The Value of a Data Governance Strategy

The benefits of being a “data-driven” company are increasingly obvious, and more and more businesses are recognizing them. Organizations that rely heavily on their enterprise data to make smarter business decisions are 19 times more likely to be more highly profitable than their competitors.

While 99 percent of companies want to move in a data-driven direction, however, only one-third of them say that they’ve succeeded in this objective. In many cases, these disappointments are due to the lack of a holistic data governance strategy throughout the enterprise.

As big data becomes an essential part of more organizations’ businesses, data governance can no longer be just a “nice-to-have” – it’s a full-blown requirement. This article will explore the reasons why you can’t afford to ignore the importance of data governance to the success of your business as a whole.

Why Data Governance is Crucial to Business Success

If you opened a vineyard, for example, you would expect to have complete oversight of the winemaking process: from the conditions in which the grapes are grown to the time that the bottle is finally corked.

70 percent of organizations agree that big data is “crucial” to their business, however, far too many of them are lagging behind in implementing the essential ingredient to complete oversight of the flow of data: data governance. These companies fail to understand how information truly flows throughout their enterprise: which parts of the business own and/or use different data assets.

By implementing a strong data governance strategy, you know exactly which information you have at your fingertips at all times. Your employees have visibility and transparency into every step of the data lifecycle, from collection and storage all the way to reporting and decision-making.

Like your employees, your enterprise data is a valuable asset that needs to be carefully managed and monitored. Data governance involves establishing processes throughout your business that help you make smarter data-driven decisions more efficiently – as a team, often with a balance between the business and IT.

When you improve the availability, reliability, quality, and security of your data, you can ensure that your employees always have access to the information they need for optimal performance in their jobs, with security applied as well as any other critical factors to control the access to data in your organization.

The Benefits of Building a Data Governance Strategy

Unfortunately, Gartner estimates that between 60 to 85 percent of big data projects are failures. While this rate is alarmingly high, it’s not exactly shocking. By failing to achieve good data governance, these organizations are missing out on advantages such as:

• Better decision-making: It’s impossible to become a “data-driven” organization without having reliable analytics and reporting solutions. By improving the consistency, accuracy, and quality of your enterprise data, you’ll feel more confident in your business decisions.
• Improved productivity: 89 percent of organizations say that they’ve wasted money due to inaccurate data. Better data governance means that employees no longer have to spend their valuable time hunting down the right information when two data sources are in conflict.
• Easier compliance and audits: Regulations such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley place strict controls over how companies in certain industries can handle sensitive data. A well-defined data governance strategy helps you make the case to auditors that information is stored securely and free from tampering, both in transit and at rest.

Final Thoughts

Implementing a strong data governance strategy is one of the most valuable investments that you can make for the future of your business. To learn more about how good data governance should underpin every part of your data operations, download Datavail’s white paper “Data Governance: A Valuable Part of Business Information Success.”