As Head of CDO Office at Commerzbank, Martin Kraus is familiar with the hurdles on the road to digitaliization and emphasizes: you cannot progress further with the old ways, a new way of thinking is needed. But be careful: you shouldn't tear everything apart either, because that would be too much of a break. It is much more important to motivate both old and new generations to be passionate about data and to make its significance visible. This new value system must be carried by the entire organization as part of the corporate culture. The entire organization is called upon to train its employees and create resources for working with data. After all, data culture does not mean human versus machine, but a change in values that must be supported in terms of content and recognition. This means that both management and employees must live the shared data culture.
The most innovative and sophisticated data strategy is of no use if the employees are involved by the management and seen as part of the solution. After all, they are not just suppliers, but a valuable resource, especially when it comes to data expertise and data quality. The awareness must be created that the departments carry the knowledge and understanding of the data within themselves and are jointly responsible for the data quality through their daily work with the data. After all, this data provides the basis for corporate management at the highest level.
Daniela Graussam, Head of Corporate Application Management at Signa Group, is familiar with these same hurdles and with the culture clash when it comes to data. She emphasizes the importance of a common understanding of data. There also needs to be a company-wide agreement that all departments are working on the same task of getting data in order and understanding it. Even if some departments have different goals, a common culture and joint understanding is required for the big picture. It must also be clear: nothing happens overnight. A new culture and digitalization be only be achieved over the long run. "Even after more than a year in the project with dataspot. we have only processed part of our data. Only with a long-term approach - and driven by the management - can we achieve the goals of our data strategy sustainably."
However, this can often be a dilemma, says Timm Grosser, Senior Analyst at BARC, because management with short-term mandates often only has short-term goals. In order to digitalize successfully and use data profitably, the focus must therefore be on the matter at hand and not on the vanity of top management. Timm Grosser also emphasizes the importance of metadata and of a professional data governance tool in order to first achieve a common understanding of the company's data and then to apply this understanding to the organization. Only with this foundation can everyone pull on the same data strand.
Michaela Mader, Managing Director of dataspot. GmbH and moderator of the panel, has observed something similar in many companies over the last two years, but she also sees the beginnings of a paradigm shift in dealing with data. Many key players are not only aware of the importance of data, but are also becoming increasingly aware of the change and awareness measures required. However, Michaela Mader also often recognizes short-term successes with her customers: when starting with a central data domain, rapid successes are achieved with specialized data modeling in smaller company divisions. This proves to both management and employees how quickly the understanding of data and the associated data culture can grow within a subdivision of an organization - providing a role model effect for an organization-wide rollout.
Michaela Mader spans the panel discussion with a quote from Richard Buckminster Fuller that contains a clear message for data pioneers: "You never create change by fighting the existing. To create change, you build models that make the old obsolete." And that applies to data culture, too, because it eats even the best data strategy for breakfast.
The panel makes it clear: Without data culture, there can be no digitalization. Because this path can only be taken if the value of data is culturally anchored for everyone in the company, whether in top management or in data entry. Digitalization and data management are change measures and must be lived together. Only then can we talk about a mature data strategy and no longer about culture clash.
