Organizations know that leveraging data and insights to inform decisions leads to better outcomes. Yet, Forrester finds that fewer than 10% of enterprises are advanced in their insights-driven capabilities. The key differentiator between beginner, intermediate, and advanced capabilities is not primarily about technology or data; it’s about the organizational habits and practices that enable all stakeholders to securely access timely, relevant, clean, complete data for developing insights and applying it to their decisions. This is the realm of data governance.

At DS&I 2022, I delved into data governance operating models and outlined a roadmap toward federated data governance. This year, I will focus on operationalizing data governance to unlock analytical success. Here is a glimpse of the pivotal data governance activities I will discuss in my session “Data Governance Is The Foundation Of Analytics Success” at Forrester’s upcoming Data Strategy & Insights event, September 13–14 in Austin, Texas:

  • Data security and privacy compliance: Organizations, regulators, and consumers are all concerned about data breaches and privacy violations. Safeguarding sensitive data and providing privacy controls are pivotal for ensuring regulatory compliance as well as instilling confidence in employees, investors, and customers. Data governance frameworks, policies, and procedures establish data protection and access control mechanisms to ensure that data is only used by authorized people for appropriate purposes.
  • Data ownership, sharing, and collaboration: Organizations suffer from data silos when information is isolated within different systems or departments. These silos hinder efficient analytics and pose significant risks. Collaboration, a centralized repository of data knowledge, and the establishment of data-sharing channels are vital to overcome this challenge. A data governance framework defines roles and responsibilities to ensure data ownership that supports data definitions, quality standards, sharing parameters, and access control enabling users to easily discover, understand, and utilize available data assets.
  • Data accessibility and self-service: While promoting collaboration between business users, data analysts, data engineers, and data scientists, data governance also ensures that analytics teams can access the right data at the right time. Well-defined data governance policies provide guidelines for data access, usage, and interpretation, supporting business users with the ability to explore and analyze data on their own. Through robust governance, organizations strike a balance between data democratization and data control, enabling users to make informed decisions while maintaining data quality and security.

Data governance is not just a checkbox exercise, but a strategic investment that can propel you ahead of the competition. Please look at the agenda and reserve a spot at Data Strategy & Insights 2023 to equip yourself with the knowledge and strategies necessary to drive analytics success in your organization.