Data Quality Dashboarding ……… A Call-to-Action Your Data Fitness. ….. Use it as a catalyst to sensitize Your People & Culture around the health of you
Most organizations can never quantify the cost of poor data quality. The sad truth is that many organizations are currently in denial about their data health, hence why many still need to see the 'burning bush' before investing in Data Governance. One of the most asked questions by many organizations struggling with their data governance adoption today or sitting on the fence is - How do I justify my organization's data governance adoption? How do I justify the funding?
I parallel this question to asking how do I justify the cost of taking care of my physical & mental health? The answer is simply obvious. You only have one body and one mental space. And this physical body is all you have as your vehicle to journey through life. If you want to be around long enough and if you want to continue to play in the game of life and its narratives, you need no pitching or debate around why you should be taking care of your physical or mental health. You just do it, unless you're ready to check out of here sooner than later.
The same mindset goes for your data as an organization. How do you justify data governance adoption?
Governance is your vehicle to optimal data quality. I highlighted this in my recent article. Data Quality And Data Governance Are Conjoined Twins
Your data health drives your relevance as an organization in the global market. You can't forge it, and there's no magic wand around it. We're in a data-driven world and the currency of operation in today's data-driven world is 'fit and governed' data. You can't survive without it. Your governance adoption is the only discipline that would help check the needed guardrails around your people, culture, and processes to establish fit and trusted data. A governed data environment is the only way you can continue to play in today's economy.
Your Data is your number one asset as an organization in today's economy. But, it can only be an asset when it's at its best. i.e., trusted, insightful, business-ready, and working for you.
For you to realize this, you must be intentional about drawing awareness around your data quality.
So, how do you draw quality awareness and justification around investing in the health of your data?
It's simply the same way you draw awareness into the state of your physical and psychological health because it's that important, and it's critically foundational to everything and anything you do. For your health, you simply check in with your physician to know what's going on. You go for a 'blood work' to assess the state of your health and reveal areas of potential risks you need to swiftly mitigate with preventive caution and decisions to stop anything bad from happening.
For your organization's health, you need to do the same. The reality today is that many organizations are simply blinded at the state of their data quality. They coast along in poor data environment without harnessing the full potential in their data asset simply because they've forged a way to keep the light on in their daily operations, and no one is screaming yet or complaining that they can't run their reports, or they can't make decisions. Operating without a true assessment of your data health is simply data blindness.
Being data driven doesn't mean you're heading to optimal value and limitless opportunities. The question you ought to ask yourself is, where is your data driving you? If you're operating in a data blinded, ungoverned environment, you're being driven down the ditch of failure and missed opportunities.
You simply need to swiftly check-in on your data health and not settle for business as usual. Today's business cannot afford to operate on 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' mentality. You need to get in touch with the reality of what's going on in your data health.
So, How do you check in with the reality of your data health?
One of the most powerful and simple tools every organization needs to embrace in a smart way is Data Quality Dashboarding. Many organizations are not foreign to the idea of dashboarding to 'show and tell' their annual performance and declare a bragging right to impress their shareholders and the world. Every organization does this with its annual report without missing a beat.
This same tool of telling the story of success can also be turned to use as a catalyst for 'a call to action' around your data health.
What does a good quality dashboard for a call to action look like?
1. A good quality dashboard should sensitize your people to the health and fitness of your data as an organization.
2. A good quality dashboard should motion your data owners and data citizens to action around fixing the health of their data and effectively contribute to the governance of the same.
3. A good dashboarding culture in your organization would accelerate the cultural transformation of mindset around data creation and data consumption ethics.
4. It would highlight not only areas of potential risks, leakages, and gaps in your data health; it might also reveal areas of potential opportunities for growth and new market.
5. It would trigger healthy competition between your data owners and data domains.
6. It will help build accountability and stewardship around the health of your data.
7. It will accelerate your journey to optimal data quality as you build a cadence to showcase your quality dashboard as part of your performance metrics for each business line and function.
Here are some practical tips to kick off an excellent dashboarding culture in your organization as part of your DQ framework rollout:
· Begin by profiling your data to get the initial baseline quality of your data.
· Review your profiling results with each business line and data owners to analyze the results.
· Prioritize your data in order of importance based on materiality and criticality to remediate
· Develop quality rules and controls to remediate issues.
· Establish Key Quality Indicators(KQI) and Thresholds to measure quality based on ranking and prioritization.
· Develop Issues Remediation Plans and Establish Service Level Agreements(SLA) for data fixes based on prioritization.
· Triage issues and assign ownership
· Remediate & Monitor Issues with ongoing cadence.
In a nutshell, using a Quality dashboard to tell your data story and sensitize your people around your data health is a must for every organization hoping to win and thrive in today's economy. If you're already on data governance and quality management adoption journey, this should be one of your key deliverables to put in place. You need to start tracking where you're winning and where you're losing with your data. Waiting for breakdowns to happen in your business operation before putting one in place Is simply a therapy for disaster. The longer you wait to put one in place, the more challenging it could be for you to get your head above the water.
Simply put, governing the health of your data with quality dashboarding as part of your rhythm is smart governance.
Need help establishing a good cadence around the health of your data? Book a Free Call with me to discuss your challenges, and we can explore simple strategies to actualize your governance success.
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