Domestic companies that can do data governance

Data governance forms the basis of company-wide data management and can effectively use trustworthy data. Effective data management is an important task that requires centralized control mechanisms.

What is data governance?

Data governance includes the people, processes, and technologies needed to manage and protect a company's data assets to ensure that company data is generally understandable, correct, complete, trustworthy, secure, and discoverable. Data governance mainly includes the following:

Why is data governance so important?

The lack of effective data governance within a company guarantees one thing: bad data. This poor data representation manifests itself in inconsistent definitions, duplications, missing fields and other classic data faux pas. These are clear problems that should be solved – but what specifically will deliver ROI for companies that solve them?

Here are three key benefits that highlight the importance of data governance:

1. Data governance saves money

Simply put, data management increases efficiency. Duplicate accounts lead to duplication of effort, or at least wasted time tracking down duplicate accounts in marketing, sales, finance, or analytics efforts. Data governance can reduce errors in your database, provide your business with a reliable database, and save valuable time that would otherwise be spent correcting existing data. Time saved is money saved.

In addition, data governance forces enterprises to clearly define their core data and the rules for managing it. The beginning of a data governance project is a great opportunity to get everyone on the same page regarding core data definitions. Doing this ensures long-term operational efficiency improvements.

2. Bad data governance is dangerous

The lack of effective data governance is a security issue for two reasons: related to dirty, unstructured data and compliance issues Related external security risks.

Bad data and misstructured data pose security risks for the simple reason that if you have dirty unstructured data in your database, how can you quickly tell when something is wrong and how can you monitor it effectively? What data is at risk? Good data governance tools and practices make it easier to monitor what is happening across your entire database and see which areas may be at risk.

Regulatory compliance and data governance are increasingly a hot topic. As people continue to understand the importance of their personal data, governments are beginning to adopt fair ways to store, protect and use customer data.

Take GDPR as an example. The regulation, which will come into force in early 2018, gives EU residents greater control over their personal information, including the famous "right to be forgotten," which enables EU residents to request that all data be deleted from commercial databases. (Note that this applies to any company doing business with EU residents, so the regulations can easily cross over to the U.S.). With a cluttered, unmanaged data swamp, there may be no guarantee that all data about a specific individual will be deleted upon request. This exposes your company to significant risks and potentially severe fines.

3. Good data governance provides clarity

Take a moment to imagine what the guarantee of perfect data means to your business. Effective data governance gives you peace of mind that data is often clear, standardized and accurate. The impact was felt throughout the company.

Here are some of the benefits this clarity will provide:

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What does the future hold?

Data governance is the key to today’s data-driven companies, but do today’s companies want to be data-driven? Now that we know why data governance is important right now, let’s consider the three main forces that companies can benefit from in the near future: IoT, artificial intelligence, and big data.

All three of these forces hold great promise for many companies through massive amounts of data through which insights and intelligence can be gained;? However, the influx of data increases the need for effective data governance programs needs. If companies don’t stay ahead of the dirty data coming from IoT, AI and big data, the main result may just be a giant data swamp rather than the increased intelligence and profits that board members expect.

One of the most important elements of data governance is alignment with all teams and individuals responsible for collecting, managing, and using data. Make sure everyone is on board and there are clear goals, clearly defined processes and clear levels of authority to keep everything running smoothly. The key to data governance is effective collaboration. The right data governance tools should go hand in hand with these principles. Make sure any tool you evaluate is easy to use for business and IT users, enables seamless collaboration across teams, and is flexible enough to evolve based on your changing business needs.