Data literacy, governance keys to transformation at Dow [Video]

The 127-year-old chemicals producer has modernized with an award-winning Integrated Data Hub project and literacy program to make data accessible to every employee.

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Dow Chemical Company is one of the largest chemical producers in the world, with a presence in roughly 160 countries and more than 37,000 employees worldwide. But with analytics and AI becoming table-stakes to staying competitive in the modern business world, the Michigan-based company struggled to leverage its data.

“We have all these data scientists and business problems that would be more easily solved with data,” says Brandon Schroeder, the company’s IT director, data & analytics platforms. “We didn’t have a centralized place to do it and really didn’t do a great job governing our data. We focused a lot on keeping our data secure. We didn’t spend as much time making our data easy to use.”

Dow’s scale resulted in a large and diverse dataset that …