| | DECEMBER 201919CIOReviewCXO INSIGHTSYOU WANT TO DO WHATWITH YOUR DATA?By Andrew Sohn, SVP - Global Digital & Analytics Srvcs, Crawford & Company [NYSE: CRD.B]Any business that's over a few months old has a lot of data. Businesses that are several years old have tons of data. Large, established businesses and digital native companies are drowning in data, and are having a hard time just figuring out how to store and manage everything in a cost-efficient manner. So, with all of the "data is the new oil" whitepapers and "data is our biggest corporate asset" keynote speeches, you would think the amount of data a company has must correlate to how much they can increase the business revenue and drive up shareholder value. Right? Unfortunately, that is not the case.These days, CIO and CDOs are routinely instructed by their management and business partners to "monetize the data" and "use our data for a competitive advantage". The thinking is that since the company has been in business for a long time and has a plethora of data, it must be able to use this information and drive value from it better, and manage and leverage it better than a company that's only been in business for a few years. Often times, management will offer support by bringing in some data scientists, consultants and other smart people to try to do something quickly and gain an advantage over the competition.There are many challenges in this type situation. The first and foremost is that even though an organization may have an abundance of data, it typically wasn't collected, managed or processed for the requested purposes. In the past, just enough data may have been captured or moved from system to system to fulfill an order, manage inventory, process a transaction, or record a specific event.
< Page 9 | Page 11 >