Top 5 Reasons for Data Governance

Before you go deep on PIM, check how product data is governed: the process, the tools, and where the data actually lives.

Experian runs a yearly Data Management survey of more than 1,000 people who work on data management, across IT, finance, customer services, marketing, and risk. The 2018 edition found:

• 55% said unreliable data has a substantial disruptive effect on the organization.
• 73% agreed it is often hard to predict when and where the next data problem will show up.
• 68% said the growing volume of data makes legal requirements harder to meet.
• 69% said incorrect data will undermine their ability to deliver an excellent customer experience.

If there is no working data governance structure, competitiveness and the ability to operate within the law both take the hit.

What data governance is

The phrase is used loosely. In practice it is the frame an organization uses to manage data for its own needs: policies for how data is handled, and named roles for who does the work.

Why it is needed

The data you already have

Good data is an asset, and it only stays one if someone maintains it. Organizations often write the business requirements and then spend little or nothing on processes that keep quality in check. The data is neglected, and its value falls. Many also lack tools that can check and improve quality on an ongoing basis. When an end user does not trust the data, they build a workaround to clean and enrich it. That adds time and cost, and it multiplies end-user tools the organization then has to manage.

Laws and regulations

Compliance risk gets harder and more expensive as data gets larger and more varied. A lot of organizations aim only at the minimum the legislator set. That checklist can keep a subset of data in line. It does not change how the organization treats data. A proactive stance has to be chosen, not audited into existence. Legislators have also gotten more precise: each new regulation asks for more detail and a wider scope. Organizations that moved early treat governance as a competitive advantage, not only as a control.

Cost

When governance is approached across the organization, less time and money goes into one-off fixes for the data that business processes need.

Customer experience

Given what organizations spend on CRM, you would expect one accurate customer record. Most do not have it. Departments run their own systems, and those systems are often out of sync with everything outside the department. Without governance, marketing automation and customer-support databases fill up with duplicates, gaps, wrong values, and outdated records. The symptoms are familiar: the wrong name, several versions of the same catalog on the doormat, the same promotional email ten times.

Datasets that are changing

Big Data, Open Data, and Linked Data are different problems from the database you already run.

Big Data means one or more datasets that are beyond what a regular database management system can handle. Open Data is information that is freely accessible; licenses and terms of use state the conditions, and the aim is to keep restrictions on reuse low. Linked Data is a way of publishing structured data so it can be found and used online.

Those forms open new uses. They also add governance and quality problems. Build the frame for the data you already have, and put it in place, before you try to govern these newer forms. You cannot combine large amounts of outside data with your own if you cannot understand, or manage, what you already store.

The volume of stored data keeps growing, and it keeps changing. That is the practical reason to put a governance frame in now. If the current data is not understood and managed, a faster rate of change will not make that easier.