Most companies have started to realize the importance of data governance as it is essential for meeting regulatory or industry compliance requirements. However, compliance is no longer the main reason for implementing data governance. Better decision-making is.
In this article, we explore what data governance is and how you can use it to create sustainable practices that are vital for uncovering insights and making optimal business decisions.
What is Data Governance?
Data governance is a term used to describe the overall management of an organization’s data. This includes the policies, procedures, and standards that ensure data is collected, managed, and used in a consistent and controlled manner.
Why is Data Governance Important?
There are many reasons why data governance is important for businesses. Some of the key reasons include:
- Ensuring data accuracy and completeness – One of the main benefits of data governance is that it helps to ensure the accuracy and completeness of data. This is essential for making sound business decisions.
- Maintaining compliance – Data governance can play a key role in helping organizations maintain compliance with industry regulations or other requirements.
- Accessibility – One of the advantages of adhering to data governance standards is that all employees will have access to accurate information.
- Increased company value – Most employees have access to and use data somehow. Having a solid understanding of what is considered good data governance is necessary for increasing the value of an organization.
- Decreased risk – One of the most significant benefits of data governance programs is that they help to reduce risk. No matter what kind of business you have, strong data governance standards can help minimize the impact of any data crisis.
Designing a Data Governance Strategy for Your Company
Now that we covered the importance of data governance let’s take a look at how you can design a data governance strategy for your company.
Establish a report request/change system
Before you can design a good data governance program, it is important to establish a system for report requests or changes. This will ensure that everyone knows what kinds of reports are available, how they can be accessed, and who is responsible for creating them.
Also, make sure to decide on a tool for making requests. It can be as simple as a Google Doc or Sheet document, or you can go for a more advanced data governance solution.
Find a way to document reports properly
Once you have a system for report requests in place, it is important to find a way to document reports properly. This will ensure that everyone has access to the most up-to-date versions of reports and that all stakeholders are aware of changes that have been made.
You can consider creating a template for documenting a report that is available to all employees. Also, make sure to put this documentation somewhere that users can find it easily.
Focus on data training instead of report tool training
It is more important to focus on data training than tool training when it comes to data governance. This is because most employees will need to understand the data before they can use the reporting tools effectively.
You can hold data training sessions that cover topics such as how to identify good data, how to cleanse and merge data, and how to create data dictionaries.
Only with a proper understanding of data can one make impactful business decisions. With tools like TRUECHART, you can do just that. TRUECHART makes pertinent information readily available, understandable, and actionable within your reporting platform. By utilizing modern design standards and data-dependent collaboration, business decisions become faster and better – powered by the IBCS standards for improved data visualization.
TRUECHART fundamentally changes data visualization and collaboration – powered by standardized IBCS® templates. It provides the speed and scale needed to tackle petabytes of business intelligence in interactive speed to make data management and complex reporting much easier, simpler, and faster.
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