Why Data Governance?
Data has become the lifeblood in today’s world – essential to running key company operations, driving decisions and informing strategies in nearly every industry. As the volume and complexity of both structured and unstructured data increase at an exponential rate, so does the need for a discipline to maximise the value of data, manage risks and reduce costs. Without this discipline, organisations will lack the ability to discover insights through trusted analytics, and become exposed to the risks of financial penalties and reputational damage because of non-compliance with data regulations.
A well-crafted Data Governance strategy is fundamental in today’s fast-moving and highly competitive enterprise environment. As organisations continue capturing massive amounts of diverse internal and external data, there is a growing need to understand and articulate how your business can rely on and drive value from this strategic asset through well-governed, consistent processes and responsibilities.
What is Data Governance?
Data Governance is the collection of clearly defined policies, procedures, standards, processes, roles and responsibilities that ensure the effective and efficient use of data in enabling an organization to achieve its goals. At its core, Data Governance defines who can take what action, upon what data, in what situations and using what methods.
Business drivers will shape the structure of an organisation’s Data Governance program, which will, in turn, inform the strategic, tactical and operational roles and responsibilities required to carefully control the capture, storage, maintenance, consumption and destruction of data across the enterprise. If a business driver in your Data Governance strategy is to ensure compliance with data privacy regulations, for example, client data will need to be managed securely as it flows through your business. Retention requirements (i.e., history of who changed what information, when and how long you retain client data before destroying it) will be defined to ensure compliance with relevant government regulations.
For Data Governance to be successful, an organisation must first understand how a Data Governance program can align with its business strategy and drive long-term, sustainable value. At Ronan Analytics, we enable this understanding by partnering with organisations to identify the most critical pain points and high-value use cases while establishing a Data Governance mission and vision in alignment with corporate objectives.
After understanding where the Data Governance program will drive the most business value, Ronan Analytics assesses an organisation’s Data Governance maturity across six key domains. The results of the assessment are then synthesized with the top-priority use cases to create a clear roadmap and actionable plans to begin implementing a Data Governance framework and addressing your organisation’s most critical needs.
Once a roadmap and actionable plans are defined, Ronan Analytics partners with organisations to translate the plans into results. From creating Data Governance policies, to building frameworks including procedures. Ronan Analytics has the passion, expertise and skills needed to partner with you at any point in your Data Governance journey and begin maximising the value of your data.
