Press Release • February 14, 2024

Alation Launches Data Culture Maturity Assessment to Measure the True Value of Data Initiatives

The assessment allows organizations to quantify and demonstrate how a mature data culture contributes to business value, drives innovation, and accelerates digital transformation

Redwood City, Calif. – February 14, 2024 – Alation, Inc., the data intelligence company, today announced the Data Culture Maturity Assessment to help organizations measure the value of their data culture. The assessment applies the four core tenets of the Alation Data Culture Maturity ModelData Search & Discovery, Data Governance, Data Literacy, and Data Leadership – to measure an organization’s data maturity and ability to realize business value from its data initiatives.

As budgets shrink, data leaders must demonstrate how data programs produce tangible business benefits. Recent research from Alation reveals that organizations dedicated to cultivating a strong data culture drive innovation and agility and gain a distinct competitive edge. Furthermore, 89% of organizations with strong data leadership report they met or surpassed revenue goals in the past year. Despite this, there remains a hesitancy to invest in a data architecture that empowers people to find, understand, and trust data for decision-making. Often, this is due to data leaders struggling to justify the value of data initiatives in budget-restrictive conditions.

The Data Culture Maturity Assessment empowers organizations to address the elusive nature of data value and the absence of uniform metrics. The framework was derived through extensive collaboration with Alation’s global customer base, including 40% of Fortune 100 companies, to understand which metrics matter most regarding data culture maturity. 

The assessment allows organizations to effectively link data programs to business objectives. Organizations can tie specific metrics to Data Search & Discovery, Data Governance, Data Literacy, and Data Leadership to measure their impact. The Data Culture Maturity Assessment measures how each tenet drives business value – for example, by measuring the maturity of an organization’s Data Search & Discovery capability and showing the impact on business analyst productivity. In this way, organizations can explicitly show the value of developing a data culture through the impact of specific data initiatives.

“The Data Culture Maturity Model reveals where we are on our data maturity journey and is especially useful when quantifying the business value of investing in data initiatives to our executives,” said Spencer Percy, Senior Data Management Analyst at Kinross Gold Corporation. “Thanks to this model's insights, we now have a very clear roadmap, so we can surgically focus on areas of our data landscape that will provide the greatest value. We’ve made incredible progress in a relatively short time with the Alation Data Intelligence Platform, which serves as the catalyst for maximizing time-to-value as efficiently as possible."

"Real business value and competitive advantage lie in mature data practices,” said Julie Smith, Director of Data & Analytics at Alation. “It's how organizations can confidently handle data to achieve goals, make decisions, and add value. The approach to success isn't one-size-fits-all; it's as unique as each organization's approach to defining it. With the Data Culture Maturity Assessment, organizations can align data initiatives, such as self-service, data governance, and accelerating cloud migration, with business-specific goals and establish clear metrics to measure success. Data should be a collaborative venture, bridging various departments and roles, and laying the foundation for a future with it acting as a catalyst to drive innovation and strategic growth across the organization. This is our way of helping organizations to plot their path ahead.”

Download the whitepaper, “How Can Organizations Measure the Value of Data Culture?” and take the comprehensive assessment today to gauge your organization’s data culture maturity status and advance to higher levels.

About Alation

Alation is the data intelligence company. Nearly 600 global enterprises — including 40% of the Fortune 100 — rely on Alation to realize value from their data and AI initiatives. Customers such as Cisco, DocuSign, Nasdaq, Pfizer, and Samsung trust Alation’s platform for self-service analytics, cloud transformation, data governance, and AI-ready data, fostering data-driven innovation at scale. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, Alation has been recognized five times by Inc. Magazine as one of the Best Workplaces. To learn more, visit www.alation.com.

Alation Media Contact

Ashley Womack

Sr. Director, Corporate Marketing

ashley.womack@alation.com650-504-2647