Opinion: The Importance of Data Quality in Enterprise Data Governance

In today's world, data is like oil - it fuels growth and change. It creates new infrastructures, businesses, politics, and economics. However, with increasing data volumes and complexity, trust and confidence in data are declining. This is where data quality and governance come in.

Data governance practices can help us drive business advantage from improved customer experience to better supplier relations, leading to more sales and lower costs. However, the importance of data quality cannot be overstated.

The accuracy of data impacts all parts of the business, from sales and marketing to legal and compliance. Data governance needs appropriate data quality processes and tools to not only clean the raw data but to illustrate data errors, peculiarities, and issues, in order to help compile the best standards, establish key metrics, and monitor the data quality over time.

Changes in data quality can undermine trust, and it's more than simply understanding your data. Measuring and monitoring the ongoing quality of data is critical to successful data governance.

Establishing a method for measuring and reporting on data quality includes capturing metadata for data sources, profiling data sources required for the desired analysis, evaluating data sources for identified and required qualities of the data, and implementing processes for continuous improvement.

To get data quality and enterprise data governance moving in your organization, start small by identifying business objectives, securing executive sponsorship, and initiating small projects to evaluate project results. Collaborate to establish a common language, gain broader buy-in, enrich information, and share insights regularly. Finally, quantify initiatives, drive value, capture data, and improve upon it over time.

In conclusion, data quality and governance are essential for successful business growth and change in the modern world. By understanding their symbiotic relationship and implementing best practices, businesses can leverage data to drive valuable business outcomes