How to Scale Data Governance

for Digital Transformation

A guide for tech-minded data leaders
reimagining data governance
Introduction 02

This Is Big. And Impactful.

Change is sweeping the enterprise. The good news is that the C-suite is waking up To overcome these issues, data governance
Everywhere you look, businesses are to the value of data. It’s now recognized as the needs to become more collaborative,
pivoting, evolving, accelerating, disrupting, fuel that powers innovation and drives every transparent, and agile—and it has to do
and defending against disruption. There’s significant digital transformation. It’s also it at scale. So that it can serve the whole
never been a more exciting time to be part redefining how we work. Critical capabilities like enterprise, not just individual departments
of an ambitious business. automation, intelligent security, and analytics or other organizational silos.
all rely on accurate, reliable, trusted data.
If you’re a data leader, this is a massive That’s what this eBook is all about—building
opportunity. You have the chance to And as data rises up the corporate agenda, a flexible technological foundation that can
cement your status as an intelligent so too does data governance. It’s fast becoming support enterprise-wide, data-driven digital
disruptor by demonstrating the value a strategic priority and an indispensable transformation. It’s a practical guide based on
of data as a strategic asset. business function. our experiences helping some of the world’s
most ambitious enterprises launch and scale
But it’s also a time of challenges. You’re But it’s also clear that traditional data successful data governance programs.
responsible for making your business more governance isn’t enough. Big, strategic,
agile, adaptive, and intelligent. And that data-driven digital transformations demand We hope it sparks a whole new way of thinking
means you’ll need to challenge the status a more expansive, business-focused approach. about data governance.
quo, implement new technologies, and And this new type of holistic data governance
reimagine critical business processes. needs to tackle some significant challenges:
ever-increasing data volumes; new kinds of
data users; and the intense complexity of
today’s application and data environments.
All the while, it must continue to support
regulatory compliance.
Part One 03

Why Scale Matters

Data governance needs to be scalable

for three important reasons.

1. Digital transformation affects multiple 2. Next-generation analytics depends 3. Regulations often affect your
business functions on big data whole enterprise

Your program will need to serve hundreds, The most effective analytics initiatives Compliance is a key data governance
or even thousands, of individuals—internally draw on data from across the entire use case and, more often than not,
and externally. enterprise. That means all of your data regulations apply to your entire enterprise.
needs to be accessible and trusted. For example, the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR) requires the governance
of personal data regardless of where it
resides in the organization.
Part One 04

In technical terms, this need for scalability –– Enabling users with varying levels The need for speed
presents four critical challenges: of technical proficiency to self-serve the
data they need for data governance and To be effective, data governance needs
–– Ensuring policies, rules, and definitions analytics purposes. to move at the pace of the business. If it
are applied to massive (and rapidly can’t flex to meet changing requirements,
growing) amounts of data scattered –– Ensuring data can be appropriately then it’ll end up hindering your people
across the enterprise. governed, transformed, and reliably and, by extension, your business.
delivered across hundreds of applications
–– Delivering trusted data to a broad range and analytics deployments (in the cloud, Maintaining efficiency and agility is
of individuals who hold a variety of on-premises, or both). relatively easy when you’re running a
different roles—from business leaders small project but it’s much more difficult
to data stewards and developers. The good news is that addressing these when you’re managing an initiative that
challenges has never been easier. involves multiple departments and
hundreds of stakeholders.

Your objective isn’t just to support scale;

it’s to support scale, without sacrificing
speed. So that your initiative is always
agile and efficient, whether it’s serving
100 people, or over 10,000—and whether
it’s focused on thousands of records,
or billions.
Part Two 05

How to Make Data Governance

More Scalable

All data governance programs are different, Your data catalog needs to meet both these Finding that person, and enabling them to share
so there’s no one template that can be applied needs and provide visibility into data wherever what they know, does more than make your data
to every enterprise. Having said that, there are it resides—in applications, infrastructure governance program more effective—it also
certain actions you can take to build a robust, systems, on-premises, or in the cloud. It also helps you secure buy-in. And the more people
yet adaptable, technical foundation for needs to put data in context. When users can who understand the value of data governance,
effective data governance. see where data has come from, who’s been the easier it’ll be to scale your program.
using it, and how it’s been used in the past,
Catalog your data they can make better decisions when they use A collaboration tool that brings together
it. This means you need a system that uses workflows, policies, definitions, and rules will
Every initiative begins with a discovery process. multiple types of metadata to categorize data. help you create a source of truth about the
If you’re a data governance specialist, you need Only then can you present users with a holistic, value, reliability, and lineage of your enterprise’s
to identify the data you’ll be managing and contextual view of data. data assets, one that everyone involved can
governing. If you’re an analyst, you need to find agree on. Look for a solution that will help
the data that’ll help you generate new insights. Enable collaboration across the business business stakeholders:

