1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Today, in the first half of the twenty-first century it seems that Commerce, Industry
and even agriculture have all step into the digital revolution for better or worse.
This research will focus on one aspect of it, which is how to set one organization to
leverage the mass of Data input, analytics and output within the Digital value chain.
To narrow down a little, several questions are posed on the ownership and leadership
on corporate Data, on Data Analytics, on Data Monetization and on Data Valuation.
What is the Data Management? Are Current Data and Information systems fully
answering and aligned with the corporate Strategy? Who is managing your Data?
What skills are required to govern Data? What is a Data Strategy? How to determine
the intrinsic and Market value of Data? How meaningful is the contribution of
miscellaneous Data to the business? What Knowledge, skills and abilities does a
Chief Data Officer require? What would be the evolution and the impacts of having a
Data Management Leader in an organization?
The goal is not to make an identikit of the Chief Data Officer but to better understand
why there is a need for a CDO, which environment and challenges he will be facing
and what would be the ins and outs of the function.
The field study underlines here the main issue that newly created positions are facing
when entering an organization. Each Company has a history and an actual structure,
for each newly created position there is a question of how to be accepted and knighted
by its peers and internal competitors.
Human aspects, relations with stakeholders and internal politics are challenges that
new entrants face before even proving the value of their work.
The findings of the research suggest that the positioning of a new actor like the Chief
Data Officer is not an obvious one. The role has to compose with the pressure from

2. well-established technical and business leaders inside the organization to gain trust
and be accepted by its peers.
The appointment and future evolution of the Chief Data Officer role into an
organization highly depend on the maturity of the organization, its culture, its
structure, its size and its industry.
The Chief Data Officer duties eventually also depend on the ones of its collaterals in
the organization and maybe also on the personality, background and experience of the
holder of the function.
From the short history of the Data Management role, its potential has not yet been
revealed except in very Data intensive Companies such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook,
Paypal or Ebay.
In these corporations, appointing a Chief Data Officer proved to be a driver for new
business models, a lever to generate sustainable growth and a strong competitive
advantage against their competitors.