The Data Differentiator: A guide to becoming a data-driven organization

It’s an extraordinary time to be a data leader.

Organizations everywhere talk about being data-driven. They know that profitability, efficiency and customer loyalty are at stake—that data can drive competitive advantage when used for strategic decision-making across the organization. But few people have the skills, foresight and influence to set an entire organization on the path to making data a true differentiator. That’s where you come in.

With data being used more pervasively in organizations than ever before, it’s an extraordinary time to be a data leader. The decisions you make as a data leader are core to nearly every business need, venture and partnership, as your foresight, resolve and creativity help create new ways of working and break down silos.

But as you well know, using data strategically and creating a data-driven culture can be more challenging than it seems. As a data leader, you’ve got to be smart, resilient and persuasive. You have to be willing to take chances, fail fast and try again. That’s just the reality.

Enabling a data-driven company doesn’t depend only on picking the right technologies, hoping for adoption. It involves convincing senior executives and other stakeholders that this transformation is worth the time and resources to advance their goals, then proving it through results. And through it all, it’s critical to foster the right culture, skills and collaborations.

What does it take to be truly data-driven?

Shaped by Chief Data Officers, data leaders and experts across IBM and beyond, this guide will help you build and implement a data strategy that accelerates revenue growth, limits risk and expands the bottom line by making operations more efficient. Questions we’ll answer include: