Commentary
CEOs Not Seeing Big Picture On 'Big Data'
- by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, January 27, 2015
Nearly half of CEOs believe that all of their employees have access to the data they need, but only 27% of employees agree.
That’s according to study results from Teradata, a data analytics and marketing firm. The company commissioned The Economist Intelligence Unit to survey 362 workers across the globe -- including those in management, finance, sales and marketing, business development and more.
CEOs also overestimate how quickly “big data” moves through their company, with 43% of CEO respondents believing that relevant data is made available in real-time, compared to 29% of all respondents.
Overall, CEOs are wearing rose-colored glasses when examining the overall effectiveness big data has on their initiatives: 38% believe their employees are able to extract relevant insights from the data, while only 24% of all respondents do.
The report notes that of companies that outperform in profitability as a result of data-driven marketing, 63% of the initiatives are launched by corporate leadership, and 41% have a centralized data and analytics group. Of companies that say they underperform, 38% of initiatives are launched by the higher-ups and 28% say data and analytics are centralized.
“The survey is clear that organizations succeed when the data-driven vision and leadership are shared, and the benefits of data initiatives are consistently tracked, promoted, and most importantly, linked to corporate goals and business results,” stated Chris Twogood, vice president of products and services marketing at Teradata.
The full report can be found here.
Tyler Loechner is a MediaPost Reporter covering real-time, programmatic, RTB and more. You can reach Tyler at tyler@mediapost.com.
Great article. Can you share more details about the workers who were surveyed? With a small sample set of 362, I'm wondering how much accurate this analysis is. I don't argue with the overall message you have interpreted; I'm just not sure if the percentages make sense with such a small sample set. Thoughts?
Hey Gautam. Per the release: "The survey was conducted in the autumn of 2014. It reached 362 respondents: 47 percent from North America, 26 percent from Asia-Pacific, and 27 percent from Europe. Respondents held a variety of functional roles: 29 percent were in general management, while 16 percent were in finance, 16 percent in marketing and sales, and 14 percent in strategy and business development, among others. Fifteen percent of respondents were chief executives or presidents, 29 percent were in other C-level roles, 25 percent were managing directors, executive directors or heads of business units, and 31 percent were vice president, senior vice presidents, or directors."