Commentary

Is Data Governable? What Firms Are Doing To Ensure Visibility And Control

Email marketers are at the mercy of the data they are served. So it pays to be aware of their company’s data governance policies and to know the people implementing them. 

Fortunately, 87% of companies have — or are in the process of establishing — data governance as a key part of their business.

And 84% agree that data provides the best opportunity for achieving a competitive advantage, according to “2021 State Of Data Governance and Empowerment,” a study by Enterprise Strategy Group. 

First, a definition: What is data governance? Let’s let the respondents say what it is. They define data governance as:

  • Building a set of policies that govern the organization around data — 64%
  • Ensuring data usage follows define rules — 62%
  • Understanding data quality — 56%
  • Understanding deployed data in terms of sensitivity and/or regulatory requirements — 56%
  • Understanding data flows across the organization—54%
  • Building a framework of people and processes that have responsibilities for data — 53%
  • Understanding deployed data in terms of ensuring it can be understood in context to the business — 48%
  • Building a business glossary of data standards — 36%
  • Business intelligence self-service — 32%
  • Understanding ETL operations and the mapping in them — 30%

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Is your company achieving any or all of the above? And are you getting what you need from the data structure?

If not, here are the challenges that may be getting in the way:

  • Data quality/accuracy — 52%
  • Skills shortage/gap — 43%
  • Cost — 36%
  • Culture change — 35%
  • Operationalizing data governance — 34%
  • Time-to-value — 31%
  • Length of project/slow delivering time — 31%
  • Reliance on developer and other technical resources — 26%
  • Lack of support from the executive management team — 23%
  • We have not experienced any challenges — 5%

Assuming they think data governance, can help, what do brands hope to achieve out of it?

  • Improve data security—48%
  • Improve data quality—45%
  • Improve analytics — 35%
  • Maintain regulatory compliance — 34%
  • Support better decision-making — 27%
  • Increase customer trust/satisfaction — 23%
  • Create data standards uniformity — 20%
  • Support digital transformation initiatives — 20%
  • Reduce colliding policies and processes for data management — 13%
  • Enable data self-service — 9%
  • Increase precision of language — 6%

All that said, most companies are at least somewhat successful at aligning their data governance and data protection strategies: 16% are somewhat there, 48% mostly and 34% completely. 

Are you part of the successful group, or do you have little idea what your company is doing? Among the challenges that still exist:

  • 74% of firms believe they need to better formalize their data-quality refinements 
  • 48% say their end-users struggle due to lack of business context when analyzing data
  • 45% find it hard to determine the right level of data accessibility and availability

Here’s what brands are doing to make sure everyone is up to speed:

  • Improve accessibility of available technology — 48%
  • Deploying new technologies with self-service — 42%
  • Certified training programs — 41%
  • Providing business contact — 40%
  • Investing in communication/collaboration software — 39%
  • Organizational workshops — 39%
  • Existing technology add-ons of self-service capabilities — 38%
  • Averaging next-generation technology like AI/ML to help with recommendations and predictions — 27%

On the positive side, 91% place data governance among their top 10 business and technology priorities.

Enterprise Strategy Group polled 220 respondents at firms with 1,000+ employees and annual revenue of at least $100 million in March.  

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