• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 27, 2022

Data will dominate 2023, with new career roles emerging such as analytics engineer.

Research leading into 2023 shows that data will take priority in nearly all enterprises in 2023, at least according to research from Tamr, which partnered with Propeller Insights to determine the top data challenges that are impacting business productivity and competitiveness in the market.

The research found that nearly 93% of company executives have new data initiatives and projects planned for 2023, with 75% focusing on improving data quality and 65% investing in data-management technologies.

The findings analyze responses from more than 500 data leaders on their enterprise data initiatives for 2023. While nearly all have data-initiative plans, more than half said they still face challenges as they strive to realize business value from their company data. 

Tamr identified four primary areas of focus for companies seeking a competitive edge in an increasingly unpredictable business environment: data culture, data integration, data governance, and data architecture.

New initiatives mean new career opportunities, and growing demand for data scientists and engineers. More than 50% of respondents said integrating data scientists into the rest of the business is a top priority for 2023. 

The research also shows that nearly 60% of respondents believe the chief data officer (CDO) role needs to expand beyond data stewardship for their organization to become more data-centric. And more than 55% said a focus on integrating data scientists into the rest of the business is also a key imperative to becoming data-driven.

Legacy tools such as rules-based master data management (MDM), traditional data warehouses and data lakes have attempted to make messy, unclean data usable, but they have only made matters worse because their manual processes and the limited scope created more data silos, according to the research.

The manual methods to integrate, organize and clean data that are dogma in the industry have created an insurmountable and under-appreciated quantity of manual effort to prepare data for broad consumption. 

Tamr found that on average, 46% of organizations clean their data using manual processes. Nearly 60% of respondents stated that their organization faces challenges in realizing business value from its use of data and 70% said their company needs help turning data into valuable business insights.

That's why improving data quality is a top priority, with 75% of respondents saying their companies are focused on improving data quality and 65% stating that investing in data management technologies will help achieve better data quality.