October 15, 2024

Thrive Insider

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Data governance and its importance for every business

Data governance and its importance for every business

Data governance and its importance for every business

People all over the world run businesses successfully. They grow, increase their traffic and sales, compete against others, and multiply their profit.

Different companies use various strategies, management methods, and tools for a successful business. The character of leadership is different from company to company. There are countless aspects that matter to run a thriving business.

One thing they all have in common is that they process data in some ways. Every company has its master data, information about customers, sales, partners, purchases, inventory, and much more. 

The big question is: how to manage all this data? Running a small company, it might be comparatively simple to manage the data. But even there, data might get lost, unorganized or wrong. Applying that to a big company, important data quality might get damaged, or used by unauthorized people, which can cause a lot of problems for the business itself.

This is where data governance and master data management play a role. Following, we will focus on what data governance is, how it works and why a company should use it.

What is data governance? 

Data governance is a collection of different tools that manage the availability, usability, integrity, and security of data. The process is based on processes, roles, policies, and standards that define who can access which data for which reason and based on which method. So basically, it manages all aspects of the data of a company. A business can manage, utilize and protect its data with professional data governance. Effective data governance helps a company to analyze data easier. It ensures the high quality of a company’s data with the main terms: availability, usability, consistency, data integrity, and security. The whole process ensures effective data management for a company.

Data governance is usually managed by a whole team of experts, led by a data steward who makes sure that guidelines are followed, processes are monitored and improved.

Why should companies have professional data governance?

The data management of a company is very important for its overall success. Effective data governance has a lot of benefits for a business. With proper data management, a company can avoid or minimize re-work and mistakes, staff effectiveness can be optimized, and the risk of regulatory fines can be decreased. Data can be secured on a high level of quality; the accountability of information quality can be increased and a company can plan better with supervisory staff.

Data management can be simplified and processes can be optimized. Communication can be clear and fast which increases the efficiency of the overall company.

The business value of a company can be increased because the quality of processes, data management, security, production, communication, and sales are on a high professional level.

Where to get it?

There are various vendors all over the world that offer tools and software for easy, professional, and safe data governance. Major IT vendors like IBM, Informatica, SAP, Oracle, and others are selling tools as well as data management specialists like Adaptive, Erwin, and Talend. Mostly they are combined with metadata management tools and data catalog software. They can also be purchased as a stand-alone product. Still, most companies buy the combined suites with various software and tools.