The document discusses best practices for promoting a data-centric culture from the bottom-up in organizations. It finds that to complement top-down leadership, employees at all levels should use data to set goals and track performance, receive training in data analysis, share data and compete with peers, and experiment with data to innovate. Fostering these bottom-up behaviors is necessary to fully transform a company into one that is truly data-driven.

1. Sponsoredby
A report from the Economist Intelligence Unit
Driving a data-centric culture:
A BOTTOM-UP
OPPORTUNITY

2. © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 20151
Driving a data-centric culture: a bottom-up opportunity
In September 2014, The Economist Intelligence
Unit (EIU) carried out a global survey of 395
C-level executives with sponsorship from Platfora.
The survey sample consists of executives from 18
different industries and is balanced across Asia-
Pacific (34%), North America (27%), Western
Europe (26%) and the rest of the world (13%).
About half of respondents’ organisations have
annual revenue of more than $500m, of which one-
in-five report more than $5bn in revenue.
About the survey
Big data has captured the attention of business
leaders across almost every industry. Building
big-data capabilities—namely putting in place the
right technologies and talent—has found its place
in the corporate agenda. Leading companies now
are looking beyond these measures so they can
move forward in promoting a data-centric
corporate culture.
Data-driven leadership is critical to the success
of fostering such a culture, but creating excitement
within middle management on down is also
necessary if the aim is to achieve a big-data
cultural transformation.
“For a data-centric business like ours, the entire
organisation is grounded in the notion that data
drives everything … and all decisions are grounded
in data,” says Karen Quintos, senior vice-president
and chief marketing officer of Dell, a US computer
manufacturer.
Big data is a big deal
Most data-driven companies are focused on the
leadership challenge of inspiring this cultural shift.
They seek to develop a values-based vision of the
future, promote the spread of data expertise across
corporate ranks, and encourage and support
collaboration among business unit leaders. In
essence, they work towards a common set of goals
and communicate passionately and consistently
across all layers of the organisation (see our
related article, Driving a data-centric culture: the
leadership challenge). To date, however, relatively
little has been said about the role of middle
management and other, lower-level employees in
such efforts to spread and institutionalise a
data-centric culture. Leaders of companies shaping
the trend recognise the importance of evangelists
at all levels of their organisations.
Dell stands out among other large companies for
its early big-data programmes and efforts to use
data insights across multiple departments. It’s no
longer just about having more or bigger data sets,
it’s about connecting data to drive value. “It’s not
good enough to just have disparate pieces of data,
say, about our customers—the real challenge is to
connect all the internal and third-party data we
have, integrate them in a single, consistent view of
the customer and uncover new insights and
Driving a data-centric culture:
a bottom-up opportunity

3. © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 20152
Driving a data-centric culture: a bottom-up opportunity
opportunities,” Ms Quintos adds.
Other top leaders share her view: “They [C-suite
executives] realise it’s a big deal to their business,”
says Scott Klososki, a former CEO of three
successful tech start-up companies and principal at
consulting firm Future Point of View, “it’s as
transformational as, say, the use of drones in the
air force,” he adds.
Beyond technology and tools
Across industries, C-suite leadership teams are very
engaged in deploying the right technology and
tools to collect and process new, rich data streams.
Geo-location and app-usage data from mobile
devices and live sensor data from manufacturing or
maintenance systems are now prevalent. Moreover,
corporate leaders are acquiring and developing the
right talent and skills to connect data to critical
business insights; they are also spearheading
initiatives to foster the kind of culture that
embraces the use of big data in decision-making.
Many savvy companies have adopted modern
big-data technology tools and applications and
have hired data scientists and analytics experts
trained to decode and translate data sets into
powerful and timely business knowledge.
Companies at the forefront of the big-data
revolution, however, are looking beyond
technology and specialists and are striving to create
a corporate culture that promotes the use of big
data at all levels and across all business
departments. The critical next step is the cultural
transformation necessary to embed the new
expertise and tools into day-to-day business
transactions and decisions throughout the whole
organisation.
The bottom-up recipe for
success
The C-level action must be complemented by the
right bottom-up initiatives and behaviours—and
the two must go together. So what is the bottom-
up recipe for big-data success? What do employees
at all levels of the organisation need to do to
propagate a data-centric culture? Our research
uncovered the following best practices:
Use data to set and track
performance goals
To be able to fully understand and connect the data
with their everyday work, employees need to look
at key metrics daily, make sense of them and link
them to what they already know intuitively about
their business and their customers. There’s great
opportunity in making data indicators real and
relevant to individual managers and employees by
having them use data to set their own goals and
performance metrics.
“You have to spread the data to everyone,” says
Gabie Boko, North America executive vice-
president and chief marketing officer of Sage, a
software provider to small and mid-size businesses.
“And you have to make the numbers relevant—they
have to see the value of their own efforts,” she
adds.
Within her marketing team at Sage, Ms Boko has
implemented data-laden dashboards that follow
the same format that she uses to track her own
strategic goals. This approach has a significant
potential to benefit business performance. A recent
Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) survey,
sponsored by Platfora, shows that 68% of
executives say that greater access to big data
would substantially improve their department’s
functions. Respondents from top-performing
companies are even more likely to agree (76%).
“Use data to prioritise and re-prioritise the work of
employees,” says Charles Thomas, recently
appointed chief data officer of top-four US bank
Wells Fargo, “and replace old, mundane work with
new, game-changing work.”

4. © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 20153
Driving a data-centric culture: a bottom-up opportunity
Offer data analysis training
and education
The big-data revolution is not only bringing about
a slew of new data sources and analytics tools, but
is also encouraging new, more scientific ways to
think about and analyse data. Data science used to
primarily belong to academia and, even there, was
usually confined within specialised research and
engineering institutes. But now it is a popular
discipline among top colleges and even discussed
in business schools that cater to the most coveted
Fortune-500 corporate employers.
What data scientists and business leaders at
data-driven enterprises realised as they began
implementing sophisticated big-data analytics
tools is that employees who could both manipulate
and analyse the data, as well as understand the
business knowledge and opportunities they reveal,
are extremely rare—and valuable. And experts who
can effectively educate the rest of the organisation
on how to extract useful insights from data are
critical to transforming an organization’s culture
into a data-centric one. Data analysts and business
people traditionally speak different languages.
Therefore, the need for qualified and effective
“interpreters” has created a significant opportunity
for capable employees at all levels to grow and
advance.
Accordingly, there is a demand for big-data
knowledge and education within the corporate
ranks—EIU survey respondents see lack of
understanding about how to apply big data to their
role or function as the foremost obstacle to more
extensive use of data in their organisations, even
ahead of lack of financial resources.
Therefore, employees at all levels could benefit
from taking part in internal big-data training
courses—and employers could encourage
employees to take advantage of the wealth of
external data-analytics programmes offered by
academic institutions.
At Wells Fargo and his previous employers, Mr
Thomas implemented such training initiatives that
taught data analysts how to think and
communicate like business people, as well as ones
that educated business leaders in the art and
science of statistics and data analytics.
By developing into business-savvy data
analysts—or data-savvy business people—
employees would not only improve their own
professional prospects, but would also help bridge
the cultural and communication gaps that hold
back their organisation from capturing the benefits
of big data more fully.
Share, and compete, with peers
Harnessing the natural competitive tendencies of
human beings to drive enhanced performance and
desired business outcomes is nothing new. When it
comes to engaging employees with new data
sources and analytical tools, the most forward-
thinking data-centric companies make
considerable effort to create and nurture vibrant
interactive data communities that are transparent
by nature, including corporate wikis, internal
social and knowledge networks, and company or
department-wide competitions based on metrics.
“Our delivery teams compete with each other on
their scorecard metrics,” says Rod Morris, senior
vice-president of marketing and operations of
Opower, a cloud-based software solutions provider
for utility companies, “the winners can earn an
extra day of vacation and a trophy.” The
transparency and visibility of the data metrics act
as a powerful motivator for individual employees,
and teams, to push themselves to achieve better
performance. By sharing data and knowledge,
competing with their peers and even having fun
with the data metrics, employees are not only
increasing their engagement with and utilisation of
the data tools, they are also incorporating the new
data into everyday interactions and weaving them
into their companies’ cultural fabric.

5. © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 20154
Driving a data-centric culture: a bottom-up opportunity
Experiment and innovate
with data
As companies successfully implement their
big-data initiatives, employees go from learning,
to adopting and then to consistently using the new
data tools. The most advanced stage of that
journey involves employees taking the initiative to
experiment and innovate with the new data. “Data
is a raw material,” says Mr Klososky of Future Point
of View, a technology consultancy, “the key is to
create a ‘cultural alchemy’—an environment in
which lower-level management and employees can
feel free to be creative and to experiment.”
Significant opportunities exist for future
improvement of business processes and results
using big-data analytics—30% of survey
respondents see great possibilities in enhancing
future predictive capabilities and 28% believe
applying advanced analytics to more business
processes holds significant future potential.
“It is a connected and increasingly complex
world,” says Ms Quintos, CMO of Dell, “and no one
has fully figured out how to integrate and simplify
the disparate and growing data sets companies
have at their disposal. The opportunity to be
creative is huge.” Employees should embrace their
freedom to innovate with the data and unleash
their creativity using this new corporate asset. As a
result, they will help firmly embed big data into the
corporate culture and day-to-day business.
Top-down leadership and initiatives are
important for creating and nurturing a data-centric
culture. But they are not sufficient by themselves.
They need to be complemented and reinforced by
grass-roots activities and engagement at the
individual-employee level. The people who will lead
on the ground and shape the big-data cultural
transformation are different from the CEOs and
CIOs who defined the strategic vision or the data
scientists who built and implemented the new
tools. They reside at the mid- and lower levels of
the organisation; oftentimes, they are a different,
younger demographic, comfortable with the latest
technologies and social networks.
Having employees across all layers of the
organisation embrace and use data on a day-to-day
basis is the critical ingredient and necessary
condition for ultimately transforming the company
into a truly data-driven business.

6. © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 20155
Driving a data-centric culture: a bottom-up opportunity
Whilst every effort has been taken to verify the accuracy of this
information, neither The Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd. nor the
sponsor of this report can accept any responsibility or liability
for reliance by any person on this white paper or any of the
information, opinions or conclusions set out in the white paper.

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