During the last conference at the Chief Data Officer Exchange there was a discussion involving the role of a CDO in an organisation and how she or he can leverage value from their business’ data and what they can do to see increased returns from their data.

Over the past 20 years, we have always believed in generating value from data. Most of our data colleagues have been focused on the engineering side of data governance, they believe that generating value is creating the right framework to give the right information to the right person at the right time... Well, we completely agree the right governance is necessary. In fact, giving the right support to each part of the business to allow the organisation as a whole to function more effectively is fantastic. However, we also strongly believe that alongside this we can directly generate value from data. What do we mean by directly generate value? It means earning money, revenue or profit and augmenting the existing income streams for your business by using data directly!

Everyone has a different understanding of the word “value” and therefore creating value is seen in a completely different way by each department. To simplify things we have defined four tiers of maturity to describe the different stages of data value generation.





The first stage is knowing that data has an intrinsic value. In short, data can be used by anyone to improve their processes or view on the state of their work from a better angle, therefore by definition data has value. The state of the data doesn’t matter. We have met colleagues in the past who use this statement in order to avoid developing their processes and pipelines, simply being ‘happy as they are’. We call this level the “passive” level.





The second level is reporting on and gaining insight from data. Most companies are at this stage. If you look closely at some CDOs, they fill the role of managing data, making sure everyone in the business gets the right support to suit their needs: reports, analysis, etc. So by managing the data, these kinds of CDOs are proud to announce that they are leveraging value from their data because every department relies on it to have a better view of their work and make critical business decisions. Well, this is quite an ‘old-school’ way of thinking in this day age of digital transformation. This view is identical to that of the last 20 years, using basic data to make better business decisions. We call this the “puberty” level.





The next level sees data as an enabler rather than as a support tool. It’s amazing how many opportunities are missed by not using data as a key asset and structuring the corporate strategy and the view of the market around the insights contained in your data. In this level, the CDO is a key enabler of this culture and through the right leadership and support can show business departments how to transform their activities and the business as a whole by using the power of data: AI, Big Data Analytics, NLP, Search Analytics, the list goes on. The CDO needs to supply the right advice, the right subject-matter experts and the right technology to resolve business issues and propose a better way to do things instead of supporting departmental needs which are sometimes completely inappropriate if they don’t have the right skills to understand how the data could be used more fully. We called this the “advanced” level.





The fourth and final level is for the “pioneers”! At AIEVE we are directly generating money through the use of data! What is more valuable for a business than revenue? By using Big Data technology, AI, NLP and Blockchain we are utilising the combined power of data and intuitive yet powerful visualisations to generate an income stream. Data has value for us and it’s a concrete, tangible value. We are constantly monitoring the value we are generating through the use of our war room dashboards. Our business is data, we live with data and we sleep with data! We love data!





So, what stage do you think that your company is at? Do you think you’re a pioneer too? If not, how could you take steps towards unlocking the full potential of your data? Remember, you can always do more with your data, even though we have outlined four levels there is no limit, the world never stops moving and neither do we. Always strive to be the best at what you do and make the most out of your business and your data.

Co-written by: James Walmsley & Abed Ajraou

Link to the French version