In the 1980s, a popular TV personality named Warner Wolf made a national name for himself during nightly sportscasts by referencing the outcome of a game and then quickly declaring “let’s go to the videotape” to show the audience proof of what he had just described.

Much as Wolf was a storyteller who used video snippets as evidence to back up his claims, chief data officers and their information technology colleagues are increasingly being asked to tell their own stories and derive real value from the information stored in the enterprise stack. Is anyone having success? Let’s go to the video tape.

Retail giant Kroger collects data from 770 million customers and claims $12 billion in incremental revenue from data analytics applied to its loyalty card program. Through analysis of data collected from more than 3 million digital and mobile users of The Weather Channel, the climate forecaster now generates more than half of its revenue from digital operations. And United Parcel Service, which uses more than 100,000 vehicles to ship 4 billion items per year, has saved over 39 million gallons of fuel through the use of data algorithms.

What drives success in successfully monetizing data is often an IT advocate who makes a compelling argument for using data in a way that would enhance business operations.

“You’ve got to go around and find out what’s broken and talk about what can be fixed,” said Gene Leganza (pictured), vice president and research director at Forrester Research Inc., as he described the evolving role of CDOs in organizations today. “What can specifically change in your business that you want to change? Someone has to be an evangelist who can tell really meaningful stories.”

Leganza stopped by the set of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the IBM Chief Data Officer Summit in Boston, Massachusetts, and spoke with co-hosts Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm). They discussed roadblocks for data monetization, how different ways of thinking can affect change, the impact of new research in the analytics field, the ability of small companies to gain value, and IBM’s progress in leveraging its own data assets. (* Disclosure below.)

This week theCUBE features Gene Leganza as our Guest of the Week.

Challenged to generate value

While use-case narratives may show some businesses doing quite well in data monetization, there is also plenty of evidence that others are struggling with how to derive value. An Economic Intelligence Unit report showed that only 58 percent of Top 500 company executives surveyed said they were generating value from data.

Roadblocks can be caused through a number of factors. Placing all of the responsibility for monetizing data on the IT department is one way that companies can sabotage success, since it often takes a macro view of corporate operations to make a genuine impact.

“Data is obviously very critical, and the things that you can do should be getting business people excited,” Leganza said. “Clearly, the message is not getting throughout the organization that data is a new and fascinating thing that they should care about.”

Another roadblock can be the enterprise architecture itself. In its 2017 Predictions analysis, Wikibon forecasted that IT organizations would generate more value through better “proximity” of analytics and data assets, highlighting the engineering issues that still needed to be addressed.

One example of this can be seen in recent moves by General Electric to bring the compute platform closer to the edge where an increasing amount of data is being collected through industrial “internet of things.” GE updated its Predix application development platform with new edge-to-cloud capabilities, a validation that customers are beginning to reevaluate the “old” model where data had to be brought to compute.

“The missing link is that often no one’s made that lightbulb go off to say there’s actually a good reason to change the way you’ve done things,” Leganza said.

Questions about what assets are worth

As more companies take steps toward monetizing data, there are also an increasing number of questions about how to realistically value information assets. Gartner’s Doug Laney, author of “Infonomics: How to Monetize, Manage and Measure Information as an Asset for Competitive Advantage,” has been conducting extensive research in this area and examining how some organizations turn an inventory of data into actionable insights.

“I’m really glad he’s working on that area,” Leganza said. “Those discussions have to happen. I’m not seeing a technical answer about how to value data in the books, in a spreadsheet, in some accounting rules.”

There have been some attempts to value data inside organizations. Alation Inc., a collaborative data company, offers a services package designed to make data asset valuations. Alation relies on two “Infonomics” measures: the business value of information and the intrinsic value. These metrics, along with a full data asset inventory, are then incorporated into a complete enterprise data catalog.

Smaller companies finding ways

Despite the vast resources available to large companies who seek to monetize data, it’s actually the smaller, more agile firms that are having increasing success, according to Leganza. Many small companies draw on collaborative situations — such as hackathons — to generate the kinds of ideas and initiatives that will get results.

“In order to surface these ideas, you get a bunch of folks who kind of ‘get’ technology and data together with folks who ‘get’ the business,” Leganza explained. “They can build cross-disciplinary teams to make this happen. That’s where the magic happens.”

At the CDO Summit in Boston, IBM executives openly shared what has worked and what hasn’t in the company’s transformation toward becoming a fully cognitive enterprise. Part of that strategy includes successfully monetizing data assets, and there are indications that IBM is making progress in this particular area.

“From what I’ve heard so far, they’re actually making it happen. And if that’s true, it’s really amazing,” Leganza said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Chief Data Officer Summit. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the IBM Chief Data Officer Summit. Neither IBM, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE