Position Treatment of Quality Issues Closest To Your Source of Data Creation For Effective Governance.…..
Many organizations continue to bandage their poor-quality data with focus on remediating issues downstream of their value chain. Poor quality data is largely caused by lack of adequate controls and leakages in our upstream data environment.
For effective governance to be realized quickly in your data environment, you must position governance and treatment of quality issues closest to the source of data creation or origination. The reality is that quality issues in our data are largely introduced at the point of origin and data creation. Hence, effective governance of the same must be targeted closest to these sources prone to our prevailing issues. We must invest our time and resources in addressing quality issues and control gaps where it matters. Rightfully in the upstream journey of our data value chain.
Data Governance is about the optimal health of our data asset. Effective Governance is actualized with preventive care of controls around issues, gaps, and leakages in our data and remediation of existing issues at the root cause. Data Governance presents the opportunity for a bilateral approach to addressing and improving your data quality:
1. By instilling quality controls, Due Diligence, and Treatment at the source or closest to the source
2. By managing and monitoring enforced rules along the value chain with stewardship
It is important to position your data governance adoption investment in your upstream channels and platforms before the same proliferates downstream to other interfacing or consumption channels.
The health of your Data must be strategically governed by introducing quality rules and controls at your origination points and enforcing the same standards and rules across the data journey with cumulative stewardship care.
The magic formular for accelerating your data quality maturity is addressing the health of your data by treating the root cause of issues and preventing re-occurrence of the same; by enforcing same quality standards of care along the data journey - Making sure data is owned for accountability; Use and purpose of data is defined; data journey is traceable; quality rules are enforced and monitored; reported issues are logged and swiftly remediated and changes are managed in a timely manner.
This governance approach of addressing quality issues aims at reducing the cost and time organizations currently spend curating their data to support ongoing data demands and initiatives. Ie. Analytics, AI, decision support, and meaningful insight.
The essence of Data Governance is to promote quality care at the source, ensure adherence along the journey and position trusted, business-ready data at a fraction of the time currently spent today by most organizations to ready their data for insight.
Knowing where to rightfully govern our data allows for operational efficiency and allows our business users to spend enough time in making business decisions instead of spending 80% of their time getting the same to provide meaningful insight.
Why must we target instilling quality closest to the SOR?
I'll use the analogy of how farmers treat their crops to realize optimal harvest. They apply fertilizers and manures to the soil to target the root as the source of nutrients for the tree to yield an optimal harvest. They then tend to the tree (branches and leaves) daily as the tree grows to protect and ensure it produces a great harvest.
The same goes for governing data as an asset. When we rightfully target our sources of record and data creation with needed guardrails, quality rules, and controls to prevent the introduction of bad data quality, we're setting up our data for ultimate success where it truly matters. When we position stewardship of cumulative responsibility along the value chain to ensure continuous monitoring and adherence to defined quality rules at the source of creation. We're positioning our governance adoption for continuous value-add yields.
Application of controls and quality rules upstream of our data value chain should never be debated or compromised for effective governance to be realized.
Knowing where and how to effectively govern your data asset is as equally important as deciding to govern your data asset. I wrote about the importance of knowing your starting point, understanding the landscape of your quality issues, and areas of potential opportunities in my recent article ‘The Journey of A Thousand Miles Must Start With A Known Presence’ The Journey of A Thousand Miles...
The following highlights some of the value-adds of treating your data quality issues closest to the Source of Creation:
· It reduces the cost of continuous data cleaning and cleansing as a reported issue becomes minimal over time.
· It reduces the level of anomalies in our data to a level where insight is easily derived and frees up the amount of time and resource spent on poor quality data.
· Promotes quicker identification and resolution of quality issues along the data journey.
· Promotes accountability and stewardship around data
· Provides every data citizen opportunity to be intimate with their data.
· Accelerates the journey of realizing trusted, business-ready data.
· Provides data transparency along the data journey
· Exposes data usage - who is using data, which processes are involved, areas of conflicts, and redundancies.
· Accelerates 'Data to Insight' time drastically so that decision making can be easier, operational efficiency can be materialized and analytics can be optimized.
In summary, Data Quality issues are best addressed closest to the point of data creation. Developing Quality rules to address prevailing issues in your data sources is key to realizing the desired outcome around the same data. Once these rules and controls are effective at the source, the same rules are monitored with edit checks along points of integration, aggregation as data moves through the value chain, ensuring enforcement of defined rules stays true and the same along the data journey without compromise.
For more help with setting up your Governance adoption for success. Book a Free Call with me to discuss your challenges and we can explore simple strategies to actualize your desired goals.
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