Among a marketplace of industry disruptors, organizations must respond and adapt accordingly. What’s more evident in recent years: they need to embrace continual change, especially regarding business analytics.
In the age of rapid digital transformation, the role of the chief information officer (CIO) has never been more important. They are at the forefront of digital transformation capabilities to enable business growth.
Yet for many organizations, moving to the cloud isn’t producing the expected results. For example, a recent study by McKinsey reported that despite migrating a portion of workloads to the cloud, around 80% of CIOs claimed that they have not “attained the level of agility and business benefits that they sought through modernization.”
Technology has become essential to many enterprises, especially cloud adoption. And the mounting pressure for CIOs to move beyond simply managing IT to leveraging technology that creates value for the business continues to mount.
It takes practical steps to build and execute a successful digital transformation. For CIOs who need a guide to the cloud, here are some general guidelines to better business analytics.
Embrace New Business Analytics Technologies
CIOs can sometimes “fear” that technology will replace the deep-rooted processes and structure that organizations have – leading to disruptions. On the other hand, not embracing new technologies in the cloud can be detrimental to business goals.
Industry leaders have been utilizing data and analytics to stay dominant in their practices for years. To remain relevant and competitive, new technologies must not be feared. With the role of the CIO so integral in taking the steps towards digital transformation, it is essential that they are willing and able to keep pace with an evolving marketplace.
CIOs should realize that moving to the cloud is just the start of the journey, not the end.
Free Up Resources
A cloud-based data platform, like Google Cloud Platform, takes a lot of the IT work out of managing infrastructure. That may seem threatening to CIOs at first, as seems like their departments would become obsolete. Yet, with cloud computing and data platforms, IT staff are freed from having to be the “janitor” for infrastructure and the like.
Adopting or migrating to another cloud changes the skills you need in-house. It redefines roles inside an organization. Again, that is not something to be feared.
This shift to the cloud not only makes software easier to reuse, combine, and modify but also lets developers create and deploy applications much faster. What’s more, exciting new possibilities like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) put the IT department front and center as a leader within the business. By automating mundane tasks, it enables employees to focus on creating real business value and enabling clearer business analytics. The end result means operational efficiency, and the freedom for CIOs to focus on opportunities rather than on infrastructure, resources, and operations.
Foster a Culture of Data in the Organization
CIOs have the ability, and almost need, to bring a change in culture for an organization. Essentially, business success in being completely data-driven means everyone in the organization, not just data scientists, is capable of making informed decisions based on data.
If data isn’t at the center of an organization’s culture, it can be difficult to get people on board with new tools and processes as cloud adoption or migration is made a major focal point of the business. CIOs and other executives within the organization are the ones who hold the key to data democratization.
The cloud and data-driven strategies led by mainly the CIO foster a culture of data. This is due to more people having access to data and the powerful tools they need to uncover and share new insights about the business.
The CIO’s Guide to the Cloud
The cloud has changed how many CIOs think of their department’s relationship to the overall business. For many of those in various industries who have already adopted or migrated to the cloud, IT is more flexible, efficient, and sensitive to changing business conditions than ever before.
Gartner analysts claim more than 85% of organizations will embrace a cloud-first principle by 2025 and will not be able to fully execute their digital strategies without the use of cloud-native architectures and technologies. It is up to C-level executives in an organization, especially the CIO, to bring about data-driven change. That means embracing new technologies, freeing up resources, and even fostering a more data-centered culture.
The path forward can seem clouded by uncertainties and an understanding of where to begin.
That’s where Pandera comes in. Whether you are creating a new business analytics strategy or revamping one that hasn’t delivered sufficient results, our certified data engineers, architects, and data scientists with advisory and implementation services.
Learn more about our complimentary Data Modernization Workshop with our certified engineers and solutions specialists. These collaborative sessions help align your data and business analytics goals with your modernization initiatives. Get in touch with us today to schedule your complimentary workshop!