My colleague and I were fortunate enough to be invited to attend the recent Corinium CDAO Melbourne 2024 conference held from 2-4 September 2024. Corinium has an interesting approach to this annual event by alternating between keynote and breakout sessions, guided panel discussions, and interactive fireside chats. Such a structure makes for an insightful and engaging event that I always find great value in.
While last year’s conference focused on GenAI, this edition had a good balance between data management, data governance, reporting, analytics, and AI. Having soaked up so much valuable information, I wanted to share a brief and high-level report back around some of the key aspects I took away from all the presentations and discussions.
The power of data
A common theme of many presentations and discussions was the power (or value) of data and insights. This positioning around the value was refreshing to me. As professionals, we often get asked to justify proposed projects or the size of the resource pool when it comes to the value that it provides to the business. Some of the examples covered were:
- The time saved by technical teams when the business can do self-service reporting.
- Determining the lifetime value of customers. This was particularly interesting as some organisations still have ‘lifetime’ customers. Other organisations must focus on the value they can squeeze out of a customer in a typical five-year cycle.
- Additional value is derived when insights can be refined using external data. I think we undervalue the impact that the weather and the seasons have on buying and other related business patterns. Unfortunately, very few businesses ingest weather data to combine with their data analysis.
- Cross-selling is another opportunity to get value out of data. There was a good presentation on how analytics is used for cross-selling in the agricultural space. While this might seem like an unlikely topic at a CDAO conference, the discussion highlighted the value the sector derives from using data for cross-selling.
A good takeaway was that when it comes to data value pitches, it helps to be as specific as possible. Vague statements of potential value gain hardly excite any decision-maker!
Data governance
Another theme that received a lot of attention was data governance. If companies are going to use GenAI to generate insights, they must make sure that the data on which those insights are based is accurate – and trustworthy.
Data classification, dictionaries, catalogues, and metadata all came up in the presentations. These topics have been neglected in recent years. One presentation took a look at a very interesting classification scheme that associates the value of the data with the classification of its attributes. Another presenter talked about the value of particular data domains and their alignment with strategy. While this is a similar classification scheme to the previous one, this happens more at an aggregate level.
Data quality was a hot topic, not just for GenAI input but also for the quality of insights provided through reporting. Other aspects of data governance that were mentioned were data ownership, data stewardship, and risk management.
Additionally, there were full papers presented on the aspects of managing unstructured data. These covered the likes of discovery, cataloguing unstructured data, classification, data line, preventing exposure, privacy, security, and making the data useful and reportable.
Another interesting take on data governance is that it has a branding problem. Data governance is often seen as a burden to the organisation that slows down production and the delivery of insights. One speaker took an interesting approach to how to turn data governance from a risk-controlling police officer to a value-generating business person. The most important point in this regard was that data governance should be aligned with the business strategy. It should assist reporting and BI teams to provide better value, instead of being a blocker.
The conference also had a deep dive session into data literacy. The focus was more on the people aspect than the technology used. Understanding of data, including contextualising it to the role where it is used and how to extract value from it, were all fascinating points. The viewpoint was held that aspects of data literacy should be built into every project and deliverable – and that data literacy is not a stand-alone exercise to force people to sit through boring presentations or online training courses.
Overall, this year’s Corinium CDAO Melbourne 2024 conference was a fascinating one that really highlighted just how far we have come around the importance of data, along with what key aspects are critical to focus on as more businesses and industries become more data driven.
