“To become a business asset, the role of data within an organization must move from being departmentally siloed to being centrally managed. Breaking down the siloes is not necessarily a technical challenge, but an organizational one. It requires a data strategy, the correct level of ownership and corporate governance. Data-as-a-business-asset means a single definition of the customer, ownership at an executive level and a well-managed change control process to ensure ongoing data quality and trust in the data across the organization.”
Steve Earl here.
As Eric Hoving said at TM Forum Live!, “For 20 years we tried to make sense out of data and failed, but Google did it. Stuff is not an asset if you don’t get something out of it. If you aren’t going to do something with it then stop doing it.”
This is a strong statement by Eric Hoving but an important one when building our OSS strategies. Do we see ourselves collecting data for operational purposes or are we really going to try to make sense of it and turn it into a significant business asset? [wikipedia refers to an asset as “Anything tangible or intangible that can be owned or controlled to produce value and that is held by a company to produce positive economic value is an asset.”]
Should the data collection requirements of our OSS and BSS be defined by ops only or should they be defined by the Chief Data Office (ie centrally organised with a whole-of-business asset strategy in mind)?
As Steve Earl says, this “is not necessarily a technical challenge, but an organizational one.” Do we want to lead this change or follow?