The need for an executive responsible for an organization’s information assets today may seem obvious. But some organizations still struggle with making a business case for the role. And even existing chief data officers can be confounded about how to formally justify their existence. This session will share eye-popping findings and analyses from Mr. Laney’s study of hundreds of organizations with and without a CDO. 

As any good scientist knows, and any good data scientist should know, most discoveries begin with a hypothesis. We see a lot of surveys about the CDO role but don’t really have much of a point to make or look at the impact a CDO makes. This study examined over 500 organizations to determine how businesses with a CDO operate differently.

 Drawing from the study's conclusions, attendees will learn about the benefits of a CDO, and how having one affects data quality, governance, data democratization and monetization. We'll explore whether having a CDO affects an organization's ability to value its data and how investors perceive it, and look at the career path of CDOs to better understand what makes an actual C-level CDO.