Business and IT Alignment Around Data Governance

The CDO’s dilemma

Simply walk into any business meeting and the dilemma is clear as day: is the data stored by your organization to be trusted? It’s a safe bet that 3 out of 5 times (if not more), both business and IT alignment can’t articulate answers to what many would consider easy-to-answer questions.

Here’s the test: Take any report being discussed in a business meeting and simply ask one or more of the following six questions. In no time, it will become clear that everyone is not on the same page.

• Who can give me the correct definition of the data on that report?
• Who can tell me where they go to understand the data on that report?
• Can anyone tell me the quality of the data on that report?
• Are there synonyms being used to describe the same terms on that report?
• What’s the source of the data on the report?
• Who is the data owner(s) for the information on that report?

In addition to fumbling when it comes to data trust, CDO’s know that to make an impact, the business must leverage data to drive revenue for a competitive advantage. This can’t be accomplished without a baseline understanding of that data. According to Datawatch, only 12% of enterprise data is used for information and decision making, leaving 88% of enterprise data untouched.

Within organizations, most business users don’t even know where to find new data sources. Those that do, refrain from using them because of the same fundamental issue discussed – lack of trust. If a business user doesn’t have transparency into the quality of the data nor the data owner to ask questions, the user may simply not utilize the data, or worse yet, assume the data is good enough to use. This type of scenario persists across many organizations where IT owns data, but various lines of business use the data. In order to be successful, a collaborative effort must exist between IT and business that shares responsibility for the understanding and utilization of data.

This white paper explores how a IT and business alignment must exist to share responsibility for the understanding and utilization of data.