To quote the well-known rhyme, “water, water all everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” I feel can also be true of data. Where organisations have a lot more data than ever before, only a few are able to take advantage of this resource and truly leverage it for insight.

There are no doubts regarding the value of data. It’s viewed as a key competitive advantage, and in some instances, a strategic asset financially.

However, translating your data into a meaningful insight may be a very different task to storing and managing it, from a regulatory perspective. we have seen a large number of businesses invest in many kinds of data initiatives, like analytics, machine learning automation, customer insight, data governance, etc. Yet, most businesses still report that they’re not sufficiently data driven.

Every year we conduct a world study of data management practices and of data usage. This year, we surveyed over a thousand practitioners regarding how they would like to leverage data. The research looked into a number of the obstacles that faced them and why only a few manage to leverage data for insight. we noticed that 3 key areas emerged.

Firstly, there’s a sizeable degree of distrust when it comes to information. The standard professional observing data doesn’t know how the data got there, what state it’s in, or even when it’s useful. Whereas the knowledge that data gives you may result in better insight and more informed decision making, a large level of distrust usually causes leaders to fall back on making their choices by gut instinct, instead of by knowledge that has been provided via the use of data. Subsequently, we’ve consistently witnessed over the past years that many believe that nearly one third of their data is not accurate.

Secondly, we are seeing the rising levels of data debt. Data debt is much like technical debt. You’ve got data assets that may not be fit for purpose, or have data that consists of a high level of inaccuracy. Unless you’re taking the time to repair that data, and govern it properly, you’ll forever have a suboptimal data operation. In turn, poor quality means that several businesses aren’t totally seeing the ROI or expected advantages in a number of the investments they’re making.

Finally, there’s a skills shortage when it comes to data. This doesn’t simply mean professionals, like data analysts, data scientists, and chief data officers (CDOs). There’s a general lack of understanding across the board around data, within the broader business. We’ve seen a growing number of businesses talking about facilitating a wider usage of data across their business and looking to do a lot more with data insight, however only a few people across organisations are actually data literate. Our survey results indicated that most businesses have reported that literacy of data has to become a core ability of staff over the next 5 years.

To generate the amount of insight required to leverage data fully, as a valuable asset, organisations will be required to tackle problems around its accuracy, trust, and of course, data skills. Unless these elements are addressed, organisations will remain surrounded by all of this useful data that will not provide the business with what it actually needs.