Researcher Michael Goul of Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business spoke recently to the Society for Information Management’s Advanced Practices Council (APC), a forum for senior IT executives, about the role of the chief information officer (CIO) in the data analytics department. According to Goul, companies’ CIOs should have a major part in aligning data gathering and business strategies.

Among the specific tasks that should be the purview of the CIO and IT department, Goul mentioned assessing risk and establishing security practices, designing data-management policies, encouraging collaboration between business and data divisions and applying predictive analytics to identify new business opportunities or improve existing ones.

In a CIO magazine column, APC director Madeline Weiss and advisor June Drewry, former CIO of insurer Chubb Corp., say that CIOs currently face a “Wild West” when it comes to big data. An unprecedented amount of information is available and most companies realize its potential and are implementing business intelligence analytics projects, but they are still learning the finer points of data analysis and how to turn that data into business results.

For Goul, coordination is essential to the success of analytics programs. He identified six steps for an effective process:

• Design: A project should be planned out in detail before its implementation.
• Embed: Ensure that each department is getting the specific information that it needs.
• Empower: Train employees to understand and work with the data they receive.
• Measure: Monitor the project’s results in as close to real time as possible.
• Evaluate: After the project’s conclusion, look closely at the results to measure its effectiveness.
• Re-target: Take lessons from the results and apply them to future projects.

The importance of data analytics is growing throughout the business world, and CIOs and the departments they manage have the chance to take a leading role in their companies’ business strategies.