According to data governance leaders, there are three major trends driving the realisation that data governance is essential, rather than a nice to have.

These are:

• The rise of the Chief Data Officer.
• Regulatory oversight.
• Business intelligence that delivers.

Are these trends driving data governance in Southern Africa?

Let’s examine them one by one.

1. The rise of the Chief Data Officer

In Europe and the USA, some studies suggest that up to 40% of organisations have employed a Chief Data Officer. Typically, a CDO is a business-oriented role that is responsible for ensuring that data meets business needs, and drives business outcomes. As such, they are typically reporting to a business line (CEO, CFO or COO) and have their own budget and responsibilities – most typically including data strategy, data governance, data quality and, in many cases, advanced analytics.

In South Africa, I would suggest that the CDO plays a much less influential role.

In many cases, the CDO role is confused with related roles, including Chief Information Officer, Chief Analytics Officer, and even Chief Digital Officer. Or the CDO role may not exist but the responsibilities of the CDO may be sitting in various middle management roles reporting into one of these mentioned. These more technical roles frequently look at data in a more traditional way, with IT taking the lead, rather than having business users being accountable for the data they produce and use.

However, the CDO role is emerging in those businesses that recognise that they need to use data more effectively in order to survive and thrive. Where business sees data as an asset the CDO is becoming accountable for data governance and stewardship and the value of governance in ensuring the effective use of data is becoming clear.

Has your organisation hired a CDO or do you think they should?

2. Regulatory Oversight

Increased regulatory oversight is a given – particularly for financial services and multinational firms. More importantly, in the last few years, regulators have shown an increased appetite to penalise businesses that fail to comply with regulatory requirements. Penalties for MTN in Nigeria, and for multiple banks in South Africa show that regulations such as KYC and AML must now be taken seriously. Poor data management or quality will no longer be allowed to excuse non-compliance.

Another wave of data-related regulation, that will impact most businesses, is those related to the protection of sensitive data – PoPIA in South Africa and GDPR in Europe. Organisations must plan to govern the capture, access to, use of and destruction of personal data; must put processes in place to manage breaches, and must generally up their game when it comes to managing personal information.

Are you trying to figure out how to mitigate risk or avoid steep penalties?

3. Business Intelligence that delivers

A key challenge for business intelligence is to deliver insight that actually sways decision-making.

Far too often, decisions are made that go against the data. In many cases, this is because data is so poorly managed that executives simply do not trust the results of analytics – particularly when this runs counter to their gut feel.

One approach taken by leading BI teams is to certify reports – rating them for data quality (is the data statistically reliable), for data traceability (where did the data come from) and for ownership (business engagement). This builds trust in the insights delivered and helps decision-makers assess whether or not to take each report seriously.

In the rapidly changing world, business leaders are looking to data to drive business change – through advanced analytics. The ability to easily find, understand and trust data – the outcomes of governance – are definitely drivers for many of the clients we talk to.

Is it time to stop talking about being “data driven” and actually do it?