Media Query Source: Part 14
The responses I provided to a media outlet on August 9, 2018:
Media: Customer-centricity, customer journeys, data as an asset. In a lot of cases, it's just lip service. The real reason companies aren't keeping their promises traces back to the data they have and don't have, as well as how they use or don't use it. This piece will explain what's going wrong, why, and what companies need to do to fix it.
Gfesser: From my experience, I've seen many businesses place considerably higher value on their applications than their data. And in many cases, it's not difficult to see why: applications are often customer facing, and customers need to be served.
IT departments in many of these businesses also value their applications more highly, but the reasons behind this philosophy are a bit different. From my experience, I've seen the reasons fall into one or more of the following categories: (1) the data is seen to be already (or magically) available, (2) the data is "the easy part", (3) the data is not understood, or (4) a desire to work on the data does not exist.
What's wrong here? The reality is that as much as some executives might be focused on the appearance and functionality of user interfaces, the purpose behind these user interfaces is to provide some type of services, and services are all about data.
I've worked in a wide number of roles for modernization and transformation efforts. Businesses looking to pursue such efforts need to understand that when it comes down to it, data is a longer term asset than any applications that might be built to make use of it. Applications are often replaced due to new requirements or new technologies, but the data cannot simply be replaced.
Based on my experience, any firm looking to pursue a modernization or transformation effort should first make sure that its data is in good shape, or at the very least, address its data in parallel with the reworking of its applications. This is especially the case for businesses which have grown quickly and need to reign in product sprawl across the enterprise.
The tooling for applications and data, while traditionally separate, are increasingly converging to the point where IT departments will need to take both of these areas into account simultaneously, especially in an era of microservices and distributed applications, where data awareness needs to be heightened due to the pervasive role that it plays.
See all of my responses to media queries here.