Big Data Model Maturity Discussion – What Are You Measuring?

“Maturity models” can be very useful. Every analyst firm and most vendors have created some sort of maturity model. Not only can a maturity model benchmark where you are with respect to your cohorts, but good maturity models also provide a roadmap to help organizations advance along the maturity model. But different maturity models measure different things, and what the maturity model measures is critically important because you are what you measure.

For example, a friend recently sent me the below cartoon about the “5 Stages of Data-Driven Marketing” (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: 5 Stages of Data-Driven Marketing

Figure 1 measures how effective an organization is at leveraging data to drive an organization’s marketing culture. In the case of Figure 1, it conveys the organizational and cultural challenges in a very fun and creative manner.

We at Dell EMC Services also use a maturity model, the Big Data Business Model Maturity Index (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Big Data Business Model Maturity Index

The Big Data Business Model Maturity Index (BDBMMI) measures how effective your organization us at leveraging data and analytics to power your business. Like other maturity models, it provides two immediate benefits:

• Benchmarks where your organization sits vis-à-vis cohorts in the use of data and analytics to power your business
• Provides a roadmap, or a guide, to help organizations advance along the maturity model

We recently released a blog and a supporting infographic, “De-mystifying the Big Data Business Model Maturity Index” to help clarify each stage of the Big Data Business Model Maturity Index. The infographic provides a simple example of what each stage of the BDBMMI measures through the bubbles in the infographic (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Big Data Business Model Maturity Index Demystified

This maturity model is certainly different than many traditional maturity models because it is not a measure of how effective you are at leveraging technologies such as Hadoop or Spark or SQL or Python or Bark. The Big Data Business Model Maturity Index measures how effective your organization is at leveraging data and analytics to power the business; maybe the single most important question that we should be asking of our technology investments.

Figure 4 also how to use it as a guide or roadmap to advance up the maturity model. For more details on the BDBMMI guide, check out the blog “Big Data Business Model Maturity Index Guide.”

Figure 3: Big Data Business Model Maturity Index Demystified

You Are What You Measure

Any maturity model discussion needs to start by understanding what the maturity model is trying to measure. So, what does your maturity model measure? Does your maturity model measure your capabilities in using different technologies such as Hadoop, Spark, R and Python? Does your maturity model measure the current market adoption of new technologies?

Our maturity model – the Big Data Business Model Maturity Index – measures how effective if your organization at leveraging data and analytics to power the business?

Remember, you are what you measure.

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