Our network for data-minded executives in the Chicagoland area closed out the year with an event downtown featuring a breakout group case study challenge around data capability mapping. Here’s a recap of key takeaways from the breakouts.
This year, Centric Consulting’s Chicago Data and Analytics (D&A) team launched a community of interest for high-level data and analytics leaders and other business executives with a passion for data that gathers to collaborate quarterly. Due to members’ high level of interest, our last meeting covered the topic of “Data Capability Mapping,” which focused on tying business initiatives to their appropriate data capabilities and, in other words, using capability mapping to build the right data architecture to meet the specific needs of a business.
The event was hosted at the downtown Chicago office of one of the community’s founders, where attendees split into groups to complete a case study exercise.
Key Takeaways From the Breakout Groups
With the help of subject matter expert facilitators, each group reviewed a set of real-world business initiatives in a typical business area and strategized around how to best apply modern data capabilities. Group takeaways include:
- Ensure the business initiative is strategically aligned: Make sure your business initiative is actionable and in support of current business goals. If a team’s request does not advance the business, it should be reconsidered or adjusted.
- Consider all initiatives holistically: Look at all business initiatives at a high level instead of solving them one at a time. This helps minimize the potential overlap of capabilities in tooling, reduces unnecessary data redundancy, and facilitates solution cohesiveness and maintainability.
- Keep change management and executive buy-in top of mind: Ensure support and alignment at the highest levels of the organization for data capability mapping efforts. There will likely be an organizational change component for the work to succeed, which is best driven from above.
The breakout activity fostered engagement and knowledge sharing between members, and many reported leaving the session with action plans or new strategies they planned to apply immediately. The camaraderie continued at a nearby downtown eatery as the local group celebrated its first official year in the books.
Centric’s Chicago Data and Analytics practice will continue hosting quarterly community events on data fabric, data privacy, data quality, cloud-native capabilities, real-world data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and more throughout 2024. The group discusses actual use cases around these topics and how our members create business value through information.
Are you a director-level or higher business leader in the Chicago area? Learn more about our D&A Community of Interest.
