This is a recording of a chapter meeting of DAMA South Africa during which we discussed how to link data governance to achieving business goals and objectives and demonstrated how Precisely Data360 can be applied to achieve this goal.

Subsequently, Infogix has been acquired by Precisely. Precisely Data360 remains a top enterprise data catalog and remains unique in its approach to information value management.

• Data governance struggles are common, often due to challenges in aligning business goals with governance efforts.
• Existing data governance tools may lack business relevance and fail to connect with stakeholders.
• Historical metadata management tools focused on technical aspects, lacking business context.
• Shift towards holistic data governance, integrating top-down, bottom-up, and middle-level approaches.
• Business-ready data involves prioritizing valuable data slices aligned with specific goals and outcomes.
• Transparency, involvement, and gradual progress are crucial for successful data governance.
• Cloud-based solutions enable easy access to metadata while keeping sensitive data secure.
• Business-oriented interfaces allow users to search, view, and interact with data assets and relationships.
• Defining asset types, classes, and governance structures enhances data governance effectiveness.
• Data360 focuses on making data governance more relevant to business by linking data assets to business goals and objectives.
• The tool allows users to define regulations, goals, objectives, and metrics within a data model.
• It enables tracking compliance with policies, regulations, and standards, as well as associating assets with specific rules.
• Business relationships between different areas, goals, and objectives are built, allowing for prioritization and understanding of impacts.
• The tool provides a web browser-based interface and can be exposed to external partners.
• It supports hierarchical relationships and associations between business capabilities, value chains, and business strategies.
• The tool is not a full data modelling tool, but it can integrate and synchronize metadata with databases and other tools.
• Data value is measured using an internal algorithm, and the tool aims to track data value changes over time.
• The value of data assets can be rolled up to metrics and goals, providing a communication mechanism for prioritization.
• The tool emphasizes the philosophy of connecting data management to business goals and driving value.
• We discuss the importance of data classification and semantic tags for business context and navigation through hierarchies.
• The system offers configurable categories and tags to aid in metadata management and navigation.
• Data governance is shifting towards a collaborative, crowd-sourced model for metadata documentation and management.
• Collaboration and incremental updates are emphasized over striving for perfection before publishing.
• The integration layer allows pulling data from various sources, such as PowerDesigner, and publishing it through APIs or web pages.
• Considerations for making data accessible to the public involve calculating infrastructure load and cost, with options like web pages or controlled API access.
• We highlight the alignment of agile methodologies with data management projects and collaboration facilitated by tools like Data360.
• The system enables linking data strategies, roadmaps, and agile projects for better coordination.
• Granular control and efficient change tracking are enabled by the system, improving data quality processes.

Love to hear your examples of how you are linking data governance to value.