In recent times, information and knowledge represent the key to obtain a competitive advantage. Organizations that have reliable, high-quality data about their customers, products, services, and operations can make better decisions than those that lack data or have unreliable data. Poorly managed data is akin to poor capital management resulting in wasted time and opportunity.
Why data governance?
If there is no data governance, a well-defined structure or an adequate strategy that allows them to use or take advantage of the data that the organization has, there is a risk of having inaccurate, incomplete, and low-quality data, which causes the data to they can be misunderstood.
Data Management is the development, execution and supervision of plans, policies, programs, and practices that deliver, control, protect and increase the value of data and information assets throughout their life cycle.
How do we help companies design Data Governance strategies?
Data Governance is a discipline that organizations must implement, to use data for decision making.
The Data Strategies that an organization requires are linked to each other in accordance with the following Strategic Framework:
It is essential that organizations have a Data Strategy that responds to the Company’s Strategy in two ways, both by identifying the data that the company needs to have to meet its strategic objectives, and by identifying, based on the data, new opportunities that contribute to the Company’s Mission. It is in this strategy that the types of data that the company requires are identified, who produces them, who consumes them, what principles must exist to generate a data-oriented culture that truly sees them as the business asset they represent.
Data Governance Strategy
The Data Governance Strategy defines what capabilities will be developed over time; what structures and roles should exist; the objects (processes, systems, data entities, data repositories, etc.) that will be governed in each of the implementation stages, as well as the functional areas within the company in which Data Governance will be applied.
Data Management Strategy
Once the Data Strategy has been defined, we can think about defining the Data Management Strategy that will support the first through the different Data Management Functions. It is in this strategy where it is proposed which functions will have to be developed with the highest priority, depending on the motivations of the company, and, above all, in response to the problems related to data that are generating the most «pain» in the organization. The Data Management Strategy must be closely linked and aligned with the IT Strategy to ensure that the necessary technology and infrastructure are available for the proper performance of the Data Management functions. Likewise, the priorities in terms of Data Governance capabilities that must exist over time must permeate the Data Governance Strategy.