Hungry for data insights, companies struggle with security and skill shortages

Dive Brief:

Security, compliance and governance restrictions are hindering data strategies within the enterprise, according to a survey conducted by 451 Research, part of S&P Global, on behalf of Immuta. The survey, which consulted 500 data professionals, also identified skills shortages and a lack of process automation as frequent barriers.
More than half of professionals agree data is often stale or out of date by the time it is consumed or analyzed, which indicates an imbalance between data supply and demand.
Data challenges stand in the way of what businesses want out of the technology, which is to gain micro insights that guide broader strategy, according to Matt Carroll, CEO and founder at Immuta.

Dive Insight:

Every transaction, decision or customer interaction adds to the amount of information the enterprise must manage, store and analyze. But many businesses struggle to quickly connect input to output.

"It's about the speed of decision-making," said Carroll. "Because the relative speed of the market is increasing in orders of magnitude."

In the current business landscape, "it is no longer enough for businesses to be data aware — or even data driven," according to a Forrester report. Companies must guide their decisions using insights about customers, processes, operations and partners.

Nine in 10 companies say their DataOps strategy, an automated application of data management technique, isn't yet optimized, 451 Research found. While most (85%) said their strategy is accelerated, emerging or nascent, few believe they have achieved DataOps maturity.

Technical challenges such as a lack of automation or the inability to scale stand in the way of company aspirations for their data, which center on democratizing access of data insights throughout the organization.

"Executives want their management teams to be able to use data to make whatever decisions they need to," said Carroll. "That could be a myriad of insights to a myriad of use cases across any corporation."

Similarly, organizations look to AI as a way to help guide their business decisions. More than half of executives said AI's top advantage is its ability to improve planning and decision-making, according to a survey released Monday by Cognizant. Nearly 7 in 10 executives called AI "an invaluable tool" for interpreting unstructured data.