Importance of building data governance strategies

Data governance can contribute to the making and breaking of any company. Yet, many company stakeholders rarely pay close attention to it as they focus or pour efforts on regular business-as-usual activities. In this article, I tease out a workable data governance strategy for organisations in various industries. These are not cast in stone strategies, but they serve as a general guidance that can help any company improve their data governance strategy.
The first and most critical part is measuring the impact on the business in financial terms. Last two years, I went to one of those fast-food restaurants in Lekki, Lagos. Their payment system was down and customers without cash couldn’t pay for food. For thirty minutes, the restaurant couldn’t process card orders and customers without cash couldn’t buy food. If the business measures the financial implication of these downtimes, they would be able to come up with the best back structures when these things occur. The measurement will help the organisation answer these critical questions: Can the organisation save hard costs by putting certain things in place?
Second strategy is assigning accountability to personnel within the company. Typically, most companies tie accountability to their IT department. From indications and field implementation, one finds out that data governance is not only an IT thing since most business unit generate data for various reasons. It is, therefore, imperative for business units and their heads to take charge of data that stems out of their departments. For example, HR should be held accountable for employee data, not IT.
A company must recognise the features of various data assets and their attending features. Because it spreads across business units, stakeholders must understand the end-to-end lifecycle journey of data. Plus, without the control and monitoring of data assets, businesses will be unable to maintain data integrity and quality.
The collection and processing of data presents that big elephant in the room. Most times, companies think that they have a perfect data governance strategy. However, I’ve concluded that in data governance a strategy can only be achieved if the tasks are broken down into minute chunks and work streams flow out of those little tasks. Task-by-task and the gargantuan project can be broken down. An incremental approach with an eye to the future creates a clean starting point and can reduce the pain required to implement the tasks.
In any data governance strategy, managing change is key. Employees must be trained as to why a particular data governance programme is being implemented. Most companies make the mistake of assuming that by implementing a new way of managing data that staffs automatically understand reasons why something should be done in a new way. Education plays a key role in any implementation, and how the information is disseminated is key.
Good data governance ensures that downstream negative effects of poor data are avoided and what’s more, the implementation of the strategy should be carried out with the broader company’s mission and vision. It would feed into data governance best approaches.

Admin