(US and Canada) Esther Munyi, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Sasfin, speaks with Robert Lutton, Vice President at Sandhill Consultants and Editorial Board Vice Chair at CDO Magazine, in a video interview about the various steps an organization should take to establish a data-driven culture.

Munyi begins by stating that data literacy and culture go hand in hand. She mentions the following focus areas that require data literacy:

• The top management should lead by example and it is important to hold them accountable for making decisions based on data and insights.

• A root cause of bad data quality is human error. So data literacy is important in helping all types of knowledge workers capturing data understand their role in ensuring data quality.

• Technical specialists should also be able to communicate insights in a way that is understood by business audiences. They should empower data consumers to see a story when they look at a report or a dashboard.

• Data literacy is important to empower business users to be able to use self-service capabilities for foundational work so that the data specialists can focus on the advanced work.

• Data literacy stimulates innovation and improves the chances of successfully deploying or implementing a technology product or digital transformation initiative as it is easier also to find opportunities if people are data literate.

• The adoption of data products and data solutions can be slow without data literacy. This is because of the back and forth between business and data practitioners as they are not speaking the same language.

Further, Munyi says that with the markets changing at a drastic pace, becoming data-centric can be difficult if people do not move at the same pace. Businesses need to be able to anticipate the change and the needs of clients to meet them where they are. Data literacy is also required to move up the maturity ladder when it comes to data analytics, she concludes.

CDO Magazine appreciates Esther Munyi for sharing her insights and data success stories with our global community.

See more from Esther Munyi

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