How Organizations Struggle with Data Fluency - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 33

Chapter 3
How Organizations
Struggle with Data
Fluency
Few people need to be convinced about the value of using data
to inform decisions. A 2012 survey conducted by the technology
consulting firm Avanade found that 84 percent of senior leaders
think using data has helped them make better business decisions.
Furthermore, data use can help drive growth; as 73 percent of
respondents claim to have already leveraged data to increase rev-
enue. 1 Increasingly, the opportunities and benefits of data are well
understood. What is generally not yet understood is how to actu-
ally use data and convert the potential energy stored within this
information into kinetic energy that will propel growth and facilitate
goal attainment.
When tracking the progress of data use, many organizations value quantity
over quality. In 2014, Facebook shared that it was storing 300 petabytes of user
data, an amount that had tripled since the previous year. 2 That's more than
a CD's worth of data for each man, woman, and child in the United States. A
study by Oracle indicates that the average data warehousing project costs
$1.1 million and takes 10 months to deliver. 3 Tremendous volumes of data and