The rise of the CDO is a sign that future competitive advantage is dependent on effectively managing and exploiting data. If "Big Data" Solutions were so simple as some would have you believe the strategies and culture changes would be well in hand. Yet as Gartner says "Beware of the Data lake Fallacy"! CDOs will be aware of these.

" Data lakes therefore carry substantial risks. The most important is the inability to determine data quality or the lineage of findings by other analysts or users that have found value, previously, in using the same data in the lake. By its definition, a data lake accepts any data, without oversight or governance"

And what are you going to do with this data once the CDO endorses it's accuracy, completeness and relevance?

That is one of the first questions to ask and needs to be asked by line of business staff. What changes do you expect to make and why? What will be the impact on the organisation and how will it make you more competitive, more profitable, more secure? How will it let you deliver better products and services to customers.

The CDO is one of many C-Level staff to make sure that you have the right data, at the right time for the right analysis to drive better decisions and execute them well.

This requires the right analytics solutions to give people across the organisation the insights, information and means of executing data driven Data Driven Decisions