Business Intelligence Slideshow: How to Sell the Value of Data to Your CEO

The McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas recently conducted a survey, which was sponsored by Sybase, to explore how investments in data management and information technology affect the financial performance of a company. University researchers, working in conjunction with the Indian School of Business, surveyed 150 Fortune 1000 firms across several industries in an effort to quantify the relationship between effective data and key performance metrics. The study examined how 10% improvements to one of five distinct attributes of data impacts the metrics commonly reported for assessing the financial performance of businesses. For example, the median Fortune 1000 business in the study's sample would increase annual revenue by $2.01 billion as a result of increasing the usability of its data by 10%, according to the survey. This is driven by a strong correlation between data usability and sales per employee, which correspondingly increases 14.4%.