“We are a data-driven company,” is a familiar refrain we hear from business leaders and managers. This is evidence of a fundamental shift in mindset, reflecting the fact that leaders have now understood and internalized the concept of the data-driven enterprise. However, when attempting to re- structure and reorganize data flows and processes and bring in new ways of working with data, particularly CDOs, CIOs and data teams often run into what feels like a brick wall. Acceptance and lip service may have been paid to a data strategy, but the application of the strategy is fraught with hurdles. The realization comes soon enough: Data culture and its manifestation in the day-to-day running of the business can make or all too often break any carefully crafted strategies. So, understanding what data culture means within each organization is critical to its success.
This study was conducted due to the steadily growing interest in the topic and to better understand the flavors of data culture within organizations, the hur-dles they are facing, the initiatives that are on underway and of course the wins that have already been achieved with these measures. Together with the lessons learned from this study and the BARC Data Culture Framework, we hope to provide resources that help leaders to ride the wave of this new mindset and begin to shape their data culture.
This study was prepared by BARC, an inde-pendent market analyst firm. It is available free of charge thanks to the generosity of Alation, Board, Collibra, Crate.io, Five1, Snowflake and Tableau.
