Talent Shortage and Organizational Silos Are Obstacles in Delivering on ‘Big Data’s’ Promise [REPORT]

The IAB Data Center of Excellence and DMA, the largest U.S. data and marketing association, have released “The Data-Centric Organization,” a whitepaper showing that a lack of talent and ongoing functional silos are major hurdles to taking full advantage of “big data.”

Researched and written by Winterberry Group, which surveyed over 200 advertisers, marketers, publishers, technology developers, and marketing service providers, the paper reveals that a third are “confident” – and just 5 percent are “extremely confident” – that their internal teams have the right skills and experience to support their data-driven initiatives. In addition, more than half of those surveyed (59%) agreed that dissolving organizational silos would represent the most important step their businesses could take to derive more value from their use of audience data.

Notwithstanding these obstacles, an overwhelming majority (96%) of media and marketing executives are deeply committed to leveraging audience data to transform their businesses into data-centric companies. More than half (59%) expect that their organizations to be data-centric within the next two years. Less than a quarter (24%) describe their organizations as “extremely data-centric” today.

“Today’s enterprise media and marketing executives are investing in a future that will allow them to tap into the value of their data, but it is still early days,” said Patrick Dolan, Executive Vice President and COO, IAB. “IAB will continue to advance the industry’s data literacy through research, best practices, and educational initiatives like our Digital Data Solutions Certification Program.”

“Tuning big data into smart data and identifying actionable insights will require skills that many marketing organizations recognize they lack,” said Neil O’Keefe, Senior Vice President of Membership Engagement and CRM, DMA. “Once the skills are in place, access to the best technical solutions will be mandatory to excel. &THEN, DMA’s annual event, and DMA’s new data analytics certificate program provide marketing organizations the opportunity to upskill talent and connect with new solutions enabling accelerated data-centricity and ROI.”

“While companies search for a way forward creating data-centric organizations, it became clear from our interviews that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution,” said Jonathan Margulies, Managing Director, Winterberry Group. “It’s vital that each business assesses their unique situation and crafts a game plan that will allow them to reach the next data maturity milestone. Both the IAB Data Center of Excellence and DMA offer tremendous resources to help executives gear up for the changes ahead.”

To download report CLICK HERE.