Data Governance: Importance and best practices 

Do you want your organization to be data-driven? Then we suggest that you consider having data governance in place. In this article, you will find out what exactly it is, why it is important, why it isn’t optional, and the best practices for it.   

Data governance is a structure that regulates who within an organization has the power to manage data assets and find out how to use them. It incorporates processes, people, and necessary technology to manage and safeguard data assets.   

Importance of data governance 

Finding data inconsistencies throughout an organization is no longer a concern when strong governance exists. For instance, account names may be altered or written differently between systems. This kind of situation can compromise data integrity and reduce the accuracy of analytics and business intelligence (BI).   

Below are a few advantages of data governance.   

• Data will be standardized and consistent throughout the organization, making decision-making easier.   
• Your firm becomes more agile because of explicit rules for modifying processes and data.   
• By reusing processes and data, you will find enhanced efficiency in the enterprise.   
• It reduces your data management costs.   
• It makes it simpler to comply with data requirements.   
• This gives the company a 360-degree perspective of key business entities.   
• Understanding the location of all the data pertaining to important entities will be possible.  

Having the right data governance tools 

Looking for trustworthy and scalable tools is crucial if your organization is trying to find the best data governance approach. Ensure the tool you choose has a plug-and-play mechanism and is cloud-based. The business advantages you hope to gain from the governance tool should guide your choice.  

The tool you select should facilitate the following:   

• Manage your data by regularly reviewing and keeping an eye on it.   
• Learn about your data using tools for profiling, discovery, benchmarking, etc.   
• Validate, cleanse, and enrich the data to enhance its quality.  
• Effective data management makes it simple to track and trace your data.   
• Upgrading the website’s searchability, linkability, accessibility, and data compliance.  

What are the best practices for data governance? 

Even if every enterprise is unique, you must nevertheless adhere to the basic best practices to make sure that your company’s journey toward data governance is successful.  

• Avoid going all in at once. Start small and aim for small successes.  
• Make sure your goals are clear, measurable, doable, and practical.    
• Establish the ownership of data governance duties. Its framework will not work if no one addresses the problems that arise.  
• It will help if you adapt the data governance framework in the manner you conduct the company’s operations. 
• Take steps to map your goals, architecture, and infrastructure. Your firm’s IT landscape and enterprise architecture should include its framework.  
• Obtain support from significant stakeholders.    
• Discuss the governance framework in simple business language so that it is easy for people to comprehend what it involves.   
• After selecting them, concentrate on the most crucial data components.   
• Find use cases that connect to your progress, cost savings, etc.  
• Integrate your performance KPIs with your data quality KPIs as your primary focus.  

7 Principles of data governance 

Gartner has outlined seven key foundations that you need to adhere to for data governance. Let us understand them here.   

Value and results 

 The goals of your business should be in line with your data governance. It would help if you had a robust data analytics framework to track the development.  

Trust 

Can you rely on all of your data sources at once? Is the data in your ownership for the rest of its life? If you intend to use a distributed data system, you should structure your data governance on a model of trust. In fact, you must be aware of the source of the data to handle expectations.  

A model of decision rights and accountability  

Assure that your team is accepting of your data governance strategy. You must specify who has the authority to decide on the data. All parties should be made accountable for your data. 

Being transparent and ethical 

Your data governance should have transparent data analytics. A sound decision-making procedure should be in place so that no errors would be discovered even by a third-party audit.   

Training and Education  

Update stakeholders, such as data owners, about its principles. To ensure that data governance is in place, having a well-defined training program is favorable. 

Security and risk 

Data governance is a practice businesses use to control risk and security concerns that may arise from data.   

Collaboration and employee culture 

How will different departments collaborate in order to safeguard the data? Instead of treating data governance as a bureaucratic activity, having a collaborative culture across teams/employees fosters a positive approach and changes the attitude towards it.   

Thus, you can achieve your governance objectives and improve your operational technique by concentrating on these seven areas.   

Challenges 

When implementing a data governance plan, you can expect several challenges, all of which you must meet head-on. Let’s examine each one separately.   

Data silos 

The fact that various departments do not share their data with one another is one of the main issues with data governance. As a result of the lack of datasets for all of them, this occurs frequently. The teams may be unaware of the types of data other teams may have. There is such a disparity that it causes errors in many data sets and adds to the issues.  

Lack of trust 

The data quality needs to be outstanding for your analytics engine to produce actionable insights. The consistency and dependability of data in your system are the factors that will establish trust. Most importantly, they will not trust the analytics results if there is mistrust of data. 

Inadequate leadership 

Many businesses need a Chief Data Officer (CDO) to manage their data. Consequently, new norms and rules should be implemented with the leadership’s full support. Each implementation step should be carefully examined when developing a governance system so that the structure, delivery, and policies are understood. 

Lack of resources 

Data governance is typically considered a second thought by most businesses. Many businesses believe that the IT department is in charge of handling data. However, the IT team can only control some data and cannot be the only ones in charge of it. Getting the requisite funds or resources is typically more challenging than usual. 

Lack of control 

The absence of data control is one of the most frequent problems with data governance. When there is no control over data, it might result in non-compliance. Rules like HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS, and CCPA have been implemented to control how sensitive data is handled. Businesses that do not adhere to them strictly risk harsh penalties.    

Take away 

Every organization should have a precise plan for managing its data, and that process begins with putting a data governance policy in place. Data that is routinely managed with care will produce reliable business results for you. Organizations that safeguard their data will be able to derive value from all that is gathered and see success in their business as a result.   

As a result, data tracking is essential to any firm, SME, or corporation’s success. You can contact Saxon and find out about Saxon’s Data Engineering Services to create a single source of truth system for real-time data analytics, business reporting, optimization, and analysis.   

We would be more than pleased to assist your organization in making sense of your data while complying with all data protection rules. Get in touch with the Saxon data governance team to schedule a call.