Is your data ready to help you make game-changing decisions?

Organizations today are facing disruption on all fronts, which should viewed as a good thing as it allows organizations to redefine their strategies, their markets and re-create their organization to be better prepared for the future.

This disruption is one of the driving factors behind digital transformation initiatives. In order to successfully complete these transformation projects, companies must build a foundation of properly managed data.  With the right data management and governance systems and processes in place, CIO’s can begin to build an intelligent organization that has the capability to make intelligent decisions based on data that is reliable, up-to-date and trustworthy.

To build the right foundation for an effective data-driven digital transformation, CIOs must first ensure their organization can effectively understand and manage their data. With the proper data management platform in place to support the discovery, connectivity, quality, security, and governance across all systems and process, organizations can fully trust their data, which means they can trust the outcome of any decisions, processes, and outcomes driven through that data.

Reliable data has always been important, but it’s vitally important for organizations looking to unlock its potential as a driver of digital transformation. With high-quality, “clean” data, CIOs can begin to build an intelligent organization from top to bottom by providing trustworthy data, information, and knowledge for all aspects of the business.

An evolved approach to data management sets the stage for improvements across all areas of the business including finance, marketing and operations. In describing how proper data management has helped her company, Cynthia Nustad, CIO for HMS, states a few clear business benefits. “We’ve accelerated new product introduction, aligned data easier, and reduced the time to onboard customer data by more than 40%,” she says.

In addition to the improvements that data quality can bring to your existing operations, good data provides a strong base for entering the intelligence age. With good data, you can begin to build new data analytics projects and platforms, and incorporate machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) into your analytics toolkit. If you try to implement these types of projects without proper data quality and governance systems and processes, you’ll most likely be wasting time and money.

While it’s tempting for CIOs to jump headfirst into AI and other advanced big data initiatives, successful deployments first require a focus on data management. It isn’t the most exciting area, but having good data is an absolute requirement to building an intelligent organization.

Originally published on CIO.com