36 per cent of business leaders still go with their 'gut' when making decisions: survey

A SURVEY from data integration firm Talend has found that about a third - or 36 per cent - of business executives go with their gut when making the majority of their decisions, because most of them (78 per cent) say they face challenges when using data.

The Data Health Survey was conducted from March to April this year, identifying data perceptions of 529 global executives across medium and large companies making more than US$10 million in annual revenue.

Among the respondents from the Asia-Pacific region, as many as 96 per cent of executives face challenges in data literacy, despite three quarters of them wishing to make data-driven decisions.

The report found that nearly half of executives in the sales and marketing (48 per cent) and finance (44 per cent) sectors make the majority of their decisions without considering data. Leaders in production (35 per cent), engineering (33 per cent) and information technology sectors (23 per cent) were less likely to do so.

Some 38 per cent of data users and 44 per cent of data producers said there were no data standardisation practices in place to ensure data quality and effectiveness.

The lack of transparency and shared understanding further perpetuates data ignorance as only 45 per cent of Asia-Pacific executives always trust the data they are working with. Instead, they rationalise decisions as "gut feelings".

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"Our relationship with data is not healthy," says Talend CEO Christal Bemont, adding that the reality of data is "falling well short" of the industry's vision.

Opining that they "hold the keys to data-driven success", data sharers are less likely to struggle with data use and are significantly more inclined to make data-driven decisions. Fortunately, 52 per cent of business leaders already work on both sides as data sharers.

The survey said that by aligning the data practices of both producers and users, and creating cross-industry standard metrics, data sharers will help organisations build accurate and complete data that is ready and easy to use.