Case Study: Sallie Mae Drives Data Governance In A Complex Environment

Sallie Mae is a financial services company specializing in education, offering college savings programs, tuition payment plans, and education loans. In 2006, the firm developed a marketing strategy to directly target its end customers — students — to complement its traditional approach of marketing to schools. But the CIO and senior business leaders recognized that some existing data quality and timeliness issues could affect the firm's ability to effectively market to students. To mitigate these potential problems, Sallie Mae initiated a data governance program to help drive the data quality (DQ) improvements needed to support its new strategic direction. The data governance team used four best practices that allowed it to gain early cross-enterprise credibility, provide business-oriented measures of the value the program was delivering, and position it to continue adding value as an ongoing function. The result? Sallie Mae's data governance program now influences millions of dollars of revenue growth and cost savings across the enterprise.