Lack of Data Capabilities Impedes Organizations’ Success, Global Survey Finds

While governments around the world have identified data as a strategic resource to drive economic and social progress¹, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) today unveiled global survey results showing that a lack of data maturity hinders both the private and public sector from achieving key outcomes such as growing sales or advancing environmental sustainability.

Conducted by YouGov on behalf of HPE, the survey of more than 8,600 decision makers from across industries and the public sector in 19 countries reveals that the average organization’s data maturity level – or ability to create value from data – is 2.6 on a five-point scale, with only three percent reaching the highest maturity level.

“There is broad consensus that the world’s data holds an enormous potential to advance the way we live and work – however, unlocking this potential requires a shift in organizations’ digital transformation strategies,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE. “We must move from ‘cloud first’ to ‘data first’ as the North Star of digital transformation – meaning that organizations align their strategic, organizational and technological choices with the overarching goal of leveraging data as a strategic asset.”

Lack of data capabilities impedes key outcomes

The survey is based on a maturity model developed by HPE that assesses an organization’s ability to create value from data based on strategic, organizational and technological criteria. The lowest maturity level (1) is called “data anarchy”; on this level, data pools are isolated from one another, and are not systematically analyzed to create insights or outcomes. The highest level (5) is called “data economics”; at this level, an organization strategically leverages data to drive outcomes, based on a unified access to both internal and external data sources which are analyzed with advanced analytics and artificial intelligence.

Survey results reveal that 14 percent of organizations are on maturity level 1 (“data anarchy”), 29 percent on level 2 (“data reporting”), 37 percent on level 3 (“data insights”), 17 percent on level 4 (“data centricity”), and just 3 percent are on level 5 (“data economics”).

The lack of data capabilities, in turn, limits organizations’ ability to create key outcomes such as growing sales (30%), innovating (28%), advancing customer experience (24%), improving environmental sustainability (21%) and increasing internal efficiency (21%).

Organizations must close strategic, organizational and technological gaps

The survey provides a detailed view of the strategic, organizational and technological gaps that organizations must close to capitalize on data along their entire value chain. Sample findings include: