Data management transformation: From defensive to offensive, business-driven data use

Since then, the change has been dramatic in leveraging data in the business, says John Bottega, the President of the Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Council. He recently visited our Data Insiders podcast to discuss successful data strategies.

Today, we don't see data as a solely defensive weapon. Instead, it offensively opens new business opportunities across multiple industries: manufacturing, retail, pharmaceutical, and insurance, to name a few. At the same time, the role of CDOs has evolved, and they meet new requirements to succeed.

The finance sector used to be the pioneering industry in developing new ways of using data, but is it still the one leading the change, or are the other ones catching up? As the EDM Council President – "bringing the smartest folks in the room," as he says – John Bottega has an impressive view of the field.

Frameworks describe the capabilities needed for data management

As the role of data grows tremendously, cloud platforms lend their helping hand in managing it. Greater capacity and flexibility bring along new opportunities but challenges as well. You should avoid one thing above others: to take those mistakes made in the past 20–30 years and drop them in the cloud. You don't want your data lakes to turn out data swamps.

According to a McKinsey report on Global Data Management Transformation, employees spend around 30% of their time in non-value-adding tasks due to poor data quality. Bottega emphasizes that when you hear people complaining about data quality, in many cases, it's not the data itself that's the problem but the management process that created that data.

Data Management Capability Assessment Model (DCAM) is an established best practice assessment and certification tool that was developed for EDM Council members and was first used by finance organizations. Today, data creates new opportunities across industries – and cloud is where the magic happens. Therefore, a group of EDM Council members and partners, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Tietoevry, brought their experiences to the table and created the new Cloud Data Management Capabilities (CDMC) Framework. It is a free download for anyone. Now that the building work is done, we at Tietoevry have just delivered parts of the very first trainings of this framework.

What kind of true stories did Bottega share on implementing these frameworks in large and small organizations? Listen to the episode to learn more!

John Bottega is a senior data management strategist and executive with almost 40 years of experience in the industry. He became one of the first Chief Data Officers in finance as CDO at Citibank and served as CDO for Bank of America and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Today he is the president of the EDM Council, one of the world’s largest industry trade associations focused on data management and analytics.