Foreword
It’s clear that technology is all around us, from your cell phone to your DVR. What we don’t think about is the role that data plays. Technology is second nature to us and it’s time for data to be the same. To truly tap the value of data we must manage it first, separately from technology.
My first exposure to the power of data was in 1989 and I found myself perplexed when people outside my organization didn’t understand the concept of leveraging data to drive better business decisions and ultimately increase profits. At that time technology-based data implementations were a novelty. Data was limited in availability and its storage costs were astronomical.
Today everyone talks about data and information-based strategies. Technology’s incorporation into all manners of business transactions is commonplace. Data is growing exponentially and storage is cheap. However, we continue to be challenged by the fact that the data isn’t supporting the business to its fullest extent. Even in those places where the data is supporting the business, acts of heroism are often required to unite disparate data to unearth new business insights. It’s difficult to quantify the challenge of disorganized data because strategies to create data architectures, independent from data’s encapsulation within business information systems are almost non-existent.
Data materializes from within natural business transactions. It is inherently multi-dimensional. Because business information systems only capture parochially-based subsets of this data, much of its ability to be subsequently recast into different forms and uses is forever lost. Because of this business information system centric strategy, we continue to have suboptimal, single/restricted-use data that cannot be advantaged for the business.
If systems are built to support the business processes, shouldn’t there also be systems that capture business data within its natural business-transaction contexts as well? If so, then Data Management’s role is to enable the successful architecture, engineering, capture, storage, and ability to leverage business data to drive better decisions and ultimately increase profits.
While the journey to well-managed data and ultimately the use data to achieve a business’s strategic advantage is long, it all starts with an organization’s recognition of the independence of data from its encapsulation within business information system centric processes.
Data needs the same dedicated focus that technology has enjoyed if we truly want it to achieve its full potential. Now is the time to embrace the next generation in the data journey that must be focused on how to best manage that abundance of data and put it to work for the business.
The authors have dedicated their careers to educating themselves and others on best-in-class data management practices and through that work have a clear line of sight on how to ensure that the 21st century makes the most of this amazing asset. Peter Aiken and Michael Gorman have joined forces to describe the data challenges that most of us see but struggle to articulate, much less solve. I am hoping that all of you will see that these problems really exist and this book gives you the solution, which now in retrospect seems so simple. So, I challenge each of you, what will you do differently tomorrow with the information you will learn today?
Cathy Doss was Chief Data Officer of Capital One from January 2002 to December 2005. No one has challenged the claim that she was the first appointed CDO or that CapitalOne’s CDO played a key role in its successful Information-based Business Strategy (IBS).