Despite Data’s Importance, More Than A Third of Business Leaders Don’t Use It for Critical Decisions

Sydney – May 12, 2021 –Talend, (NASDAQ: TLND),  a global leader in data integration and integrity, today released the results of a survey that highlighted the challenges businesses face in becoming data-driven organisations and the solutions to these challenges. It’s clear that business leaders know how important data is — two-thirds report that they use data every day (76% of APAC respondents). Yet 78% of these leaders say they face challenges in using their data (96% of APAC respondents), and more than a third say they simply aren’t using it to make the majority of their decisions (35% of APAC respondents).

There’s a difference between data-saturated and data-driven. Companies have more access to data than ever before, but there’s very little way to make sense of it. Only half of executives highly rate their ability to deliver the basics (45% of APAC respondents): timely, accessible, complete, and accurate data. Data management companies have been offering to solve these problems for years — but they’re focused on the mechanics of data like moving it and storing it.

“Our relationship with data is unhealthy. Only 40% of executives always trust the data they work with (45% of APAC respondents), and more than a third of executives are still making decisions based on gut instincts (35% of APAC respondents),” said Christal Bemont, CEO, Talend. “The reality of data is falling well short of the industry’s vision. Data management, which largely focuses on moving and storing data, doesn’t take into account the overall health of data. Therefore, in trying to manage data, all companies are creating digital landfills of corporate information. This has to change. Our vision of data health is the future because it recognizes the fundamental standards that are critical for corporate survival.”

Data health is Talend’s vision for a holistic system of preventative measures, effective treatments, and a supportive culture to actively manage the well-being of corporate information. It is designed to allow companies to answer basic questions about their data that remain challenging for many to address – where it resides, who has access to it, whether it’s accurate, and how much it’s worth. Data health would help organisations understand and communicate — in a quantifiable way — the reliability, risk, and return of this extremely critical business asset.

Talend’s data health survey also revealed:

• 22% of executives do not think that their company’s investments in data management is worth it (13% of APAC respondents).
• More than a third of executives report that there are no standards for data quality at their company (40% of APAC respondents).
• In an ideal world, 73% of executives would like to make the majority of their decisions based on data (75% of APAC respondents).
• Decreasing cost of operations is only a corporate objective for 49% of executives (40% of APAC respondents), far behind monitoring performance for 68% of executives (71% of APAC respondents), improving customer service for 67% of executives (76% of APAC respondents), and increasing revenue for 59% of executives (53% of APAC respondents).
• To make data the critical asset in the entire organisation, the challenges that executives face are both technical and human:
  • 50% to ensure data quality (56% of APAC respondents).
  • 39% to make data available to the right person (47% of APAC respondents).
  • 36% to have enough skilled resources (52% of APAC respondents).
  • 36% to meet compliance and security requirements (49% of APAC respondents).
• 95% of executives agree there should be cross-industry standard metrics to assess the quality of all enterprise data (97% of APAC respondents).
• Among the executives surveyed, the sales and marketing teams are the least data-driven departments:
  • Nearly half of sales and marketing executives (48%) make the majority of their decisions without data.
  • The finance department follows closely with 44% of finance executives reporting that they make the majority of their decisions without relying on data.

Customers report that a focus on data health is having a positive aspect on their business. “Without access to quality data on time, we could have never achieved the scale of analytics we are currently in,” says Ranadip Dutta, solution architect manager, Lenovo. “We now have flexibility along with scalability.”

Read the full survey report to discover the differences in how people who produce and deliver data feel about working with data, versus those who consume it. You’ll also learn more about industry data trends and whether functional groups in every organisation are working with data effectively.

For more information on the Talend Data Health Survey and data health, click here. 

About the Survey

 From March 24th to April 8th, 2021, Talend led a survey via Qualtrics of 529 global executives (57% North America, 26% Asia-Pacific, 17% Europe) — with titles ranging from director to the C-suite — from medium and large companies making more than US $10 million in annual revenue to assess their ability to make data-driven decisions.  

About Talend  
Talend (NASDAQ: TLND), a leader in data integration and data integrity, is changing the way the world makes decisions.  Talend Data Fabric is the only platform that brings together all the data integration and governance capabilities, to simplify every aspect of working with data. Talend delivers complete, clean, and uncompromised data in real-time to all. This unified approach to data has made it possible to create the Talend Trust Score™, an industry-first innovation that instantly assesses the reliability of any data set to bring clarity and confidence to every decision. Over 6,500 customers across the globe have chosen Talend to run their businesses on trusted data. Talend is recognised as a leader in its field by leading analyst firms and industry media.  

For more information, please visit www.talend.com and follow us on Twitter: @Talend. 

ENDS