Why your data strategy is failing

The success of your data strategy hinges on stakeholder engagement, business alignment, and clear communication. And that means fostering better relationships with non-technical leaders.

Data strategy: Overview

• What is a data strategy?
• Why data strategies fail: Technology alignment, data literacy and culture 
• Building advocates and champions from the c-suite down
• The value of data storytelling
• Successful data strategies start with alignment and experimentation
  

In the age of artificial intelligence, data is paramount. As the old data science parlay goes, ‘garbage in, garbage out’, meaning your data needs to be clean, reliable and trusted if the organisation is able to derive any valuable insights.

At Confluent’s Executive Summit, hosted at London Docklands Museum, HotTopics debated ‘How To Gain Data Strategy Buy-In: Influencing Non-Technical Leaders’, a session which explored the need for C-Suite alignment, new mindsets around data and innovative ways of portraying the value of data, digital and technology teams to the wider business. 

The event also tackled data leaders’ concerns about achieving real-time analytics and operations data integration, the democratisation of data and the importance of ‘shifting left’ to balance business speed with data governance.

What is a data strategy?

A data strategy is an organisation’s strategic plan which defines the people, policies, processes and technologies required to manage data collection, storage, management and analysis across every part of the business.

These strategies, usually implemented by the Chief Data Officer or Chief Information Officer (depending on organisational structures and reporting lines) and supported by product owners or cross-functional data teams, are designed to drive business alignment on how the organisation will use, govern and secure data.

Done effectively, these strategies can help inform better, faster decision-making, enhanced employee or customer experience, stronger data governance and improved regulatory compliance.

Despite this, data strategies often end up driving a wedge between departments, a line between strategy and execution.

According to Gartner, 85 percent of data initiatives fail, with a similar percentage of organisations subsequently unlikely to achieve their digital transformation goals.

Why data strategies fail: Technology alignment, data literacy and culture

These data strategies often fail because they are unable to connect back to the business strategy. According to Informatica, while 84 percent of technology leaders say their organisation prioritises data strategy just as much or more than any other business objective, nearly half (47 percent) admit the two interests are ‘not very’ or ‘not completely’ aligned.

For tech leaders, speaking at the Summit, this misalignment comes back to both parties understanding each other, the business strategy and the role digital, data and technology teams can play in reaching those objectives. A failure to find this common ground, as one data leader in utilities remarked here, can result in organisations continuing to be ‘backwards looking’, rather than proactively looking to drive new internal efficiencies or external market opportunities.

“I’ve not really talked about the tech, it's about what the problem is you're trying to solve? What is the outcome, what is the ‘so what?” said Trevor Gordon, CDTO at Save The Children, who went on to give the example of finding common ground between multiple commercial leaders across different regions.

Other executives said that data strategies can be similarly inhibited by poor, siloed adoption, an inability to create a sustainable data culture and build data literacy across departments. Long investment cycles were also cited, and so were organisations which, perhaps naively, assume they always need to always be at the ‘bleeding edge’ of change.

“Some of this is about the art of the possible, and what you can do with some of the data products,” said Gordon. “Because a lot of the bleeding out stuff is probably maybe too sophisticated to apply in your business.”

Building advocates and champions from the C-suite down

Bridging this divide often comes back to relationships - and, in one such case, finding business advocates who will argue on your behalf. 

Steve Hall, the former chief of staff to the CTO at Sky, spoke of co-sponsoring activities with key executives like the CFO or COO who can see how data initiatives help them to achieve their own objectives and find a way to marry the business benefits with the technological requirements.

Gordon added to this, highlighting the need to build a ‘strategic cohort’; supporters willing to partner and drive initiatives forward.

Advocates should ultimately help understand the business strategy, translate technical concepts into business value, co-sponsor technology and data initiatives and bring ‘boots on the ground’ perspectives from various business functions, even if that means smoothing out different expectations initially.

The value of data storytelling

The art of communication is not lost on digital, data and technology leaders; indeed, as one CIO once said at a HotTopics event, these executives increasingly need to exhibit ‘the problem-solving of computer scientist Alan Turing, the storytelling of biologist and broadcaster David Attenborough, the leadership of Nelson Mandela, the strategic vision of National Health Service innovator Aneurin Bevan and the computing skills of Ada Lovelace.’

And yet, despite this, the technology industry still struggles with connecting technical parlay into business outcomes.

“Some of our clients wouldn't have understood most of the words that were said this morning [at the event]. Their focus is on the growth of their business,” said Reg Williams, managing director at Accenture.

“We often hear clients say, ‘we are stuck in the mud on our data strategy’. You read the strategy, which is about all about technology, and it’s not resonating with the business,” said Williams, who went onto add that data strategies sometimes reference ‘data marketplaces or ‘data products’ – the principle of treating data as a product with ‘owners’, terms that are usually poorly understood by line-of-business peers.

“My guidance to them is to really focus on the business strategy and align the business strategy to the tech strategy; why you should be building out this capability. Otherwise, you fall into the ‘tech for tech’ problem.”

“You can get embroiled in the technical nuts and bolts, and that's great. You do need to do that. You need to go into detail. But you've got to take it up as well,” added Hall.

Successful data strategies start with alignment and experimentation

This communication has become imperative at a time when artificial intelligence has captured the imagination (and increasingly budgets) from the C-Suite down. As Robin Sutara, Field Chief Data Strategy Officer at Databricks remarked during an earlier session, ‘boards are opening up on AI’ to the extent that ‘every board is now talking about AI’.

Hall shared a positive example from his time at Sky, where he led the development of the media organisation’s GenAI strategy, shortly after the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

“Our CTO was very keen for this not to just be a PowerPoint presentation. She didn't want to bring in lots of consultants telling us how we should be doing things. What she wanted to do is actually get some engineers using the tools and bringing in partners as well.”

Hall would go on to mention that Sky brought in Microsoft and Google to run hackathons, and created internal working groups with engineers to discover the art of the possible. The CFO and COO were made aware of early opportunities, such as leveraging GenAI to find efficiencies in the contact centre for example, in the hope of pinpointing early use cases and proof-of-concepts.

“We didn't spend much money on it. What we're trying to do is really understand the hype; where does this capability work? Where might it work for Sky? Where's the hype?”

It’s this approach which resonates with Peter Pugh-Jones, director of financial services at Confluent, the data streaming platform company which hosts regular workshops, encouraging participants to work backwards from their desired outcomes and think freely about the possibilities around data.

“We tell [customers] to come to the workshop with no preconceived ideas of what's possible with their technology,” said Pugh-Jones. “You almost take away the handcuffs, and just think about what you want to do with the data…and work your way back from that.”

For further information, you can download Confluent’s 2025 Data Streaming Report here and visit Confluent during the Data Streaming World Tour at a location near you.

Advice:

• Identify the "so-what" of the data strategy and communicate it effectively to business leaders.
• Understand the business strategy in-turn and ask questions that help tell the story of how digital, data and technology can support it.
• Focus on what the business wants to achieve with data and technology, rather than just the technical capabilities.
• Successful data strategies are based on strong business alignment, improving data literacy, and clear and consistent storytelling

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