(US and Canada) Egor Sadovnic, Crowe Advanced Analytics Leader, speaks with Jason Masker, Field Chief Technology Officer at Stratascale (an Shi Company), about technology investment and the need for having a common corporate metric dictionary.

Sadovnic shares that decision-makers sometimes fall for buzzwordy marketing and sometimes make unwarranted investments in tools they do not need or are unable to use. He adds that real technology leaders tend to be conservative and more measured with their investments; they tend to reach for things they are either familiar with or have used in their previous organizations.

In terms of deploying new tools, Sadovnic states that a set of core foundational technologies can meet 95 percent of an organization’s needs. He stresses that it is safer for average organizations to avoid buzzwords and establish core foundational competency across their data.

When asked about his approach to gaining confidence from the business side, Sadovnic says that it ties back to the contextualization of their pain points. He explains that it can be difficult at times due to factors like legacy infrastructure, new people, different leadership, and disparate data sets. To address this, Sadovnic says that he presents a strategic angle combined with the proof of concept, followed by applying agile and scrum methodologies so that people can see tangible outcomes.

Sharing his views on prioritizing transformation and the role of data, Sadovnic emphasizes that one of the most important aspects is to break down silos and bring people together. He adds that a common data culture starts with having a common dictionary. Sadovnic points out that the corporate metric dictionary is often overlooked, which can lead to people having different definitions. Then, when they gather for deeper conversations, they cannot agree on one metric to measure business success. Sadovnic explains that this difference then permeates into other technological investments as well.