Data leaders more likely to boost innovation and profit - report

Splunk in collaboration with the Enterprise Strategy Group, has released the Economic Impact of Data Innovation 2023, a global research report that quantifies the economic benefits of mature data practices.

The report reveals the most data-savvy companies are increasing profits by 9.5%, are 2.9 times more likely to beat the competition to market, and are twice as likely to exceed financial expectations.

Mike Hughes, CISO of REI, says, "A strong data foundation is essential to staying ahead of the curve–and we are proud of our proactive approach to extracting innovative value from our data.

"Our data visibility bolsters efficiency, competitiveness and resilience against an advanced threat landscape and macro challenges. Splunk is a critical element of our overall strategy to ensure we can scale and deliver the best experience for our customers."

The research report defines leaders as organisations that have achieved excellence in the six key areas of data classification, aggregation, quality, analysis skills, analysis tools and monitoring.

Key findings include:

• Data leaders experience increased profits and innovation. With an average increase of 9.5% in gross profits, data leaders report launching nine new products per year that wouldn't be possible without their data innovation capabilities, compared to the beginner's average of three new products per year. They are also more likely to report that applying data innovation to sales, marketing and customer service/support has contributed to increasing customer lifetime value (49%, versus 30% of beginners). In addition, data leaders are more resilient and quicker to identify and remediate security incidents by 11%, the report finds.
• Data leaders beat out their competition. Data leaders are 5.7 times as likely to say their organisation almost always makes better decisions than competitors. They are 4.5 times as likely to believe their organisation is in a very strong position to compete and succeed in their markets over the next few years.
• Data leaders are proactively operationalising and monetising their data. Leaders are also more likely to say that their data monetisation streams are additive and grow faster. They have operationalised 38% more of their data assets while also deriving 2.3 times as much of their revenue via data monetisation.

Virtually every organisation is under pressure to keep up with the rapid rate at which data is growing. However, the organisations that feel the most pressure are also having the most success: 67% of data innovation leaders report feeling a high degree of pressure versus only 41% of intermediates and 15% of beginners.

Ammar Maraqa, Chief Strategy Officer, Splunk, says, "Data-driven innovation gives you a massive edge. Organisations that prioritise investments in collecting and using their data have full visibility into their digital systems and business performance, which makes it easier to adapt and respond to disruptions, security threats and changing market conditions."

Across every industry, data provides an opportunity to increase profit and improve performance, with unique challenges and outcomes. The industry-focused addendum to the report highlights these areas.

Key findings include:

• Public sector: 20% spend more than a quarter of their IT budgets on solutions and staff that investigate, monitor, analyse and act on data - well above the 8% cross-industry average.
• Financial services: 79% have adopted AI/ML for data innovation, versus 67% overall.
• Healthcare: While 9% of surveyed organisations are among the most mature group of data innovators, 11% of healthcare and life sciences organisations achieved leader status.
• Manufacturing: 54% apply data innovation to supply chain and operations use cases, compared to 45% of organisations across all industries.
• Retail: An above-average 10% are data innovation leaders, and retail organisations are more likely to report greater brand loyalty, customer lifetime value, revenue from data monetisation, product innovation and a multitude of other data innovation-fuelled outcomes.