Embracing a data driven culture: how to transform your finance organization

Over the last 10 years, the movement toward using data and analytics on a greater scale has increased significantly across many industries. Analytics tools have evolved and data technology has become smarter, faster and more user-friendly. Companies, more than ever, are viewing analytics reports as assets. Data isn’t just something an organization has, it’s something an organization needs. And, more than that, data has become something an organization depends on.

Of course, with that mindset, there are significant challenges when it comes to generating economic value from your organization’s data. Primarily, the challenges are:

• Understanding how to leverage new data sources
• Maintaining high quality core data assets
• Overcoming barriers to transition to a data-centric culture

From connected devices to communications and service tools, data sources (both internal and external) are growing at an exponential rate. It can be overwhelming to consider the vast number of sources and how much data is created on the internet every single minute. This bombardment of data presents a technical challenge, but also a business challenge: How do I value this data and how to do I drive value from it?

The final client-facing product may look pretty, but at its essence, data is not clean. Only 3% of participants at a recent Baker Tilly webinar described their organization’s data as “a beautifully integrated single view of our organization.” Meanwhile, nearly one-third of participants described their data as “complete chaos.”

Becoming data literate requires hard work and change. A lot of organizations, as they mature, use data to inform more decisions. But the truth is that many organizational leaders are threatened or overwhelmed by data. Organizations often need to undergo a cultural shift to get business leaders to embrace data, before they can become a more data-driven organization.

Data’s impact on the CFO’s role

As the financial steward of an organization, the CFO is responsible for ensuring funds and capital are used appropriately and efficiently. However, now more than ever, the CFO and their team are becoming the strategic center in charge of overseeing data, in many cases.