You need a CDO-level view, not a CDO headcount
The questions are strategic — operating model, ownership, where to start — but they do not add up to a permanent executive role, and hiring one takes six months you do not have.
A separate service from the platform. Our data consultants work alongside your team to establish where your estate actually stands, what to do about it, and in what order — before any software enters the conversation.
A fractional advisor gives you that judgement at the cadence you actually need it — a few days a month, or a defined piece of work with an end date — rather than a permanent hire or a large programme you commit to before you know what the problem is.
The questions are strategic — operating model, ownership, where to start — but they do not add up to a permanent executive role, and hiring one takes six months you do not have.
They are running delivery, incidents and stakeholders. The strategy work keeps moving to next quarter because there is no quarter in which it is the most urgent thing.
A platform, a programme or a team is on the table, and nobody can state the current baseline it would improve — so the business case rests on assertion.
Where your data maturity actually sits today, measured against a recognised framework rather than an opinion — and the distance between that and where you have decided you need to be.
Domains and ownership, the data products that already exist, contracts and quality, the platforms and tooling you run, how governance decisions are actually made, cost against value, and where the critical data elements sit.
Against DAMA-DMBOK, DCAM or your own framework — whichever you are already invested in. Capability by capability, with the evidence behind each rating named. Where there is no evidence, we record it as unassessed rather than guessing a number.
Score absence as weakness to make the gap look larger, or benchmark you against an anonymous “industry average” we cannot show you. Both make a report more dramatic and less useful.
Capability by capability, with the evidence behind each rating and the gaps recorded as unassessed where nothing could be observed.
Not “level 5 everywhere”. The level each capability actually needs to reach for your business, agreed with you rather than prescribed.
What is missing, ordered by what it blocks — with prerequisites made explicit, so nothing is scheduled before the thing it depends on.
Phased, with owners, dependencies and a realistic view of what your organisation can absorb at once.
Built from your numbers, not ours — cost of the current way of working, what changes, and what remains uncertain, stated as uncertain.
Whether a platform helps you now, later or not at all — including which of your existing tools you should keep rather than replace.
Four groups of work. Take one, take a sequence, or retain an advisor across all of them.
We say elsewhere that a consultant assessment is six figures for a snapshot — accurate the week it is written, stale by the time it circulates, and impossible to repeat cheaply. We are not going to pretend that stops being true because we are the ones selling it.
The critique of manual scoring is that it rates the organisation — and “level 2” is not something anyone can act on. The assessment works at the level of domains and data products, so every finding has something specific attached to it.
Every rating names what it rests on. Where nothing can be observed, the capability is marked unassessed rather than given a number somebody invented to fill the cell.
The output is structured so the baseline can be re-measured — by you, by us on a cadence, or by the platform if you adopt one. A snapshot is only a problem when it is the last one you ever take.
A fixed scope with a fixed deliverable — most often the gap analysis. Agreed before it starts, priced before it starts, and finished.
A set number of days a month with a named advisor. The point is continuity: someone who already knows your estate when the question arrives.
Full-time cover in a defined role for a defined period — while you recruit, or while a transformation needs someone accountable.
The two are separate services. They are not, however, designed in ignorance of each other.
The assessment measures domains and data products against DAMA-DMBOK, DCAM or your own framework. The platform computes on exactly that model, so the baseline you paid for becomes the starting point rather than something re-keyed.
An advisor establishes where you stand today. The platform is what stops that answer going stale — the difference between knowing your maturity once and knowing it every month.
Tell us what is prompting this — a decision you are facing, a programme under way, or simply not knowing where you stand. We will tell you whether we are the right help, including when we are not.
A gap analysis is a defined piece of work with a fixed scope, and the deliverables are yours whatever you do next.