Chief Data Officers in 2026: Driving Business Value Through Data

By 2026, data has become a strategic asset for organisations. After many years of experimentation, the trend is now focused on turning data into business value. This is why the role of Chief Data Officer has become a board-level priority.

These days, the CDO is responsible not only for managing data, but also for shaping the way an organisation thinks, operates and competes.

In this article, we will explain the responsibilities of a CDO within an organisation and how these have evolved over the years.

What Is a Chief Data Officer?

Traditionally, responsibility for data resided with IT, finance, or individual business units. However, as data volumes grew and regulations tightened, this fragmented ownership became problematic. Inconsistent metrics, poor data quality, compliance risks and missed insights all highlighted the same problem: data required strong leadership.

The Chief Data Officer (CDO) role emerged to address this gap, bringing strategic oversight, accountability, and coherence to an organisation’s data landscape.

The Chief Data Officer is the executive responsible for the governance, management, protection and utilisation of data across the enterprise. Unlike CIOs or CTOs, who focus on technological infrastructure, the CDO focuses on data as a business asset. Their core mission is to ensure that data is trustworthy, accessible and aligned with business goals.

Day-to-day, the role involves coordinating the data strategy based on goals set by the organisation. In doing so, they are responsible for establishing a data governance framework that enforces data management policies and ownership of data collected by systems.

In most organisations, the Chief Data Officer (CDO) is responsible for ensuring that data is reliable and well-managed. They are therefore the primary point of contact for any team leader or board member with queries regarding data strategy. While they are not typically technical leaders, they have a solid grasp of business priorities. They can translate these into data initiatives that deliver measurable value.

The position of the CDO varies according to organisational structure. Some CDOs report directly to the CEO, which indicates the importance of data within the company, while others report to the COO, CFO, or CIO.

Measuring the success of CDOs and the common challenges they face.

The success of a Chief Data Officer is best measured through outcomes rather than outputs. While foundational metrics such as data quality scores, platform adoption, and governance compliance provide useful signals, they only tell part of the story.

The true impact of a CDO is reflected in how effectively data enables the organisation to operate and compete. This includes faster and more confident decision-making at all levels, consistent and trusted metrics across teams, and the routine use of analytics within daily business processes rather than as a specialist activity. Ultimately, the most meaningful indicator of success is tangible business value—whether through revenue growth, cost optimisation, improved customer experience, or risk mitigation.

As with any position, the CDO faces common challenges within any organisation, such as mobilising resources to minimise issues that hinder the deployment of data initiatives. The first issue that comes to mind is data silos, where data is not shared across departments (e.g. sales and IT), which increases the risk of duplicate and inconsistent data.

Another challenge related to infrastructure is that legacy systems prevent agility from being implemented in the most efficient way to address business needs, or a clear defined data ownership guide, where business teams lose precious time and resources in finding who belongs the data they are trying to access.

Finally, data is a relatively new set of processes and tools for many people. Some people may not initially recognise their relevance and may resist using them for personal or professional reasons. It is the CDO's task to understand these concerns and support teams through this transition.

The Future CDO: a leader of AI and digital transformation for enterprises

As organisations invest more heavily in AI and automation, the Chief Data Officer's (CDO) role will only become more important. Ethical data use, transparency and trust are becoming strategic differentiators rather than mere compliance requirements.

Future CDOs will increasingly act as transformation leaders, working closely with AI, digital and product executives to ensure that innovation is built on solid data foundations. In many organisations, the CDO is evolving from a data steward into a catalyst for enterprise-wide change.

The Chief Data Officer is no longer a “nice to have” role. In a data-driven economy, the CDO sits at the intersection of technology, business, and culture—turning raw information into insight, trust, and competitive advantage.

Organisations that empower their CDOs with clear mandates, executive support, and cross-functional collaboration are better positioned to unlock the full value of their data. Those that don’t risk being rich in data, but poor in insights.