Most analysts agree that we have moved from the Industrial into the Information Age.

During the Information Age, the phenomenon is that the digital industry creates a knowledge-based society surrounded by a high-tech global economy that spans over its influence on how the manufacturing and the service sector operate in an efficient and convenient way.

Elevate your data management strategies by understanding the complementary nature of Data Governance and Data Quality and their impact on business outcomes.

1. Business Agility and Disruption

In a commercialised society, the information industry is able to allow individuals to explore their personalised needs, therefore simplifying the procedure of making decisions for transactions and significantly lowering costs for both the producers and buyers. This is accepted overwhelmingly by participants throughout the entire economic activities for efficacy purposes, and new economic incentives would then be indigenously encouraged, such as the knowledge economy.

This means that older, established companies are being challenged and, in many cases beaten, by more nimble, digitally oriented start-ups.

Data Governance provides the foundation for analytics

For our established customers data governance provides a foundation that allows them to more quickly find, understand and deliver trusted insights from their complex data environments.

They can no longer wait months or years for impact assessment before making critical changes to business processes or introducing new products. Data governance empowers knowledge workers to document and understand the data landscape and make that information available quickly for decision-makers.

In this business case, data governance is implemented to drive business value by reducing complexity.

2. Business insights and analytics

Advanced analytics, machine learning, and the insights that come from these initiatives are highly dependent on the ability to find, understand and trust data.

Many analytics programs are set up to support the goals of business agility – for example, through data-driven product development or by enhanced customer experience.

This short video describes how data governance helps to support advanced analytics

In this business case, data governance adds business value by delivering trusted insights

3. Improving data quality and master data management

As the need for trusted data becomes clear, the drive to deliver quality (master) data becomes more urgent.

Without data governance, data quality and master data management efforts can become bogged down due to a lack of clear business needs.

In this business case, data governance empowers business and IT stakeholders to reduce complexity and drive results

4. Compliance

For many people, governance is seen as a compliance function.

It is true that many compliance programs – such as BCBS 239 in banking, Solvency II in insurance – and the personal data protection regulations legislate or recommend enhanced data management capabilities – such as data quality, proof of the trustworthiness of reports, or ensuring compliance with data usage and other policies.

In this business case data governance delivers a repeatable framework that reduces the effort required to comply with each new regulation, and makes it easier to show compliance.

Any combination of the above

A strong defence provides the controls organisations need to ensure the security, privacy, and integrity of their data. They can identify their data sources, map data transformations, store data securely, and understand who has access to it and why.

A winning offence helps organisations drive real value from their data assets. They’re using data governance to deliver self-service analytics that really works or data lakes that are simple to navigate.

In an ideal world. data governance enables the common areas of value to be identified and prioritised at an enterprise level.

For example, in delivering a reporting catalogue for compliance, we can also help to enhance the effectiveness of our enterprise decision-making.

In delivering enhanced customer data quality to improve customer experience, we also meet compliance needs.

The real value comes when we shift data governance from a tactical tick box to an strategic driver.

How does data governance improve data quality? We explore in our blog post.

Stay updated on the latest Data Governance and Data Quality Trends shaping the industry with this LeBow Center of Business Analytics Research report

What is driving your data governance initiatives?