Data Stack Evolution: Legacy Challenges and AI Innovation, a global report which included a survey of 775 manufacturing and supply chain IT decision-makers, found that almost three in five (58%) said their data leadership and IT teams work in silo.
Some (13%) admitted that there is no collaboration between these teams whatsoever, blocking the sharing of data and knowledge to achieve new data analytics use cases.
The findings suggest difficulties in execution for the increasing number of manufacturing and supply chain firms that are prioritising modernisation of analytics and applications of data to rise to the complexities in modern supply chains.
The report revealed that this lack of cohesion between data and IT teams is having a knock-on effect on how other lines of business work with data. Many supply and manufacturing IT leaders indicate that data is kept within the department it was generated by (48%) and that each company department is responsible for managing its data (42%).
Part of the problem is that there is little consensus on where the responsibility for data processes lies. For example, the report uncovered a 50/50 split amongst respondents about whether data quality management should sit within the IT team’s remit (51%) or the data leadership team’s (50%). Similarly, 47% of manufacturing and supply chain IT leaders see managing and processing large datasets and databases as a data leadership task, while 48% say it is the responsibility of IT teams.
This lack of ownership also translates into a lack of data culture. Just a quarter (25%) of IT decision-makers said they prioritise data consistency across sources to ensure high-quality, value-adding data. Further, governance policies and strategies that cover the distribution of data are only in place in 22% of firms, pointing to a lack of data democratisation.
Alan Jacobson, Chief Data and Analytics Office at Alteryx, said: “The full potential of data analytics in manufacturing and supply cannot be unlocked without a centralised strategy and chain of command.
“Businesses that are still relying on fragmented operations and reactive analytics on an IT project basis risk getting left in their competitors’ dust as the opportunity to drive real transformation is simply not there. Aligning data science with overall strategic corporate direction and embedding a data culture across the organisation, enables multi-domain problem-solving through shared datasets and insights. With this approach, organisations can reach the analytics maturity needed to unlock new use cases that drive innovation.”
Methodology
The survey was conducted by Coleman Parkes from November 2023 to January 2024, and targeted 3,100 IT decision-makers, including 775 in the manufacturing sector, on data leadership teams in organisations across key sectors in the Americas, EMEA, and APJ regions. Survey respondents worked in financial services, the public sector, manufacturing, and technology for organisations with global revenue ranging from $50 million to over $10 billion. The smallest employed a workforce of 500 – 1,000 people, and the largest had more than 10,000 employees.