For every opportunity and challenge your –– Define what success means for the program
data governance program must address— at a policy, rule, and quantitative level.
regarding policies, definitions, rules, and data
types—there’s someone, somewhere in your –– Align with their technical counterparts
organization, who understands the problem to instrument their data management
and knows how it should be solved for the operations accordingly.
best possible outcome.
–– Assess and monitor attainment and
business outcomes on an ongoing basis.
Part Two 06

Gain agility by aligning your people Automate with artificial intelligence Here are just a few examples of how AI-enabled
data governance tools work in practice:
When an opportunity arises, you need to react Manual data governance processes may
quickly. From a data governance perspective, be manageable when you’re serving one –– Data users working with one data set can
this means providing the right people with the department, but they can suddenly transform be presented with similar data sets that
right information as quickly as possible, so that into big and expensive problems when you’re provide context.
they can take the right actions. serving the entire enterprise and supporting
big data requirements. –– New unstructured data can be onboarded,
A best-practice decision-making framework, structured, and categorized automatically.
like a DACI approach (Driver, Approver, The good news is that machine learning tools
Contributor, and Informed), will help your team can now help you automate many of the –– Data can be tagged automatically based
work together more efficiently. But you’ll need functions needed for critical data-element on the logic learned from previous
to support this model by creating a workflow discovery, quality, rule-based verification, tagging practices.
that orchestrates the various components and reporting. They can also help you improve
of your data governance program. That way productivity by providing users with intelligent All of these capabilities may seem relatively
everyone will be working based on a shared recommendations. minor, but put together they add up to
understanding of business processes. significant savings in terms of time and
resources, especially when they’re operated
at the scale needed to process hundreds of
millions of records—or more. And when your
team doesn’t have to bother with routine data
management tasks, they can spend more time
on more meaningful activities.
Part Three 07

Scaling Your Solution: An Example

It’s unlikely that your first data governance –– A data governance console, to visualize
initiative will be an enterprise-wide program. data lineage, bridge the gap between
You’ll probably want to start small, prove business users and IT, and track
value, and broaden the scope of your program the performance of your project.
incrementally. That means your data
governance solution will adapt and evolve over –– A data catalog, to enable data stewards
time to incorporate new business initiatives, and data users to discover and access all
more data, and additional users. of the data in the enterprise.

Here’s an example of how this might happen. –– A data quality application that can tackle,
and potentially automate, the process of
Let’s say your first project is designed to cleansing, standardizing, and enriching data.
streamline the reporting process for your finance
department. You’ll need to understand how
data is flowing to and from the department
and identify any issues that are impacting data
quality. That means you’ll want to consider the
following solutions:
Part Three 08

Now let’s say this project is a success and

your product management team approaches
you for help securing its data. You can use the
same architecture you have in place, but you’ll
probably have to integrate it with new data
management tools and capabilities, such as:

–– An intelligent data platform, to manage –– Automation and AI, so that the platform
data from all sources (for example, provides intelligent suggestions and
third-party applications or databases). automates routine data management tasks.
Part Three 09

Once your program has hit its stride, your

Data Protection Officer asks for your assistance
implementing a GDPR compliance program. He
wants you to help him track how customer and
employee data moves between your enterprise,
customers, suppliers, and other third parties.

This is a big job and you’ll need to adapt

your solution again. For example, you may
want to add:

–– A master data management tool to –– A data security intelligence solution that This is a simplified example, but we hope it
manage customer and employee consent allows you to track the use and movement shows how and why data governance solutions
and maintain a single, 360-degree view of data to ensure it’s within GDPR-compliant often evolve from relatively lightweight point
of all the rights granted to use customer usage rights. solutions to powerful strategic assets.
and employee data.
Part Four 10

What to Look for in a

Data Governance Solution

Your data governance solution will need to But these are just the fundamentals. The best
give you certain capabilities. It needs to be solutions will also:
modular to support you in starting small and
demonstrating value, and it needs to scale –– Deliver all of the capabilities and
rapidly to add additional capabilities to serve functionality you need in one modular,
your entire enterprise. yet fully integrated platform.

–– Meet the requirements of both business and

technical users, enabling them to collaborate.

–– Utilize artificial intelligence so you can

increase productivity even when you’re
onboarding ever-increasing amounts
of data and tackling new use cases.

–– Enable users to access and manage any

type of data from any data source across the
entire enterprise—in the cloud, on-premises,
or big data anywhere.
Conclusion 11

A Sizeable Opportunity

As your enterprise continues to do more with

data, the importance of data governance is
only going to grow.

But to capitalize on data governance, you

need to ensure that it’s scalable enough to
serve the whole enterprise—all of your people
and all of your data. Only then can it be a truly
strategic business function that doesn’t just
support data-driven digital transformation,
but accelerates it.

The tools you need to build a robust and

scalable foundation for data governance are
out there. It just takes a commitment to a
holistic, strategic approach; an understanding
of what makes governance scalable; and the will
to drive this new approach to data governance
through the organization.

We’re here to help.

 12

Further Reading

Get started now

Read our workbook, The Data Governance Program Workbook,

for practical guidance on launching your first data governance
initiative and scaling it into an enterprise-wide program that
can support digital transformation.

DOWNLOAD NOW
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