An Application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process to the Evaluation of Companies’ Data Maturity

The study reports the data maturity evaluation on a sample of Italian firms of different sectors and sizes, retrieved through an online assessment made by 261 professionals and entrepreneurs operating in the data domain. The paper's objective is to derive the relative importance of the critical factors to impact successful big data initiatives, according to organization reality and manager perspective. The questionnaire was distributed among IT professionals and decision-makers in Italy using the LinkedIn platform. The assessment was divided into two sections: the 1st one contained the assessment of 8 critical success factors for big data, whereas the 2nd section assessed weights based on an application of the analytic hierarchy process. The result of this process is a scoring system that includes the characteristics a company "must-have" to become dataoriented and make data-driven decisions. The application of the weights allows giving more importance to the domains that managers think are more important in a data-driven company. Respondents agreed to the importance of integrated architecture, data-friendly corporate culture, and integrated organization domains. Once the results consider the weights from the AHP, data friendliness becomes the most sought-after characteristic. The findings provide direction for further development of the assessment system.