Dive Brief:

• A majority (57%) of chief information officers (CIOs) in the U.S. say that the amount of data they will need to manage is set to rise 33% in the next 12 months. 
• Four out of 10 CIOs expect heir companies to add a chief data officer over the next 18 months to deal with the surge in data, if they don’t have one already. 
• Companies are looking to chief data officers (CDOs) to “de-risk” data-driven projects, manage increased regulation and governance, and control costs resulting from poor data quality. 

Dive Insight:

Companies are looking to chief data officers to manage problems resulting from the rapidly rising amounts of data available, according to a recent poll from Experian Data Quality and Loudhouse Research. Many CIOs named needing to “de-risk” data-driven projects (48%), increased regulation/governance (47%), increasing costs due to poor quality data (47%), and decentralized data and reporting (45%) as issues they would like CDOs to address.

The same report shows companies with CDOs improving performance in areas such as decision-making and managing regulatory risk, but just adding the role won’t address every problem. Companies with CDOs reported being more likely to have employees mistrust decisions (36%) over those without CDOs (27%), and more than one-quarter (26%) of the companies with CDOs reported inefficiencies due to duplication of efforts, compared to 16% of those without CDOs. 

For retailers, data provides them with the unique opportunity to understand their customer a little more fully and truly tailor their operations around the guest. But some of the major hurdles facing these companies include centralizing the data, reorganizing teams around the data, and finding smart and precise ways to use data once they have gathered it. While not one retailer has truly mastered these goals, the spike of chief data Ooficers show that businesses, whether retail or not, are making them a priority.