Data Governance: Lessons learned for best practices

How do we gain buy-in with enterprise Data Governance and data quality programs when your organization is exercising caution due to past failures?

Data Governance has become a critical discipline and important area of focus for organizations to realize operational efficiency that support business growth. The formal orchestration of people, process, technology, and data enables any organization to integrate, manage, and present data to deliver value. Data, a key differentiator, is one integral asset for competitive advantage and organization success. In short, Data Governance treats that information as an enterprise asset.

We’ve spoken with many organizations that look to expensive technology to solve their Data Governance challenges. However, technology is only part of the solution and should be coupled with a real Data Governance strategy to support the investment. Typically, we are brought in after this realization. We make every effort to help our clients understand where they went wrong and that hope is not lost.

Next Steps

Suppose your organization is in a similar situation, in that you've experienced failure in executing a successful Data Governance program. It's not easy to convince others to double down on a collapsed initiative. Our recommendation would be to postpone the technology conversation and develop a solid Data Governance strategy that aligns with the organization's goals and objectives.

The next step would be to prove the concept and gain support from stakeholders and those responsible for decision making. This can be accomplished by means of a production pilot project that solves small, high-value use cases. We demonstrate our capabilities while delivering a successful data application to showcase our success to business users and leadership. A working data application makes it much easier to gain stakeholder buy-in. This will allow the project  team to move forward with the extensive Data Governance program and its relevant activities and practices. A pilot shows how Data Governance supports data applications' quality and scalability. It builds early credibility with stakeholders and those in a position of ownership in the strategically chosen pilot use case.

In the end, we enable organizations to take a center of excellence (COE) approach for data and analytics. This allows for the integration of Data Governance across all the organization's projects and operations. Now, data quality can be delivered throughout the enterprise's data lifecycle.

Summary

At Data Ideology, we work to engage the business and gain support from executive leaders. These efforts allow us to deliver value and successes by integrating Data Governance into any data related process. Equipped with extensive insight and training, our team of business and technology experts have helped organizations of all sizes and across various industries with Data Governance initiatives. We understand both the challenges and factors associated with implementing a Data Governance program, and we are here to help to ensure a bright future ahead for your organization.