Data is a company-wide asset that impacts most of all business operations. Companies nowadays deal with increasingly diverse data at higher speeds and volumes. Keeping track of their data has become essential because it helps them to make informed decisions. To handle such voluminous data, it is even more crucial to adhere to the compliance and standards of the data in terms of accuracy and security.
Having an effective data governance policy in place is intrinsic for any data-driven business. And once youm implement data governance strategy, it is critical that all the business operations adhere to its requirements. Data governance isn’t just limited to adhering to governance policies like GDPR. It goes beyond the definition and purpose of being a compulsion.
Let’s study the growing importance of data governance in brief.
Transparency of sharing insights
Managing data is not the sole responsibility of the IT department, and nor are your sales and marketing teams exclusively responsible for delivering customer experience. With the right governance policy, data can be shared across organization to receive benefits from the insights derived from it. This shared responsibility makes far more efficient use of company time and resources. As one team uses and analyzes data, their work could reveal insights that are incredibly relevant to other departments.
Your customer service department can share its findings with research and development team to help them improve products based on customer feedback. Your sales and marketing teams could work closely with your IT team to transform complex data into simple visual representations. These graphical representations of data can reveal customer buying patterns. There are many such instances to prove that a strong data-centric culture that encourages information to be shared is highly effective for business.
Boosting collaboration and accountability
A major benefit of a comprehensive data governance policy is that it fosters greater accountability. When any data is updated or deleted in a system, employees with access to the system will know immediately and would be able to see who made the changes.
In case of any errors, a transparent system allows multiple users to see where it has been recorded. It becomes easy to gauge gaps where certain rules for storing or maintaining data haven’t been followed. When data use and maintenance is governed by a standardized set of rules, it weeds out inefficiencies and boosts collaboration across the organization. This enables employees to take necessary actions before more serious issues arise and helps to keep the system fault-resistant.
Keeping data clean
The volume of data you store is beside the point. The relevance and usability of that data is of far greater value than its quantity. One of the key benefits of having a governance process in place is that everyone has a reason to keep the data in good shape. This shared responsibility means that your data will be regularly cleansed, updated, and purged by all who use it; even the third-party vendors dealing with your data. After all, an effective data policy is about finding and maintaining truthful information or insights and putting it to good use.
A data governance policy encourages your teams to use company and customer information correctly and righteously. The sooner you implement the policy the better, as it will take your business a step closer to using and maintaining real and relevant data. The right data strategy is the tool that allows for unification of business and IT expectations for all enterprise data-related capabilities. The more detailed and comprehensive it is, the better the chance that both sides will fully understand each other.
Importance of data strategy
Data strategy is the comprehensive vision and foundation for an organization’s ability to harness data-dependent capabilities. It also represents the umbrella for all derived domain-specific strategies such as master data management, business intelligence, big data and so forth.
Organizations that are highly analytical are more than twice as likely to substantially outperform their peers as others. – IDC Research
Why organizations need a data strategy
Different departments of the enterprise view data-related capabilities differently. This certainly leads to replication of both data and data systems across the organization and thus makes it quite difficult to determine the truth of one’s data. Moreover, this also drives up costs.
Having a data strategy provides the basis for all data-related enterprise planning efforts. A clear data strategy ensures that the entire business has a set of data management processes to follow. It plays a vital role in solving problems and delivering expected business value. This helps the company to understand that data is not, and should not be the sole responsibility of a single department – it needs to matter to and be cultivated by everyone. It builds reliable data governance across the organization.
A clear data strategy for data governance
Enterprise-wide focus ensures there is a standardized way of collecting and collating data to improve overall data quality. The time saved on data cleaning and maintenance can be significant. A clear data strategy avoids possible legal issues or penalties that could damage your brand and further expose your business to competitors. Data quality and the proper treatment of data mean that a business is going to be well-placed to maintain a proper data governance policy. Practicing apposite data protection procedures is vital and very much on the radar of users.
At Softweb Solutions, we understand that data makes the organizational culture more purpose-oriented. And hence, we emphasize on inculcating data-centric approach in our clients’ business. Our data experts thoroughly understand your data requirements and help you plan a data strategy that enhances organization-wide consumption of reporting, analytics, and visualization capabilities. You can consult our data experts for further information.
