Data quality management begins with data governance

Digg This!     StumbleUpon     Del.icio.us

RELATED CONTENT Data governance and quality Are there data governance plans, templates or standard procedures? Should we buy data quality management tools or focus on policies? Resolving data ownership issues with external funders, organizations Where to find new academic resources on data quality best practices How to estimate customer data cleansing costs Data quality management for data warehouses What is high quality information? Data quality management tools: Where to get unbiased information Roles and salaries of data quality and governance analysts The role of data governance in unstructured data Data quality techniques and best practices Understanding five major enterprise information management benefits Gartner: Open source data quality software focuses on data profiling Poor data quality costing companies millions of dollars annually Are there data governance plans, templates or standard procedures? Should we buy data quality management tools or focus on policies? Where to find new academic resources on data quality best practices How to improve data quality on a tight budget -- a guide Data quality management tips and best practices Peachtree Data uses SAP BOBJ Data Services to clean up mailing lists Data quality software, including dashboards for non-IT users, gaining traction Data governance strategy Do you need enterprise information management software to conduct EIM? Birst takes SaaS BI out of the cloud, battles data security fears Master data management adoption 'broad but shallow' across industries Data governance software has unexpected benefits for LTC Partners What exactly is data governance and what falls under this category? Are there data governance plans, templates or standard procedures? Resolving data ownership issues with external funders, organizations The importance of metadata management in EIM Keys to planning an enterprise information management (EIM) initiative Disjointed eDiscovery practices exposing companies to legal risk, rising costs

RELATED GLOSSARY TERMS Terms from Whatis.com − the technology online dictionary data  (SearchDataManagement.com) data governance  (SearchDataManagement.com) data quality  (SearchDataManagement.com) data scrubbing  (SearchDataManagement.com) fixed data  (SearchDataManagement.com) raw data  (SearchDataManagement.com)

RELATED RESOURCES 2020software.com, trial software downloads for accounting software, ERP software, CRM software and business software systems Search Bitpipe.com for the latest white papers and business webcasts Whatis.com, the online computer dictionary

Well, that is a short question that would require a book-length answer to do it justice. Instead of inundating you with information, let me give you a few high-level pieces of advice to get your data quality management initiative moving on the right track. First of all, you need to be sure that the executives at your company recognize the data quality problem and endorse the need to rectify it. By this I mean a couple of things. Data (perhaps, more accurately, information) needs to be treated as a valuable corporate asset. This means imbuing data with the same value as your other corporate assets – and then treating it accordingly. What are your other corporate assets? Capital, human resources, intellectual property, office buildings and equipment, and so on. You protect, manage, inventory and even model all of these assets (what is an org chart but a model of your human resources?). Executives do not need to be told to manage these assets, but perhaps they do when it comes to data. Have you defined and inventoried all of the critical data elements needed by your organization? Does your company know where every piece of data is? And yes, I am talking about copied data – even in Excel spreadsheets on your user's desktops.

Only when you know what it is that you are dealing with can you ever hope to ensure that it is accurate. With that in mind, how is data governance implemented (if at all) in your organization? Data governance encompasses the people, processes and procedures to create a consistent, enterprise view of a company's data in order to increase consistency and confidence in decision making, decrease the risk of regulatory fines and improve data security. Consider these questions:

• Does your company have a team of IT professionals focused on data governance?
• Or do you just have the DBA group, with anything even remotely relating to data getting foisted upon them?
• Is IT aligned with business so that each data element gets the proper treatment it requires for the business as well as in terms of governmental regulations?
• Or do you hobble along with IT and business interacting only when necessary to gather program and database specifics?

Of course, you can always take some baby steps along the way and do not have to implement a grand data governance practice before doing anything. Procuring and implementing a data profiling tool can help to show you the existing state of your data – and perhaps help you start cleaning up your data.

Good luck.

More information on data quality management and data governance

• Read Data quality management: Follow the doctor's orders to get expert recommendations for data quality management in business intelligence and data warehousing projects.
• Read Data governance: Tips for techies and managers for easy-to-read data governance advice.