Navigating the Data Governance Journey: Linking Business Goals and Success

Embarking on a data governance journey commonly starts with a strong sense of excitement, but it can result in frustration if not carefully aligned with significant business goals. The story of a typical data governance initiative often involves initial inquiries and disengagement. But what if there was a way to steer clear of this common narrative and unlock tangible business value through a business-first approach? In this article, we uncover the transformative power of connecting data governance with your business goals and explore how it can reshape your organization’s data journey.

Initiating Data Governance: Navigating Challenges and Business Relevance

Often a Data governance program begins with enthusiasm, with project teams diving into data definitions, workflows, and ownership. However, without a clear link to business value, users start to wonder about the relevance of these efforts. The data governance team is often associated with fire-fighting data-related problems and resolving issues, and the absence of clear ownership leads to a focus on resolving urgent problems rather than pursuing strategic efforts. As a result, there are disengaged users, an absence of ROI, and a weakened foundation for future data governance actions.

Covering the Path to Business Value

How can companies regain lost confidence? We focus on a business-first approach that directly aligns data governance with strategic business objectives. This involves a more focused governance approach, pinpointing the most crucial aspects and improving in on elements that truly strengthen business value.

Taking this path offers three key advantages. Firstly, it expedites rollouts, achieving outcomes up to 40% quicker. Secondly, it yields a measurable ROI that’s 2 to 7 times greater than a broad, generalized approach to data governance. Lastly, it significantly boosts the probability of executive management reinvesting in data governance, increasing the chances of success by up to 75%*. When stakeholders across the organization fully grasp how data governance efforts influence business operations, their engagement naturally follows, ultimately resulting in tangible and quantifiable business value.

*Statistics are taken from Precisely website

Linking Data Governance to Key Business Values

The cornerstone of the business-first approach lies in linking data governance to three main categories of business value:

1. Risk Mitigation and Compliance: Regulatory compliance and risk management are paramount in today’s data landscape. Privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, along with fraud detection and compliance reporting, are essential for minimizing risk and upholding corporate integrity.

2. Data-Driven Insights: Extracting value from data insights offers avenues for innovation. Building a 360° customer view paves the way for targeted marketing, product innovation, and strategic decision-making.

3. Operational Excellence: Elevating data integrity and consistency enhances operational efficiency. Data quality improves marketing effectiveness, data integration eliminates silos, and a high level of data integrity streamlines processes, reduces costs, and boosts customer service.

Our method of identifying business goals/ objectives and subsequently linking these objectives to both business and data assets enables us to leverage shared assets for goals, thereby enhancing the return on investment (ROI).

Navigating the Data Governance Map

To effectively map data governance to business value, collaboration between business users and data teams is crucial. It starts by aligning objectives with necessary datasets. For each business goal, you can identify stakeholders, expected outcomes, data governance objectives, and specific capabilities.

Conclusion: Charting a Course to Success

The story of data governance is often one of missed opportunities, but it doesn’t have to be. By anchoring data governance to your business objectives, you can transform it into a strategic powerhouse that drives your organization toward success. Embrace the business-first approach, align data governance with business value, and watch as your data journey unfolds into a tale of meaningful impact and unparalleled growth.

If you would like to learn more about Data governance, Adsotech, and our partner, Precisely, will be hosting a series of workshops titled “Data Governance Learn and Lunch” in the upcoming autumn of 2023. These interactive sessions will focus on the importance of data governance, providing practical insights and best practices for managing data effectively. Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your knowledge and strengthen your data governance skills.