During an acquisition, is data management a good way for the CIO to add value to the company?

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I'm going through lots of data debt. When I joined Zoom Info, we had 15 years’ worth of data. That’s one area where the CIO can really add value. As we are migrating data, we need to have a solid archive and purge process. We don't want to archive data if we don't need it because that data is a liability, so just purge the information unless you really need it to drive insights. Thinking about technical debt and data debt as liabilities for the company is so important during migrations and consolidation.

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We’ve all heard the phrase, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” If you’re acquiring a small business with unstructured data, you have to ask yourself whether it’s worth the effort and cost. If you're going to spend lots of money to structure the data or clean it up, which is most often the case, you have to know how material it is. Maybe it’s better to put it aside and leave it for a rainy day. Just because you can do something, doesn't necessarily mean you should.

Answer

In the end it's an ROI decision. They could have the worst data and security in the world, but the cost to fix those problems could be a lot less than the value of the opportunity. And if the value of the opportunity is actually better because they have those problems, which make them a target in the first place, that changes the dynamic in terms of whether to acquire and how to acquire. Like every IT project, acquisitions should be based on the assumed return on investment, which is determined by output of effort and cost to acquire.

A data set might be highly influential in determining the value of the company. If it is just names in a CRM, well-documented with Excel — with details like funnel, pipeline, opportunity, estimates and partnership arrangements — then that's fine. But you need to be able to get to that information effectively, because that is half the reason for buying in many cases.

During an acquisition, is data management a good way for the CIO to add value to the company?

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