Most business leaders struggle with maintaining a consistent dataset throughout their organizations. Given how data stems from disparate sources, data silos contain inconsistent data. The need to align data collection, management, and analysis across various departments cannot be overstated. It behooves business leaders to integrate data governance initiatives into their overall data management strategy. Here’s why we think data governance is critical for any business.
Operational Efficiency
The term data governance encompasses a set of processes and best practices needed to manage and control an organization’s data asset. There’s no gainsaying that the manual process of collecting and analyzing data can be time-consuming and cost-intensive.
Thanks to technological advancements, we have several data governance tools that help optimize performance management. These automated tools define the processes for the collection, cleaning, manipulation, and storage of datasets.
Analysis of business processes using well-governed data can help improve the operational efficiency of the business. In addition, it provides valuable insight that informs strategy and reveals opportunities for improvement. With data governance, you can standardize data management throughout your organization. Doing so helps mitigate duplication of efforts, increase employee efficiency and productivity, and enhance team collaboration.
Data Quality
Despite substantial technological investments, organizations find it challenging to maintain good data quality. Poor data quality can negatively impact the overall performance of your business. Moreover, decision-makers require clean data to make strategic decisions.
It’s the responsibility of a data steward to ensure the quality and purpose of an organization’s data assets. Sometimes, stewards struggle to keep up, especially when they are dealing with big data. Fortunately, the data governance program excels in maintaining and improving data quality.
This innovative business solution plays an integral role in ensuring efficient data assessment management. Data governance seeks to break down data silos that stem from various sources. Furthermore, business users can establish a data governance framework that monitors data practices. This will invariably instill accountability in the data owner, mitigate data misuse, and boost data security.
Business Decision-Making
Like a master data management (MDM) solution, data governance supports data stewardship and data-driven decisions. The data to support good decisions is scattered among different applications like ERP and CRM. The first step to making strategic decisions is to ensure the quality and reliability of data assets. The chief data officer (CDO) can create a data governance program to gain insights needed by subject matter experts to make informed decisions. More so, business leaders can rely on unhindered data access to make data-driven business-wide decisions.
Data Compliance
It goes without saying that data governance promotes better data compliance. Following the enactment of so many data laws and regulations, many organizations run the risk of regulatory non-compliance.
So you know, there are penalties for regulatory non-compliance, including fines, settlements, forfeitures, and the temporary shutdown of business operations. Take, for example, pharmaceutical companies in the United States that are mandated by law to track their expenses. Failure to abide by the regulation has led to big pharma companies paying billion-dollar settlements to the United States government.
That’s what makes accurate and auditable data reporting crucial. Data-intensive companies must be aware of compliance requirements on the use of customer data like GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA. The key takeaway is that data governance can help your business avoid data-related violations.
Data Monetization
When it comes to the governance of data assets, processes are considered expenses. Despite having separate objectives, data governance promotes data monetization. Data governance has gone beyond defining policies, standards, and procedures for data management to monetizing data. Business leaders can leverage data monetization to package the insights gained from data analytics to create new revenue streams.
Businesses can now maximize the full potential of the data they collect and generate.
With an efficient data governance system, business leaders can accelerate growth, cut operational costs, and increase profit margins. Additionally, it helps SMEs achieve their desired business outcomes.
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