What is data governance and why do you need it?

Without data governance, it’s almost impossible to meet privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA. And you don’t want to be receiving regulatory fines—they can set you back hundreds of millions of dollars.

That’s why this post goes through everything you need to know about data governance. We’ll cover the meaning, its benefits, and how to implement it into your work processes.

What is data governance?

Data governance is simply managing the availability, integrity, usability, and security of data within your company. This ensures all the data you are collecting is both correct and not misused.

This is especially important as new and stricter data privacy laws are introduced to give customers more power over their data. Failure to manage customer data makes meeting these regulations a hassle, leading to unnecessary fines.

This is where a data governance program simplifies your life. It comprises governance teams, a steering committee, and groups of data stewards.

These professionals work together to build principles around collecting and managing data, making data management easy.

Now that we know the data governance definition, let’s cover some benefits.

What are the benefits of data governance?

Here are some pros to implementing data governance into your work processes:

• Meeting regulatory requirements is straightforward
• It removes data silos
• It improves marketing performance

Meeting regulatory requirements is straightforward

Companies that fail to meet privacy laws are often hit with fines costing millions of dollars.

Without data governance, you don’t know where data is coming from, if it’s reliable, and how useful it is, so meeting these laws is challenging. But because of the 360-degree view that data governance provides, you have all the tools you need to meet regulations like:

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS)
• California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

It removes data silos

The most significant benefit to integrating data governance into your business is that it breaks down silos so information is easier to find.

Siloed information occurs when a business creates multiple units without a centralized depository. This causes employees to hunt for information and negatively impacts productivity.

With data governance, you gather all this information under one virtual roof. This way, stakeholders, managers, and employees have access to critical data, resulting in better customer understanding.

It improves marketing performance

Another significant benefit to data governance is improved marketing performance. Optimizing marketing campaigns is more straightforward because you understand customer data and know where it’s coming from.

Here’s a data governance example: You might find that your website brings in many leads via the contact page, but visitors aren’t signing up for your newsletter.

From there, you and your team could run split tests to find the problem. Maybe your copy is weak or you aren’t hitting the correct pain points.

How to implement data governance into your business

Here’s how to implement a basic data governance program into your business:

1. Identify and gather the owners of data assets
2. Get one person to take the lead
3. Implement policies, principles, and data standards

Step 1: Identify and gather the owners of data assets

First, identify key employees and stakeholders who manage data assets within your company and get them involved in the data governance program. Together, these individuals have access to all available data.

This information won’t be organized, and some of it isn’t reliable and trustworthy. That’s where step two comes in.

Step 2: Get one person to take the lead

Having one person in charge allows for better structure. They can build a program without siloes, delegate tasks to the governance team, decide who needs access to what, and identify qualified stewards.

This person could be a chief data officer, a dedicated data governance manager, or an executive sponsor.

Step 3: Implement policies, principles, and data standards

Now comes the hard part. Once you’ve gathered owners of data assets and structured your data governance program, it’s time to introduce and develop policies, standards, and rules that determine how data should be used.

You’ll also need to set up controls and audit procedures that ensure your company meets data compliance laws.

In addition, your IT data governance team should start to understand where data is coming from, how it’s stored, and how your company protects it from hackers and security attacks.

Data governance made easy with Lytics

Data governance is a must for every business. It makes meeting privacy rules easy since you get a 360-degree view of customers. This detailed understanding allows you to run better marketing campaigns and develop your product or service around customers’ needs.

It also helps prevent and break down siloed information, optimizing productivity.

If you’re looking for a customer data platform to help govern data, reach out to request a Lytics free trial.