Organizations that pile up huge amounts of data without turning it into actionable information are like alcoholics. And the first step towards curing themselves is admitting they have a problem. Dev Govender, Head of Enterprise Information Management at South Africa’s largest bank, ABSA, was challenged to convince senior management that if they did not get a grip on their problem and start using the 165 terabytes of data in the enterprise data warehouse, the bank’s future would be in jeopardy.

Speaking at The Premier Business Leadership Series Insight Session, Business Performance, Processes and Systems, Dev also emphasized that people working in analytics need to be less IT people and more salespeople in order to make the case for change. But don’t sell technology – sell results, which means identifying areas where you can make clear tactical wins in order to promote the bigger strategy: it is difficult to project and sell value that hasn’t been discovered yet.

In other words, talk a language that business leadership understands. “Analytics is not for the faint-hearted. You need people who can demonstrate that you need analytics to keep the business on track,” he said.

Data quality and accountability for the data are key imperatives: ABSA has established Data Stewardship Committees to ensure that quality is improved and set PDs and KPIs to ensure ownership for outcomes. Dev has also persuaded the business that the analytics function needs and deserves top talent, recruiting statistics PhDs and other high flyers to lead projects such as risk modeling and optimization of lead generation.

“We have to stop seeing IT and the business as separate functions. IT is the business,” he said.