Change management is one of the most difficult aspects of digital transformation. Manik Gupta, Chief Analytics and Insights Officer, Bayer Consumer Health, North America speaks with Baz Khuti, President US Modak, about the areas of digital transformation that need attention and the organization’s approach to adopting new technologies.

Regarding technology hype around terms like data lakes, data meshes, and data fabrics, Gupta says there’s been a strategic mindset shift from creating applications for managing data to getting meaningful business outcomes from data. “When you shift that mindset, you start to think about more agile and transformative ways of hosting and integrating large enterprise data sets. A data lake is a repository of large-scale data in its most raw format without the need to organize it. It includes all types of data — structured, semi-structured and unstructured. Also, this data can be on-premise or in the cloud,” he says.

This leads to the concept of cloud computing, which allows enterprises the flexibility to scale solutions and to pay as required without heavy investments. “These world-class cloud solutions enable the journey and therefore they become very important concepts, technologies, and architecture as you build next-gen capabilities in data analytics,” he explains.

Sharing his views on the new technology waves in the industry, Gupta says that there is a gamut of use cases for the tech from modernized marketing to modernized sales, to omnichannel, and to the newer ways of operating e-commerce, leveraging data from smart devices. “We’re thinking about pretty much all of these ideas and concepts. It is about transforming every day. We take that to heart.”

Gupta next sheds light on three important aspects that need attention to ensure a healthy future for data and analytics.

First, the shortage of talent. “There is a shortage in areas within data and analytics, be it solution architecture, advanced business intelligence, big data engineering, or data science. There’s an opportunity and a responsibility for corporate and academia to get together to start to address that,  whether it be internships or year-round programs,” he says.

Second is the idea of change management that needs to accompany data-led digital transformation. “This is the hardest spot,” Gupta continues. “Tech stacks and algorithms are immediately solvable and there’s been tremendous progress, but 70% of the equation is change management. There’s little value in developing products and solutions that the rest of the business is not ready to adopt. 

And lastly, the monetization of data. “A lot of us think of analytics and insights as a cost center because we’re not producing a product, we’re not marketing a product, we’re not a business unit, and we’re not selling anything. “But we should reconsider that point of view. We should consider that we are a profit center, and this is not just about data and technology, but it is about monetization of those assets,” Gupta concludes.