
Some time ago I have written about Data Literacy which describes the skills and capabilities of peope within a company to create value from data. Working with companies on data strategy projects on topics like data architecture, data governance, target operation model and so on, shows that a healthy and active Data Culture is a fundamental capability for an organization to be successfull with these activities and making the data strategy work.
I will mention two definitions I found for Data Culture. They are similar, but both have interesting aspects worth mentioning:
Fig. 1: Market definitions of Data Culture | Source BARC / Source Tableau
As we can see Data Culture is easy to describe, but hard to measure. Ultimately you see results in the quality of work and the amount of new ideas how to create value from data and enhance your business model in a data-driven way. Data Culture may be hard to measure, but it is extremely important for any investment a company makes in data & analytics. Being with a customer I see the state of Data Culture mainly in the collaboration with the business departments, less so with IT or digitization departments.
A recent study from BARC and Eckerson Group shows, that Data Culture is one of the most important drivers for an successful adoption of BI and Analytics in an organization, and that executives and managers are the most important drivers for developing the right Data Culture in your organization:
Fig. 2: Source: “Strategies for Driving Adoption and Value with BI and Analytics”, BARC and Eckerson Group, 2022 - Question "Which business drivers have contributed to an increase in usage and adoption of BI/Analytics tools?"
Therefore, data leadership should be an important part of fostering Data Culture and Data Literacy in a company to create maximum value from data. My company describe data leadership as "Leadership by example, establishing end-to-end decision-making based on data and leading the data measures.". Typically I see two directions for data leadership:
Fig. 3: Push and Pull activities for data leaders
There is a nice example from SAP on how they made steps in 2013 and accelerated Data Culture by "simply" handing mangers and employees an iPad, which shows how push and pull could work via the following success factors:
I would like to quote a very important sentence from the related blog by Laura Jamieson of SAP - " In an information culture, data is used alongside experience and intuition in decision making. Employees build and tell fact-based stories." - It is so important to realize with all the love for data and technology that data is important and helpful, but we should not become obsessed with data as the human factor is still very important in making the right decisions.
SAP is all about technology in the first place. We now know that data leadership, the right data strategy and data literacy are some of the key factors. So what are approaches and possibilities for IT and SAP teams to advance Data Culture?
Organizations are easily overwhelmed when trying to move to a data driven mindset and active Data Culture. Depending on where you come from it might be a good idea to work with phases and break down your activities, responsibilities and expected impacts or outcomes. This can be very individual but let me give an example for structuring possible phases to illustrate:
Fig. 4: Phases for Data Culture initiatives
So, as we can see, it is not primarily about technology, but about people, even if the right use of technology is right there and technical skills are equally important. But often technology is already there today, but is not used in a way that adds much value, or people lack the skills, missing access to existing tools or data. Additionally you need the right leadership and organizational frame.
A final recommendation for the German readers is this recording of the presentation from our last Innovation Day 2022 on Data Culture: "Datenkultur – Lösungsansätze, Hindernisse und Werkzeugkoffer"
Feel free to get in contact if you are interested in a Data Culture initiative and how it works or write comments about your experience and activities in this area and in the SAP world!
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