The slippery road to a data-ready future

OF ALL the changes that financial institutions are experiencing in current times, data-backed decision making has the potential to create the deepest impact. Advanced analytics tools give companies the power to grow the business, mitigate risks, enhance the customer experience and improve operational efficiency. But the road to becoming a data-driven organisation is often a slippery one - fraught with unmet goals and poor returns on investment.

When Gartner announced in 2011 that 70-80 per cent of corporate business intelligence (BI) projects would fail, it did create a lot of noise in the industry but also some quiet realisation of the challenges involved. Over these years, the data experience for most organisations has been a mix of excitement, satisfaction and frustration.

In my experience of working with financial institutions in South-East Asia, I see the following common themes in the challenges faced in their BI journey: