Over 50% of data-driven initiatives in enterprise organisations are failing, according to new research carried out on behalf of Exasol. One of the most common reasons for failure is a lack of employee skills with a 27% failure rate.
"The most successful businesses will be those that invest in their technology and hire the skills to make those investments work", said Sam Sibley, strategic partners and alliances manager at Exasol, driving home the need for resources to be put towards increasing the skills level of a workforce.
Companies with data and analytics functions are using a variety of channels to upskills their employees, including graduate schemes and using AI to transfer knowledge from long-standing or departing employees to new entrants. Meanwhile, business intelligence and data visualisation company Qlik has launched a campaign to improve data literacy.
Data security issues are the reason for the failure of 29% and poor data quality is the cause of 28% of failures. One quarter of data-driven strategies are not successful due to a lack of employee buy-in and the same proportion fail as a result of siloed data. Not delivering the time and cost savings expected was the cause of 24% of failures. The inability to collect data in real time led to the failure of 22%.
Worryingly, in the run-up to the first anniversary of GDPR enforcement, one in five GDPR initiatives bit the dust. Other initiatives that often fail are data consolidation (29%) and data migration (28%).
Construction and property is the sector with the lowest failure rate which sits at 7%. One might expect the lowest failure rates of data-driven initiatives to be in the IT, technology and telecoms sector as this is where the data and analytics sector lies, however, it is worth noting that the failure in this industry is 28%. Customer services at and retail are the industries with the highest failure rates of 43%.
Sibley said: “This technology is no longer seen as a cost, but an opportunity and a revenue driver. However, there is still work to be done to ensure data-driven initiatives succeed and are understood at all levels of the business.”
The survey of 500 IT and business decision makers from Germany and the UK was conducted by Vanson Bourne.
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