Data Governance: Ensuring Accuracy and Reliability in Strategy Management
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In the dynamic business landscape, strategic decision-making is the compass guiding organizations toward success. At the heart of this process lies data, the invaluable asset that fuels analytics and shapes the trajectory of strategic initiatives. However, the accuracy and reliability of data are the linchpins that determine the efficacy of these decisions. From this perspective, data governance plays a pivotal role in maintaining data integrity.
Data governance is a set of policies, processes, roles, and standards that ensure the effective and efficient use of data across an organization, in addition to compliance with relevant regulations and ethical principles. Data governance aims to establish clear rules and responsibilities for data creation, collection, storage, access, sharing, analysis, and reporting.
In that sense, a robust data governance strategy is indispensable in the context of strategic analytics. A data governance strategy is crucial for maintaining data accuracy and reliability and ensuring that the information driving decision-making processes is consistent, timely, and aligned with organizational goals.
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A good data governance framework can be approached through the following best practices:
- assigning ownership of data assets and defining roles for data stewards, data analysts, and other stakeholders
- implementing data quality KPIs and procedures to monitor and improve data accuracy and completeness
- implementing robust data security measures to securely store and access data and to comply with data privacy regulations and ethics
- investing in data management tools to automate data cleaning, profiling, and lineage tracking tasks
- promoting a data-driven culture by educating employees on data governance policies and best practices
There are several examples of how the aforementioned measures help companies with their strategy management. One of these case studies is Wells Fargo, one of the largest banks in the United States. Wells Fargo adopted a data governance operating model, which defines the roles, responsibilities, and processes for the effective management of data across the organization. The company was better able to do this by connecting its data sources with a data fabric that integrates inputs from multiple systems.
In another case study, GE Aviation, the aviation division of General Electric, consolidated its scattered data sources in a data lake. A data lake is a large-scale data storage and processing platform that can handle structured and unstructured data from various sources, making information more manageable, reliable, and accessible for all users within the organization.
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The two examples show that strategy management improved when built on accurate and reliable data, leading to better outcomes. Simply put, if the accuracy of the inputs is jeopardized, then the outputs can only be expected to be flawed.
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the print edition of Performance Magazine Issue No. 29, 2024 – Strategy Management Edition
