(US and Canada) Ryan Swann, Chief Data Analytics Officer, Principal – Vanguard, speaks with David Mariani, CTO – Founder, AtScale, about data leadership, connecting data initiatives to business outcomes, and getting more people involved in using data.

Swann says that the key to being a CDO is being able to connect. He mentions Vanguard’s mission is to help clients achieve financial success. Swann’s team has to connect data analytics, AI, and ML to business outcomes and risk reduction. He says organizations cannot do data just for data’s sake.

He explains that while connecting data initiatives to outcomes, data leaders will also be building the organization’s data literacy, where it is not just data professionals that see data as a strategic asset but also the broader organization.

Sharing a few tips for leaders to get more people to use data, he says that CDOs need to be able to tell stories because people connect with, remember, and later talk about these stories.

Next, CDOs need to highlight valuable use cases, establish the best practices and gradually drive the maturity toward building data and analytics and its use in strategy development. He concludes by saying that the process can eventually become a part of the organization’s DNA.