Lack Of Data Capabilities Impedes Organisations’ Success: Survey

New survey revealed that lack of data maturity hinders both the private and public sector from achieving key outcomes such as growing sales or advancing environmental sustainability.

The survey of more than 8,600 decision makers from across industries and the public sector in 19 countries noted that the average organisation’s data maturity level – or ability to create value from data – is 2.6 (India: 2.9) on a five-point scale, with only three per cent reaching the highest maturity level. 

“There is broad consensus that the world’s data holds an enormous potential to advance the way we live and work – however, unlocking this potential requires a shift in organisations’ digital transformation strategies,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE. “We must move from ‘cloud first’ to ‘data first’ as the North Star of digital transformation – meaning that organisations align their strategic, organizational and technological choices with the overarching goal of leveraging data as a strategic asset.”

The survey is based on a maturity model developed by HPE that assesses an organisation’s ability to create value from data based on strategic, organizational and technological criteria. The lowest maturity level (1) is called “data anarchy”; on this level, data pools are isolated from one another, and are not systematically analyzed to create insights or outcomes. The highest level (5) is called “data economics”; at this level, an organization strategically leverages data to drive outcomes, based on a unified access to both internal and external data sources which are analyzed with advanced analytics and artificial intelligence.

Survey results revealed that 14 percent of organisations (6 per cent in India) are on maturity level 1 (“data anarchy”), 29 percent (23 per cent in India) on level 2 (“data reporting”), 37 percent (46 per cent in India) on level 3 (“data insights”), 17 percent (22 per cent in India) on level 4 (“data centricity”), and just 3 percent (3 per cent in India also) are on level 5 (“data economics”).

The lack of data capabilities, in turn, limits organisations’ ability to create key outcomes such as growing sales (global average: 30 per cent, India: 35 per cent), innovating (global average: 28 per cent, India: 32 per cent), advancing customer experience (global average: 24 per cent, India: 30 per cent), improving environmental sustainability (global average: 21 per cent, India: 34 per cent) and increasing internal efficiency (global average: 21 per cent, India: 25 per cent). 

“As India is rapidly becoming one of the most data-rich countries in the world, it has the power to create new paradigms of business activity,” said Som Satsangi, senior vice president & managing director, HPE India. “However, our survey reveals that the lack of data capabilities limits the growth and innovation of many organisations. They need to realize that and close strategic, organizational and technological gaps to get ready for the data economy."

A characteristic of a low data maturity level is that there is no overarching data and analytics architecture, but data is isolated in individual applications or locations. This is the case for 34 percent of respondents (India: 17 per cent). On the other hand, only 19 percent (India: 28 per cent) have implemented a central data hub or fabric that provides unified access to real-time data across their organization, and another 8 percent (India: 9 per cent) say this data hub also includes external data sources. 

Given that data sources are increasingly distributed across clouds and edges, the majority of respondents (global average: 62 per cent, India: 82 per cent) say that it’s strategically important to have a high degree of control over their data and the means to create value from data. More than half of respondents (global average: 53 per cent, India: 69 per cent) are concerned that data monopolies have too much control over their capability to create value from data, and 39 percent (India: 65 per cent) are re-evaluating their cloud strategy due to increasing cloud costs (global average: 42 per cent, India: 51 per cent), concerns over data security (global average: 37 per cent, India: 38 per cent), the need for a more flexible data architecture (global average: 37 per cent, India: 45 per cent) and the lack of control over their data (global average: 32 per cent, India: 33 per cent).