You can’t become a truly data-driven organization if your people don’t trust the data they’re using. And without data governance, trust is impossible. If you don’t know where your data is, what it means, or who’s responsible for it, you’re not making decisions with data—you’re guessing.
It’s time to reframe the conversation. Data governance isn’t red tape. It’s your competitive advantage.
Data Should Be Driving Decisions and Growth.
Every organization has the potential to confidently make data-driven decisions to grow their company and move their mission forward.
But you can’t become a data-driven company and make data-informed decisions without a data governance strategy. And most companies don’t have one. If this includes you, you’re not alone.
In fact, only about 30% of companies have strong data governance processes to help them move beyond manual data gathering, ad-hoc analysis, and IT-centric reporting – enabling them to begin using their data to inform decisions, predict outcomes, and shape the future of their organizations.
The good news … By ensuring data governance is embedded in your data strategy and roadmap, you can join the 30%.
Data Governance Is Good For Business.
According to recent research by McKinsey and others, prioritizing data-driven strategies increases revenue by an average of 20%, customer satisfaction rates by 30%, employee-engagement by 25%, and company-wide innovation by 50%.
Effective data governance provides that type of value to an organization in five primary ways.
- Standardized, Consistent, and Trusted Data – It establishes a foundation for reliable and clearly defined data that everyone across the organization can use to inform everything from daily decisions to predictive AI applications.
- Automation Capabilities and Operational Efficiency – It improves operational efficiency by streamlining processes and reducing inefficiencies, as well as refocusing teams on developing insights and strategic recommendations.
- Actionable Strategic Insights and Improved Decision-Making – Providing a unified view of data that reflects real-time business operations – informing advanced analytics and reporting tools that enable actionable strategic insights – data governance empowers optimized resource utilization and increases overall performance.
- Risk and Compliance Resiliency – It defines who may access what data, establish how the business and individual teams use data, and clarifies the life cycle (storage, retrieval, archival, and disposal) of different data.
- Continuous Strategic Collaboration – It positions the organization to operate in true partnership across teams, business units, and departments to support one another and achieve business goals.
Data Governance Is a People Issue (Not Just a Tech Issue).
Organizations often think the right piece of technology will solve their data problem. But let’s be clear, data governance is just as much about people as it is technology. The policies, processes, and roles established by your data governance strategy define not only what happens with the data, but also how people define, collect, store, access, analyze, and use the data.
People need to be part of the process. They should help decide which data matters to their teams and how it’s defined. They need to be onboarded, supported, and bought into the effort. For data governance to stick, everyone across the organization has to see the value—not just for the company, but for their own work. That’s how it becomes part of the culture.
Three Guiding Principles For A Successful Data Governance Strategy:
While every good data governance strategy is designed specifically to meet the unique needs of its organization, there are three principles that every governance strategy should be built upon.
Treat Data as an Asset
When organizations treat data as an afterthought or a byproduct, they cannot realize the full value the data can provide. Data ownership must be defined. Data management must be centralized. And data must be secure and regularly audited.
Standardize Data Usage
Establishing data standards, structuring data to support performance, and standardizing data management are all critical for both efficiency and effectiveness. And doing all these things upfront will improve long-term results and financial savings.
Manage Change to Maximize Success
Implementing a new data governance strategy should be treated like any other cultural change in an organization. A successful strategy requires leadership support, buy-in across teams, patience, regular communications, and measurable KPIs that are in fact measured.
To be Trusted, Data Must be More Than Just Accurate.
In the world of data governance, you’ll often hear the question:
Can you trust your data?
On the surface, this question can be asking if the data is accurate. And accuracy is obviously a critical piece of data trustworthiness. But it’s also about data timeliness, and possibly even more importantly, what’s included and not included in the data set.
- Does the sales data include sales tax? Liquidated items? Orders placed or orders delivered?
- Do the inventory stats include just in-store stock? Warehouse stock? Stock in transit?
- Do the efficiency numbers cover all departments? Just manufacturing and logistics? Year-to-date or the past 12 months?
If people aren’t confident in what the data is telling them, they can’t be confident in the decisions they need to make based on that data.
Where Should Your Data Governance Strategy Start?
Data governance needs to start with the foundation of people and processes. We separate these foundational pieces into three areas.
- Framework and Policies – Define the structure, principles, and rules that ensure consistency, compliance, security, access, and quality.
- Stewardship and Owners – Ensure that data governance is realized – and not just documented – by assigning accountability for data oversight, policy implementation, continued data integrity, and compliance.
- Business Glossary – Provide clarity by establishing standardized definitions and data requirements – ensuring people across the organization can understand, trust, and use the data.
What Additional Components Should Your Data Governance Plan Include?
While the content of each of the following elements will clearly be different for every organization and every data governance initiative, we recommend your data governance plan also include the following pieces to ensure a clear understanding, consistent adoption, and continued compliance throughout your organization.
- Communication and Training: Promotes collaboration among stakeholders, while educating employees on data governance policies and practices.
- Data Security and Privacy: Ensures sensitive information is safeguarded against unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security threats.
- Data Quality Management: Focuses on maintaining data integrity by ensuring it is accurate, complete, consistent, and delivered in a timely manner.
- Metadata Management: Facilitates the organization and accessibility of data by preserving details about its structure, context, and usage.
- Lifecycle Management: Oversees the complete journey of data, from its creation and storage to its archiving and eventual deletion.
- Data Governance Technology: Employs governance tools and software to support and streamline various data governance processes.
- Governance Metrics: Implements measurable standards and audit mechanisms to uphold compliance and evaluate the effectiveness of governance efforts.
Why Does Data Governance Seem So Hard? We Can Help.
Many organizations have tried and failed to establish effective data governance, often because they fell victim to one or more of these common pitfalls.
- Governance is overlooked when developing data strategies.
- Insufficient support is provided by leadership.
- No one (or no team) takes ownership or responsibility for the governance or the data.
- Tools are chosen and adopted before strategies.
- Governance programs start too big and try to do too much too quickly.
No matter why your previous efforts weren’t successful, by prioritizing – or re-prioritizing – data governance, you can experience the many benefits of becoming a data-driven company with a strong data and analytics consulting partner.
And you can get started right away. Fortunately, the best data governance strategies begin small – improving and standardizing data usage in one area or solving one specific challenge across teams.
If you think your organization is not experiencing the many benefits your data could be providing, let’s talk and figure out where to start. It could be kicking off a data governance initiative in one team. It could be a Data & AI Strategy Assessment. Or it could be just a conversation to learn more about how your data could be moving you toward your goals.