by Angela Guess
Lisa Morgan recently opined in Information Week, “There’s a new sheriff in town and the title is chief data officer, or CDO. Found most often in regulated industries, the CDO is sometimes hired to help a company improve regulatory compliance, data management, and data governance. In other organizations the role may also be responsible for data analytics and/or data science. However broad or narrow, a CDO’s charter depends on what the organization’s leadership thinks it requires, although the actual needs of the organization may vary over time. Here are a few important things to consider.”
Morgan continues, “Large organizations in highly regulated industries are the most likely to employ a CDO. In smaller and data-first companies, a CDO’s responsibilities may be shared among other titles or be the domain of a single individual, such as the CIO. The question is whether a CDO is actually necessary. In a recent Forrester Research survey of 3,005 global data and analytics decision-makers, 45% of respondents said their company had appointed a CDO. The survey also revealed that “top performers” (those with 10% annual revenue growth) were 65% more likely to appoint a CDO than “low performers” that have less than 4% revenue growth.”
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