts were wrong. We felt that certain areas within our product suite were the problem areas. By tracking the calls and the root cause we found a very different result. With is information I was able to mobilize our sales and marketing group, our hardware engineers and our software development team to focus on the top issues. The real benefit to my company was not only reducing the number of calls, we were able to reduce the planned staff increase to account for our sales growth and we were able to increase our overall customer satisfaction. Second, it opened up a whole new realm of data analytics within my organization. It showed my peers what the power of data analysis can do."

Mark Hoffmann
CIO, TCGRx

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Greg_Flanagan"I view IT not as a traditional bank; rather I see IT more like an investment bank with a broad portfolio of assets to manage and improve shareholder value. CIOs are in a very unique position to collect, correlate and analyze data which can translate into opportunities. At a minimum, IT provides the tools to support the business partner's data needs: infrastructure, data base administration, integration, data management, etc. Depending on the organization, IT can do more. The organizational decision comes down to a few key areas: process, skill, competency, and desire."

Greg Flanagan
CIO, Coordinated Health

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Michael del Priore, CIO"Both. We provide the tools and deliver the data, but we also need to identify how data can be used in new and different ways to add value to the company."

Michael Del Priore
SVP and CIO, Catalent Pharma Solutions


Submissions via social media:


"IMHO, the CIO should force the department leaders to back off a bit at demanding data. The CIO makes sure that every certain topic is completely well-thought-out by departments AND IT. It is important, to make sure that topics are understood comprehensively."

-Anonymous


"The key is to understand the need for data to create actionable intelligence in regard to delivering business, or other value. Not just get into collecting huge amounts of data."
M.G.



"I think this depends in large part on the culture of the organization. If you're in a tech savvy organization, IT can be much more aggressive in partnering with the BUs on new data mining capabilities. If not, you have to be more of an evangelist and build awareness to see what parts of the organization are receptive."

D.O.

 

"In a perfect world, perhaps IT would be providing business with data / information in such a way that the business can turn it into opportunity. In practice a smart IT organization can see connections and value in data that the business can't, and so has a responsibility to advocate for the value in the data. There's a cultural component that determines the balance."

I.R.

big data

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