How the CDO Can Streamline the Data Supply Chain

The Chief Data Officer has never been a more necessary role in the organization than it is today. Organizations capture and store more data than ever before, and it’s growing exponentially every year.

Not only is business data growing, but we are seeing new types of data continually entering the mix. Data is structured, unstructured and semi-structured. It’s stored in big data lakes, in business applications, in file shares, and other places across the organization. There’s so much data that even the CDO isn’t completely aware of what’s out there.

And then there’s the external data. CDOs are becoming aware of the need to bring in external data sources that provide relevant, and sometimes essential, information to support decision making.

The Chief Data Officer (CDO) is responsible for storage and management of all this business data. They own the data warehouse and the data lake. They have responsibility for ensuring it is secure, compliant and well governed.

Towards Data Democratization

More importantly though, the CDO work with the business to find ways to leverage data for innovation and growth. It’s their job to get the data into the hands of the right people - to democratize it.

One of the biggest responsibilities for the CDO is to improve the flow of data through the organization, so the right people have access to it. The CDO understand the value data brings to the organization, and they want to provide the tools needed to enable data stewards and business analysts to exploit data proactively.

With data spread across data lakes and data warehouses, and in internal and external sources, the process of getting data to the people who need it is growing more and more complex. This is a key roadblock to meeting the goals of data democratization and the ability to leverage data strategically.

For CDOs to address this challenge, they need to unify their data across enterprise silos. By adding a semantic metadata catalog to their technology stack, they can rationalize their data assets globally and accelerate data discovery for all data consumers. 

From Data Storage to Analytics Center

A data storage center, while important, doesn’t bring as much value to the business as an analytics center. The CDO can maximize the value of data by providing agile tools to profile, unify and easily discover the right data for analysis. He can help identify ways to leverage data for better decision-making throughout the organization.

When he does this, he proves the ROI of data and in turn, demonstrates that the data center is a vital component of an organization’s success.

Two key words for the Chief Data Officer are ‘enablement’ and ‘democratization’. If he can get these right, data becomes a valuable asset to the organization. But getting there is not easy. To learn more about the challenges faced by organizations who want to streamline the data supply chain, download our eBook, Unify Data across Silos.