The Chief Data Officer (CDO) dilemma

The study at a glance

Data front of mind

When we pair the significant developments in large language models and their interfaces with the prominence and scale of cloud technologies, it is clear that we are at an inflection point for consumer adoption of AI in day-to-day life, where data plays a key role. Our analysis of thousands of annual reports shows that data continues to rise on the companies’ agenda: the term “data” is mentioned more frequently in the annual reports of the 2,500 largest listed companies worldwide than in the previous year – on average 81 times (up 13 percent). It is often referenced in conjunction with key business topics like “cloud” and “commercial”.

Number of appointed CDOs is going down

Paired with the rise in data mentions in the executive agenda it is surprising to see a reduced number of appointed CDOs, with 14 % reduction this year. Only 590 (24 %) of the 2,500 companies analysed have a Chief Data Officer, compared to 682 (27 %) companies in the study year prior. The hiring rate in the 2023 company cohort has dropped as well, with the peak hire year being 2021 (120 hires), to only 71 in 2023. 

There could be various reasons for the decline in CDOs: the hype surrounding the CDO position in recent years seems to be slowly leveling off, as many companies have now integrated the role and tasks of the position. However, in the current challenging economic environment, budget cuts are also a possible explanation, where companies may be distributing responsibility for data activities among various other roles.

The profile of organisations employing CDOs has shifted

It is interesting to note that the decline does not affect all regions. In Europe 34 % of the companies have appointed CDO, compared to 42 % in the 2022 top 2500 companies’ cohort. The situation is similar in North America, while the proportion of CDOs in South and Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region increased.

The analysis also shows that the profile of companies with CDOs has shifted to smaller organisations and the number of CDOs in large organisations has decreased significantly. Two thirds of CDOs currently work in companies with less than 25,000 employees.

Diverse landscape of data priorities

Data plays a pivotal role in technological advancements and innovations across a variety of business areas. The analysis revealed that data is being discussed alongside key business topics, varying from region to region. For example, in Europe greater emphasis is placed on the term “diversity” with 35 % of mentions. However, the overall data narrative in public communications continues to be defensive in nature, with companies discussing data in the context of concentrating on risk and governance topics.

The Chief Data Officer Dilemma

In many companies, innovative analytics solutions are developed within the business functions, closer to the market. CDOs are focussed on the less exciting tasks surrounding data management and data governance, which may be leading to a profession-defining dilemma to show return on investment unless they can transition to contributing more to the value creation agenda.

The methodology

The Chief Data Officer Study looked at the world’s 2,500 largest publicly listed companies by market capitalization value. We analysed these companies’ corporate annual and integrated reports over a period of six years, using natural language processing and cutting-edge language models to identify topics commonly paired with the data agenda.

For the analysis, the CDO role has been defined based on seniority, role in the organization, and scope of work, rather than just the title set by the firm. Throughout this study, when we say “chief data officer”, we mean an individual who has data-focused responsibilities at the C-suite or C-minus-one level – regardless of their job title.