Newsflash: the amount of machine-generated data will balloon to more than 15 times current levels by 2020. You are swimming in deep pools of data, but your data governance program may not be keeping pace. The critical step in implementing a data governance program is choosing the right tool, and then getting your teams to leverage its features for maximum benefit.
Data Governance Best Practices
Selecting the right software tool depends on knowing the business value you will derive from its use, so demonstrating value will be important for management’s support and stakeholder buy-in. Consider these data governance best practices when laying out your data governance plan.
Data quality. Take a look at the processes you use throughout the company. Data quality plays an important role because it affects your customer’s experience with your brand. Data quality helps you streamline operations, improve customer relations, create better marketing, lower the cost of mailing documents and build more consistent data.
Management of data. While IT departments typically took care of data management in the past, now every business unit plays a part. Each department accesses and interacts with their specific data sets every day, so they must be involved in data collection, management and documentation.
Process and policy. After you have outlined who is responsible for managing data, your primary digital executive should detail the procedures and policies. Insist on clear guidelines that indicate how data will be stored and formatted, how and when metadata will be added and what compliance and security protocols will be followed.
Monitor and measure. With people and policies in place, now you have to set down measurement metrics. Global metrics include accuracy of data, cost reductions and number of audits. Process metrics might include the length of time from problem identification to resolution, published data definition amounts and speed of new product development. Personnel metrics may include the amount of time you spend in data governance meetings or how fast new staffers are training on your system.
Clear use case. Despite the benefits, data governance is sometimes a hard sell to internal stakeholders because they are not clear on the benefits. Overcome this challenge by building a solid business case that shows how data governance saves the money you are losing due to poor security and data duplication.
Mission-Critical Data
Black Oaks Analytics developed the proprietary HiPER software tool to make it easier for companies like yours to manage and leverage mission-critical data. To learn more contact us today!