Data governance as a strategic enabler

Before you can dive into building out the data governance business case, you must understand the business outcomes the company is driving. In order to draft data objectives, you need to first understand the entire company strategy. If you don’t have it already, request a copy of the company strategy. Ask questions to understand it fully. Then, work with your data domain executives to understand both their priorities and how their business unit or corporate function is delivering upon the company strategy. What outcomes are they required to achieve to create the value the company requires? Ultimately, the definition of these outcomes will support the wider company strategy and lead to business outcomes that are highly relevant and critical to the success of your organization.

The point is that you must define a path that clearly demonstrates how data and analytics will power your company and not slow it down. Often, when individuals hear the word “governance,” they equate it to bureaucracy, friction, and slowing down progress. You must show how what you and your team will do will add value and enable the business and to do so without a negative impact on progress. It’s critical that you define a mission and clear objectives that demonstrate this point clearly.

The mission of the chief data and analytics office

The purpose of the chief data and analytics office is to drive the business outcomes needed with data and analytics solutions. It is not to sit on the side of business; rather, it is to achieve the organizational outcomes by serving this with the business. It is an accelerant to results. Success is determined by business outcomes, and thus, the chief data & analytics office must define its mission as such. Start by defining what your team is to do in business. It may contain guiding principles such as the following:

• Inspire enterprise thinking
• Deliver business outcomes powered by insights
• Define and implement the delivery model for common data and analytic solutions
• Curate solutions that embed insights when and where the business needs it
• Ensure business is executed with governance by design, which is embedded in the processes
• Drive operational efficiencies through automation
• Create revenue streams or speed revenue generation cycles
• Reduce risk and remediate compliance issues

Ultimately, you and your team should craft a powerful mission statement that encompasses the full suite of your service to and with the company. Think about the question, What is our intention?

Important note

Let’s consider a couple of example mission statements:

• Empower the company with timely, trustworthy, and relevant insights to drive revenue to USD 1B and beyond.
• The chief data and analytics office will unlock revenue, drive efficiency, and reduce regulatory compliance risk for Bank XYZ.

The mission of the data governance program

Once you have defined the mission of the chief data & analytics office, you must next define the mission of your data governance program. Your data governance program will need to take into consideration what problems you need to solve for your company and how you intend to solve them. This program should be an enabler and collaborator in solving problems for the company in a way that serves their broad interests. It can be as simple as the following:

We do X for Y by doing A, B, and C.

“We deliver enterprise-wide data governance capabilities for all corporate functions by enabling governance by design in our platforms, powering data management solutions, and delivering trusted, curated data solutions when it matters.”

Determine the projects, programs, and budgets needed to enable the enterprise activities required for delivery against the company data and analytics strategy. As we go through Part 2 of this book and dive deeper into each data governance capability, think about where you are with your company. Do these capabilities exist? To what degree? What gaps are you seeing? These gaps become your programs, projects, and deliverables. I suggest you come back to this section as we baseline your organization in Chapter 4.