The IDC InfoBrief, “Driving Business Value from Data in the Face of Fragmentation and Complexity”, noted that 75% of respondents from Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) have already embarked on their digital transformation (DX) journeys, and 70% regularly use multiple clouds, putting the region at the forefront of the world.
But despite greater data leadership, almost 60% of APJ organizations felt unprepared to combat the rapid changes during COVID-19.
According to Stewart Bond, IDC research director, organizations with higher data maturity are better at using cloud and AI to address the primary challenge of fragmentation and complexity and generate higher levels of business value with their data.
“Organizations seeking to become digital leaders should place a strong focus on data leadership,” he opined.
Data fragmentation and complexity distract from innovation
Enterprise infrastructure will be cloud-first and multi-hybrid for many years, with systems spread across on-premise and multi-cloud environments. It is this fragmentation, with data spread across multiple sources and many clouds that are making it much more difficult to discover, manage and derive intelligence from their data.
Tony Frey, VP and general manager for APJ at Informatica said that data fragmentation is by far the greatest challenge that data leaders will face next year. For organizations to drive the business forward, they must be equipped with solutions that will support their data-led transformations.
About 74% of APJ data executives spend the most time on daily operational management rather than on governance and strategic initiatives.
Highlighting the chasm in delivering business value between data leaders and laggards, the study found that enterprises with a high level of data maturity generate 250% more business value than those only beginning their data-led transformations, where most of the time in data management is spent keeping the lights on.
“The winners in digital transformation will be those who can progress beyond mastering data integration to achieve data intelligence. However, data executives in Asia-Pacific are getting bogged down with the day-to-day, hampering their ability to innovate and realize data’s true value,” said Frey.
Automate data management is critical to success
- Innovation with data starts with enabling access, yet 73% of APJ organizations are struggling to manage self-service data
- Only 37% of organizations in APJ have automated data management across the business
Only Artificial Intelligence (AI) can deliver the speed and scalability demanded by modern enterprises and the study found that data mature organizations were 3X times better at operationalizing AI to automate data management activities than their less mature peers.
Leaders in the region consider improving data ingestion and integration capabilities as a top priority as they look to better incorporate data into decision making.
Who’s in charge?
- 33% of APJ organizations have enterprise data executives and leaders, while the other 67% distribute responsibility across other C-level positions
- There are no clear reporting lines for data leaders in the region, with a good mix of data leaders reporting to CEOs, CIOs, COOs and CTOs
- Despite being the most mature region for data leadership, less than half of APJ organizations have a standardized data function
The study highlighted how critical data management is to digital transformation, noting that organizations with strong data leadership are three times more likely to be well underway with digital transformation. However, fragmentation and complexity in APJ extend even into executive’s data roles.
The way organizations resolve fragmentation and complexity issues separates leaders from laggards, with leaders adopting an integrated approach to data management with standardization and automation as core facets.
