Businesses having a data governance committee is one of the most overlooked and undervalued areas when businesses are looking to start and/or maintain their business intelligence solution aka your single source of truth. I have fun exercise for you to do, one day go out and ask different friends and/or family of yours that are in different businesses (it could be a company with 25 employees to a company with thousands). Just ask them these two questions: Do you have data governance in your business? What is your definition of data governance? I think you might be very surprised by the answers that you receive from the people you have asked and especially if you ask people that are from different sizes of businesses.
I define data governance as the overall management (with the help of processes) to ensure the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data that is employed throughout the entire business. I said it throughout the entire business. Data governance is a cultural change within your business and can be a positive change if it is approached and implemented properly. Data governance can be disruptive in the beginning but that does not mean it cannot be a positive disruption. You have to take the approach that this is an ownership of the data and each department belongs to that feeling of ownership and has a responsibility to themselves and the business to ensure that they are doing everything they can to follow the data governance guidelines. Empower the employees and you will see that data governance within your business will go along way.
Some key benefit that a data governance can give your business:
- Better data quality
- Better decision making
- Increasing Operational Efficiencies
- Improved Data Knowledge
- Higher Revenue
- Regulatory Compliance
