By Christine Kern, contributing writer
In a survey conducted by Experian Data Quality and Loudhouse Research, 57 percent of US chief information officers (CIOs) said they expected the volume of data they would need to manage to rise by 33 percent over the next 12 months. As the influx of data rises exponentially, companies are looking for solutions to corralling and making sense of the information.
Enter the Chief Data Officer. In fact, the demand is so high, that CIOs believe that the CDO will become an established board level role by 2020.
According to the study, “This new breed of data professionals will have wide-ranging impact on the way that brands interact with customers. Regardless of what industry you are operating in, your marketers are only ever as good as the data that underpins their plans, ensuring data quality is one important element of getting your interactions with the consumer right.”
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.
One of the chief barriers to leveraging bid data opportunities was the sheer volume of data that prevented them from exploiting data assets appropriately.
So what does this mean for Retail?
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. As a recent LinkedIn article explained, retail is being driven by data and technology as loyalty cards, credit card records, and customer feedback are feeding the analytical machine to predict shopping habits and trends. Predictive analytics can help retailers keep proper stock on their shelves or available online, reduce out-of-stocks and returns, and boost profit margins.
As Walmart’s CEO of global ecommerce stated in 2013, “We want to know what every product in the world is. We want to know who every person in the world is. And we want to have the ability to connect them together in a transaction.”
But with the accumulation of data also come a number of hurdles, including centralizing the data, reorganizing teams around the data, and finding smart and precise ways to use data once they have gathered it, obstacles that can be addressed and mastered by a CDO.
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