Talend Survey Finds Executives Don’t Trust Or Understand Data

Despite being recognized as one of the most valuable assets in an organization, enterprise data remains the least measured or understood. Decision-makers have more access to data than ever before, but there are few ways to make sense of it.

A new study explores the difference between leaders who are data-driven and those who are merely data-saturated. Talend’s recently released 2021 Data Health Survey1 clearly shows that executives understand the importance of data – two-thirds say they work with data on a daily basis.

Yet 78% of executives say they face challenges in using their data, and 36% say most of their decisions are not based on data. Companies know that the path forward depends on leveraging data, but despite years of investment in a modern data infrastructure, they struggle to use it.

It’s easier said than done. Only half of the executives believe their company is capable of delivering even the most basic of things: timely, accessible, complete, and accurate data. Data management companies have offered solutions to these problems for years, but their solutions focus only on the mechanics of data.

Data management

By focusing on simply moving and storing more data, some of the fundamental components of data management are lost: Where does the data come from? Who has access to them? How accurate are they? To become data-driven, leaders need to know more about their data: Our relationship with data is unhealthy.

Only 40% of executives ever trust the data they work with, and more than a third of executives still make decisions based on their gut,” says Christal Bemont, CEO of Talend. “The reality of data falls far short of the industry’s vision. Data management, which largely focuses on moving and storing data, does not take into account the overall state of the data.

Therefore, in attempting to manage data, organizations are in effect creating digital garbage dumps of enterprise information. This needs to change. Our vision of data health in the future because it recognizes that basic standards of quality and reliability are critical to business survival. “Talend sees data health as a holistic system of preventative measures, effective treatments, and a supportive culture to actively manage the well-being of enterprise information.

Data Health

Data health includes monitoring and reporting capabilities that help organizations understand and communicate the reliability, risk, and return on investment of this critically important business asset. The company’s data integrity and integration customers report that a focus on data health delivers positive business results. “Without timely access to quality data, we would never have been able to achieve the scale of analytics we are currently running,” said Ranadip Dutta, Solution Architect Manager at Lenovo.

“For more information on the Talend Data Health Survey and data health, click here. From March 24 to April 8, 2021, Talend, through Qualtrics, conducted a survey of 529 global executives – with titles ranging from director to C-suite – from mid-sized and large companies with more than $10 million in annual revenue to assess their ability to make data-driven decisions.