Within the guide, The Chief Information Officer’s Playbook and Information-Pushed Enterprise Transformation: Find out how to Disrupt, Innovate and Keep Forward of the Competitors, Caroline Carruthers defines a CDO as an individual who’s business-focused and understands the technique and course of the enterprise. The first function of a CDO is to underpin enterprise technique with information. They’re liable for maximising the strategic potential of information throughout the organisation.
Heidrick and Struggles, an govt search firm primarily based out of Chicago, just lately printed a report known as “2021 Europe and US Information, Analytics, and Synthetic Intelligence Government Group and Compensation Survey”. The report provides beneficial insights into numerous points of the function of information executives and information heads. The report highlights that 54 % of information executives have interaction in advertising and buyer engagement features, adopted by 28 % in operations and 25 % in gross sales.
Whereas the report is extra targeted on the function of CDOs within the US and Europe, we take a look at what duties are CDOs in India entrusted with.
Operate areas beneath CDOs’ command
In keeping with the report, the vast majority of information analytics and AI leaders are liable for information science, synthetic intelligence and machine studying, enterprise intelligence, and analytics features. However with variation in reporting constructions, the duty of information heads additionally varies.
Credit score: Heidrick and Struggles
Typically, information structure, information warehousing and information platform are a part of the IT ecosystem in any organisation and is the duty of know-how officers. Nevertheless, if the function of information analytics heads is extra business-oriented, they don’t command these perform areas.
“The CDO function could be seen to have three layers – run, change & remodel with a unique time horizon focus. The primary is the ‘run’ layer which is closest to the endpoint, i.e. manufacturing facility/ retailer, the following is the CXO stage or “change” layer, and the final one is the group stage central staff or the “remodel” layer. The concept is to ensure that the digital functionality in all these three layers exists and works to enrich one another,” talked about Pankaj Rai, Group Chief Information and Analytics Officer, Aditya Birla Group.
At Aditya Birla Group, the info analytics staff has been organised in what they name the 6P construction. The primary P stand for Objective, adopted by PMO, Challenge, Platform, Individuals and Partnerships. The staff that Rai is heading intends to create new digital capabilities, and therefore it assumes the function of a digital orchestrator.
“In a number of organisations, information engineers, information governance and validation, analytics and information science come beneath the CDO, but it surely additionally is dependent upon the tradition of the organisation. If the tradition of the organisation is such that lots of people are from the engineering aspect, they are going to be capable to maintain the court docket with their experience. In these instances, Analytics and science could be some acquired talent,” stated Debayan Bose, Head of Information Science and Analytics, Ibibo Group.
Who does the CDO report back to?
Globally, information, analytics, and AI executives most frequently report back to the CEO. Nevertheless, there may be vital regional variation. Within the US, the info and analytics head principally report back to the CTO, adopted by CEO and CIO. Alternatively, in Europe, they most frequently report back to the CEO, adopted by the COO. This distinction may very well be as a result of the truth that within the US information and analytics has been largely seen as know-how perform. Alternatively, in Europe, the place information integrity and privateness are a serious concern (nearly a deal-breaker), the info management roles are built-in into the enterprise features.
Credit score: Heidrick and Struggles
The reporting authority of information head corporations varies with organisations’ construction. It could even replicate the stated firm’s stage of digitalisation and that of its digital maturity. The truth is, the definition of and duties of CDO usually overlap with that of the chief digital officer and chief analytics officer. For a extra blanket reporting construction, CDO might report back to CTO or CIO.
In some instances, the CDO might report back to the CEO, COO and even CFO. “CDO encompasses information governance, data-led selections and therefore reporting to CEO could be the perfect construction to have,” stated Mathangi Sri, Chief Information Officer at YUBI.
Agreeing with Mathangi, Himanshu Gupta, Co-Founder & COO, WeRize stated that the info science staff ought to report back to the CEO or the founders and to not the know-how staff; he added that information science to be aligned extra with enterprise and firm aims. “Information science shouldn’t be specializing in solely know-how. Additionally they want to assist the companies obtain their income targets, revenue targets, NPA and danger targets, in addition to the operational effectivity targets,” he stated.
