Data Governance
Enterprises today need to view data as a valuable asset that can:
- Provide a competitive advantage and support growth
- Act as an enabler for improvement
- Foster communication and collaboration
- Increase consistency & confidence in decision making
These can be achieved through the establishment of a successful data governance program. Data governance consists of the organization, processes and enabling technologies that manage how data is defined, controlled, utilized, and accessed . The goal of data governance is to ensure the highest quality, highest value data assets obtained from all relevant and appropriate sources are available to all data consumers. In addition, data governace includes risk management guidelines that establish the appropriate process controls and access controls for protection of data assets.
Data governance comprises a set of related organizational, process and technical capabilities that are critical to ensuring that data is recognized and managed and protected as an important organizational asset. These include:
The concept of information integrity is the key to realizing the benefits of data governance and in fact, to all aspects of a business intelligence environment. Information integrity can be defined as the processes, procedures and tools that ensure that the information delivered via the business intelligence environment consistently and accurately reflects the intent of the business. Key components of information integrity include data quality and master data management (MDM).
The implementation of a data governance program can be daunting to any organization. Edgewater believes the most practical approach to implementing data governance is through the incremental delivery of capabilities towards a defined target state. The initial phases focus on establishing the critical organization, process and technical capabilities which will act as the foundation for all future activities. Incremental delivery of data governance and information integrity capabilities provides:
- Flexibility in addressing changing business needs
- Ability to implement those capabilities that are deemed to be more critical to the organization in a timely manner
- Ability to realize return on investment quickly
- Ability to align delivery of capabilities with related business intelligence releases
A data governance implementation roadmap provides the blueprint for the realization of the capabilities based on your unique requirements and target end state. Edgewater data governance services include:
- Data Governance assessment and gap analysis
- Requirements and prioritization
- Roadmap development
- Risk management definition, including process control and access control
- Data Quality and MDM Services
- Assistance with organizational design and roles definition
- Ongoing guidance and participation
