Building a Business-Friendly Approach to Data Governance
Precisely is a Business Reporter client.
It has become an imperative for organizations to fuel business intelligence reporting with data that is accurate, consistent and contextual: data with integrity. Data governance is increasingly a key factor in how organizations achieve data integrity, whether it’s to help accelerate confident decision-making and reduce costs, or to manage risk and comply with complex regulations.
But how should organizations craft a data governance strategy to deliver optimized and ongoing value to the business, and which steps help ensure its success?
Businesses must start with the “why”
If you plan to implement data governance within your organization, or you have started but are not achieving the results you expected, the first thing you must do is take a step back and ask why you’re implementing it in the first place.
Many data governance programs fail, either because business teams find them too complex or time-consuming or because they lack real, documented business value. Understanding why you have embarked on this initiative is crucial to get the most out of your data governance journey. And here is the secret: It must be business-led.
If you do not know what the business case is for the implementation of data governance within your organization, it can be easy to get sidetracked. The “why” is what will guide you in your journey and ensure that your organization is getting what it needs from your data governance initiative.
Key drivers to successful data governance programs
Research has shown that two-thirds of organizations report improved data quality as a leading benefit of data governance, and other benefits of significant added value include “higher quality of data analytics and insights” (56%) and the benefits of “facilitated collaboration” (52%) and “faster access to relevant data” (50%).
The existence of a data governance program also seems to encourage the adoption of more rigorous processes for data quality measurement. Fifty-four percent of organizations that have deployed a data governance framework report that they have mechanisms in place to measure the quality of their data, compared to just 34% for organizations that don’t have a data governance framework in place. So, the implementation of a data governance strategy provides a real opportunity for those seeking to better understand their data, while improving the overall measurement of key business metrics.
A business-friendly approach is crucial
We have seen organizations make the mistake of embarking on a journey to data governance because they believe it to be best practice, or because it is a requirement of a regulated industry. These are all valid drivers, but if you do it for these reasons alone, it’s highly likely that only the bare minimum will be done to tick the boxes required by your regulator.
We’re seeing a major shift as organizations increase their investment into an enterprise-wide approach to data governance to ensure high-quality, well-managed information. Bringing the value of robust data governance to the enterprise is imperative: Without an enterprise-wide data governance approach, organizations will fail to capitalize on countless business opportunities and suffer short- and long-term consequences.
So, how should you approach data governance in your business? This is a complex question because the answer depends on your organization’s circumstances. Every business is different, and the reasons why your company is deploying data governance will differ to some degree from those of even your closest competitors. There is not one standard approach.
Three steps to getting started
Data governance expert Nicola Askham recommends the following approach:
Look at your corporate strategy: Consider the key objectives listed and ask yourself if your data is well enough understood and trusted to deliver those objectives. If the answer is no, it’s clear that data governance is needed to help you achieve your corporate strategy.
Consider your data strategy: If a data strategy already exists, hopefully a data governance section is included. If there isn’t a data strategy, the organization needs to connect with data stakeholders from across the business and work out which initiatives are planned that rely on data, and why data governance is important to ensure success.
Search for your data-quality horror stories: These are instances where things went wrong either because data is missing or because you had poor-quality data.
“If you gather all that information, you can then do some analysis to identify the drivers for data governance in your organization,” says Askham. “You’ll be able to talk to anybody, whether they are senior stakeholders or the data users themselves, and you’re going to be able to articulate what the benefits of data governance are going to be for them—and that is going to make you so much more successful in your data governance initiative.”
Outlining expected outcomes in the data governance business case demonstrates its value across the enterprise and boosts executive buy-in for the necessary funding and resources. Once the business selects the appropriate technologies to accompany its data governance program, it’s time to focus on building trust in the business’s data.
Developing a strategy for data integrity will ultimately support the business in making the confident decisions needed to truly impact the bottom line.
For help building your own business-led case for data governance, download our eBook, Building a Data Governance Use Case to Get Budget and Buy-in.
— Emily Washington, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Precisely
This article originally appeared in Business Reporter.
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Body image credit: Courtesy of Precisely
