Enhancing Business Operations with Data Governance

Effective data governance is essential in today's rapidly changing and fiercely competitive business landscape. As organisations can gather vast amounts of internal and external data, it is crucial to have a well-planned strategy to optimise its value, mitigate risks, and reduce expenses.

What is data governance?

Data governance is managing data availability, usability, integrity, and security in business systems based on internal data standards and policies controlling data usage.

Effective data governance ensures data consistency and reliability. It prevents misuse, becoming increasingly important as organisations face new data privacy regulations and rely more on data analysis to optimise their operations and drive decision-making.

A well-designed data governance strategy is vital for any organisation dealing with big data. Business drivers guide determining which data requires meticulous management in an organisation's data governance plan and what advantages can be anticipated.

Why is data governance important?

Without effective data governance, inconsistencies in data across different systems within an organisation may not be resolved. For example, customer names in sales, logistics, and customer service systems can be recorded differently. This can impede data integrity and cause issues for the accuracy of business intelligence (BI), business reporting, and analysis applications. Furthermore, data errors may not be identified and corrected, further jeopardising the accuracy of BI and analysis. 

Poor data governance can also hinder compliance initiatives, causing problems for companies that need to comply with the increasing number of privacy and data protection laws, such as the European Union's GDPR.

An enterprise data governance program typically involves developing common data definitions and standard data formats in all business systems, promoting data consistency for business and compliance use.

What is the purpose of data governance, and what are its benefits?

Having established the significance of data governance, let us dig into its primary objectives and advantages.

Breaking down data silos

Data silos refer to isolated pools of data that are not easily accessible to all members of an organisation. Data governance helps break down these silos by providing a unified system for storing, managing, and sharing data. This ensures that data is available to all the relevant stakeholders, facilitating better collaboration and decision-making.

Promoting data use

Another goal of data governance is ensuring that data is used properly to prevent errors from being introduced into the systems and to prevent misuse of customers' data and other sensitive information. This can be achieved by developing a uniform policy for data usage and procedures to monitor usage and continuously enforce the policy. Additionally, data governance can help balance data collection and privacy mandates.

Improved data quality

Data governance ensures that data is accurate, consistent, and reliable. By defining data standards, policies and procedures, data governance helps maintain the quality of data, which is essential for making informed business decisions.

Lower costs for data management

Implementing data governance results in lower costs for managing data. By consolidating data management activities and reducing redundancies, organisations can save on data storage, processing, and maintenance costs.

Better access to needed data for data scientists, other analysts, and business users

Data governance provides a centralised platform for storing and managing data, making it easier for data scientists, analysts, and other users to access the data they need. This ensures that the right people have access to the right data, improving the accuracy and timeliness of insights and decisions.

Ultimately, data governance can help improve business decision-making by providing executives with better information. Ideally, this leads to competitive advantages and increased revenue and profit.

Important pillars

Various other facets of the overall data management process support data governance programmes.

Data quality

Improving data quality is one of the biggest drivers behind data governance activities. Data accuracy, completeness, and consistency across different systems are crucial for successful governance initiatives.

Master data management (MDM)

Master Data Management (MDM) is a service that includes the technology, tools, and processes needed to unify and coordinate master data from different sources throughout the business organisation.

Data stewardship

A data steward is responsible for a portion of an organisation's data and assists with the implementation and enforcement of data governance policies.

Cloud data governance

Cloud data governance is a set of policies, rules, and processes that streamline the collection, storage, and use of data in the cloud. This framework enforces compliance and makes data accessible. It enables collaboration even as the data landscape becomes larger and more complex.

Active data governance improves efficiency, minimises security risks, and enhances data quality and usability. The cloud environment adds unique layers of complexity around cybersecurity and access. For example, the cloud requires security controls for encryption, access control, security groups, and application access rules.

Market leaders in the cloud space (Google, Microsoft, and Amazon) all offer software to assist with this.

Start today!

Data governance is crucial in maximising data value and mitigating associated risks. By implementing a well-designed data governance framework, organisations can reap numerous benefits, such as breaking down data silos, improving data quality, and promoting data use. To experience these advantages and more, it is important to prioritise data governance in your organisation. So, start taking steps towards effective data governance and contact us today!