How CIOs are thinking about big data and the major opportunities, challenges and threats they face in managing the analytics unstructured information. Based on a survey of Canadian IT leaders

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About this data
• In preparation for a weekend retreat about innovation,
CanadianCIO magazine surveyed IT leaders about their
perspectives on big data
• 35 responses, all CIO/IT director level
• Industries included health care, education,
manufacturing, non-profit
• Company sizes from mid-market to large enterprise

3. Q1. What do you believe are the most pressing matters today for the
CIO with their line of business colleagues?
“Getting the right information at the right time. Move more towards data driven
decisions.”
Not just one matter, but access to the data and then No. 2 is to use it not
just for reporting and monitoring but on executing on business decision
and processes.”
“Sharing the information so that other people understand the needs of the
technology and what is required.”

4. Q1. What do you believe are the most pressing matters today for the
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CIO with their line of business colleagues?
“Proper management and control over information. Leveraging information
to gain competitive advantage. Lack of proper skill set and training could
lead to misuse or misrepresentation of information used in decision making.”
“The biggest diversity is knowledge, education and critical area of big data. Some
know all, some nothing…which makes it very challenging.”

5. Q2. Where do you believe big data should be housed? CIO Office, CMO
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Office, CFO Office, Other?

6. Q3. How are you enabling self-service analytics for multiple
stakeholders, including colleagues who are not data scientists?
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7. Q4A. What different skill sets are you thinking you will require for
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Big Data analytics?
“A combination of good understanding of physical analysis and data
structure when pulling information and linking from multiple sources
from big data such as social media and Internet.”
“You need people with strong knowledge of what the organization
is doing and the industry that will save you lots of hassles with finding
the wrong conclusions.”

8. Q4A. What different skill sets are you thinking you will require for
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Big Data analytics?
“Scientists know how to create and devise the method to get out the
information, but they do not know the use cases, and that battle field
experience can help define it and create the test to prove it.”

9. 5. Are you concerned about a skills gap or the cost of acquiring and
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retaining these personnel resources?

10. 5. Are you concerned about a skills gap or the cost of acquiring and
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retaining these personnel resources?
“It’s not a commodity at this point. There is a premium attached to this. So the
worry is about managing it effectively.”
“Big data is not old enough to have an established group of experts
like Cobol programmers. Anyone with basic database expertise, you
can hire them and train them to the new paradigms like SQL.”
“I think both my main concern is acquiring and retaining because of
the skills are unique set of skills and these types of skills require longer
cycles to master and definitely a particular concern for the organization.”

11. 5B. Are you concerned about a skills gap or the cost of acquiring and
“This is becoming the norm and there are wide variety of skills set
that are advanced in the transition of the big data world. It is an
extension and there still have to evolve and this is the next evolution.”
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retaining these personnel resources?
“People with the right training are not easy to get and tracking them to
this area is not easy and keeping them here is not easy.”
“Yes I am. This is a whole new concept for us.”

12. 6. Do you see the coming of Big Data reshaping your CIO
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organization? If so, how?
• Recruitment
• Education and training requirements
• Security, governance and compliance
• Privacy
• “Complete restructuring” -- reporting to CEOs, boards, LOBs
• Large degree of uncertainty and expectation of long-term impact

13. 7. Big Data/unstructured data present new types of challenges & may
require new frameworks and major technology investments. How do
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you view this change & justify the business case?
• “Only take data you can actually use”
• Evaluation and business case based on the size of data collection being
mined and the scope of time
• Based on relevance of unstructured data (ie, social media)
• Customer service imperatives
• Degree of hosted vs. on-premise IT in place today vs. the future
• Challenges with “small data” -- extracting value from traditional data
• More partnership between departments and increased investment

14. 8. Are you currently using data visualization tools, apps or new
services that are highly contextual and personalized?
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15. 9. Have you identified any other challenges or concerns with the use
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of Big Data and self-service analytics?
“I am concerned with the notion of big data and data hoarding. It’s
a problem, and you have to have business strategy to determine
what you need and what you do with the data. Stop wild goose-chasing
and seeking solutions for problems that do not exist.”
“Big data, over the course of a year, may be impacted by factors
not brought into the next year such as simple consumer trends,
environment and economic factor. It a may tell you the wrong answer.”
“The mismanagement and misuse of information by unskilled personnel
could lead to poor decisions and consequently adverse consequences.”

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Conclusions
• CIOs and their organizations need to conduct some kind of big data impact
assessment to develop realistic and relevant strategies
• The 80/20 rule applies as well to getting value from big data vs. cleaning up
traditional data as it does to innovation vs. “keeping the lights on” in
enterprise IT.
• The best use cases for big data will likely be iterative rather than
transformative in nature, teaching CIOs as much about what they need (in
IT, processes, skills) as it does about the data itself.
• CIOs need to share more as a community to foster big data best practices