Data Is Very Valuable, Just Don't Ask Us To Measure It, Leaders Say 14
The Register's Lindsay Clark reports: Fifteen years of big data hype, and guess what? Less than one in four of those in charge of analytics projects actually measure the value of the activity to the organization they work for. The result from Gartner -- a staggering one considering the attention heaped on big data and its various hype-oriented successors -- found that in a survey of chief data and analytics (D&A) officers, only 22 percent had defined, tracked, and communicated business impact metrics for the bulk of their data and analytics use cases.
It wasn't for lack of interest though. For more than 90 percent of the 504 respondents, value-focused and outcome-focused areas of the D&A leader's role have gained dominance over the past 12 to 18 months, and will continue to be a concern in the future. It is difficult, though: 30 percent of respondents say their top challenge is the inability to measure data, analytics and AI impact on business outcomes.
"There is a massive value vibe around data, where many organizations talk about the value of data, desire to be data-driven, but there are few who can substantiate it," said Michael Gabbard, senior director analyst at Gartner. He added that while most chief data and analytics officers were responsible for data strategy, a third do not see putting in place an operating model as a primary responsibility. "There is a perennial gap between planning and execution for D&A leaders," he said.
It wasn't for lack of interest though. For more than 90 percent of the 504 respondents, value-focused and outcome-focused areas of the D&A leader's role have gained dominance over the past 12 to 18 months, and will continue to be a concern in the future. It is difficult, though: 30 percent of respondents say their top challenge is the inability to measure data, analytics and AI impact on business outcomes.
"There is a massive value vibe around data, where many organizations talk about the value of data, desire to be data-driven, but there are few who can substantiate it," said Michael Gabbard, senior director analyst at Gartner. He added that while most chief data and analytics officers were responsible for data strategy, a third do not see putting in place an operating model as a primary responsibility. "There is a perennial gap between planning and execution for D&A leaders," he said.
Or, hear me out...it's not. (Score:3)
Googles business model of monetizing peoples private search information made them one the most successful businesses in the world. But that was a regulatory arbitrage. Monetizing user data in that was always looked at as something that regulators were going to put an end to eventually. Folks all over the world generally believe there should be a right to privacy. So the governments of the world have taken measures to limit such practices.
Now that's just half the problem. The other half is that most "data" that people are talking about is social media user data and that a seriously messed up dataset. The whole "enshitification" conversation is really about the noise in the signal of the internet becoming so loud that it drowns out anything meaningful. There has always been some amount of inorganic metric generation on the internet but as the environment gets more and more toxic towards organic behavior, the ratio has shifted. It really feels like bots, trolls and shills keep creating a larger and larger portion of the data. They're polluting every dataset.
What if a massive number of companies going back to the web 2.0 revolution and the proliferation of the freemium model have been burning VC money under false pretenses? That they could burn cash bringing in users to their various platforms but that their ability to capture market data would provide them with a financial windfall in the future. What if it made sense at the time and now it doesn't?
More of the data is fake and there more regulations governing it's sale and more people have access to it than ever before. Personally, I think this data is damn near worthless and everyone knows it. So they're churning out blog posts about how data is definitely valuable.
How valuable? (Score:3)
Shareholders: How valuable?
CEO: >:(
Re: (Score:2)
CEO: Data is valuable!
Shareholders: How valuable?
CEO: >:(
Do you want the value expressed in Crypto or something more easily understandable, like Library of Congress Furlongs per Fortnight?
Re: (Score:2)
The thing is, data is extremely valuable, but only when it's relevant. And whether it's relevant or not depends on not only the data, but what you're trying to do.
Data without relevance is just "pink noise".
Value of data (Score:3)
Re:Value of data (Score:4, Informative)
The concept you are looking for is information. The progression is
Data -> Information -> Knowledge
Data is merely bits and bobs. If context is included in the bits and bobs, then it is simply more bits and bobs. This is the stuff that gets shuffled around computers and networks. We'll represent a bit or bob of data as x.
Information is data-in context-where the context is not mere data. x must fit within a context to be useful. That is, it must be data ABOUT something. We'll use x |= Q where |= is the satisfaction relation from logic. x |= Q means x satisfies the proposition Q. Q is something you can say about x. Of course we can also have x |= P for P not equal to Q.
Knowledge is what the information means to someone, the individual. We might represent that as a |- (x |= Q), where |- is a misuse of logic's provability turnstile. This might read: the individual, a, knows that x satisfies Q. The match is not quite right but then knowledge is a very slippery subject.
CEOs and marketeers and politicians frequently slide back and forth among these categories because (1) they are stupid, (2) they think everyone else is as stupid as are they, and (3) no one calls them out on it.
Re: (Score:2)
Metrics? (Score:3)
Big Tech: "We don't need no stinking metrics! We decide what has value and what doesn't!"
In the same way that the folding money in your pocket is worth something by consensus - and isn't even tied any longer to anything which has a claim to inherent value - personal data mostly has value only because "we said it does". I see it as being a bit like crypto-currency, in that the collections of data are a kind of 'proof of work'. Or worse, it may be more comparable to NFTs.
Sure, the data can sometimes, and to some extent, be used to target advertising, predict behaviour, and maybe do some forecasting. But with so little in the way of metrics - and AFAICT almost zero verification of the conclusions drawn from what metrics do exist - this seems like yet another "we made shit up" grift.
Re: (Score:2)
The money in US$ has value because April 15 is coming up. The consensus is just an acknowledgement of that.
Collecting is easier than using (Score:1)
Collecting large amounts data is actually much easier than using it and especially using it to some sort of an advantage, actually maybe this is where AI should be used to help people - to try and make sense of things.
It is easy to come up with an example where huge sets of data are collected and never put to any meaningful use that benefits anyone, just look at all of the economic data.
Shake the magic data (Score:2)
Divine those valuable marketing insights to create more ads that the customer will ignore. I mean, even the people in the store that buy your chicken don't care about your ads.You don't even have to advertise. Just drop a new gas station, and people will pop in and see if you have fried chicken. If your chicken is good, they'll be able to follow their nose. But no, the AI that costs $70,000 per month per store and keeps trying to pitch a weird ad for SeaWorld because it's really confused by the concept of f
Reading Tea Leaves (Score:1)
So let me get this straight (Score:3)
The people in charge of your big data gathering and statistics that you use to run your business can't even generate analytics where they *surely* have as much data as the whole organization has, if they want it?
So, why are you paying them?!? They are too incompetent to even tell you if they save you any money by their existence!
Maybe they are not allowed to tell.. (Score:1)
So maybe they do know the value very much, and it is as high as they say, so why can't they tell?
Maybe because they use that data in illegal ways, against data protection laws, to decide valuable stuff .. whatever. .. just an idea what might be the reason, no intention in a 'conspiracy theory', plain suspicion at capitalism.