The current technological blue eyed boys are social media and cloud computing. But amongst these Goliaths there is a little David, working his way towards popularity and acceptance. We are talking about data governance which has got sidelined by other more glamorous IT phenomena. Companies, big and small, are waking up to the benefits of governing their data with the help of data management systems to produce consistent results. Yet there are a number of organizations that are not able to take complete advantage of this practice because they don’t consider information as an asset.
What is data governance?
The concept of data governance is ever evolving and hence there cannot be a textbook definition of it. It can be stated as a discipline that governs the overall management, storage, usage and protection of the organizational information. Every organization generates data related to their clients and also their internal processes. What is disheartening is that they fail to treat data as an asset to the organization which deserves a dedicated governance tool.
Why is it becoming important?
1. Data Sharing
An important part of data governance is the ease of data sharing it provides. Imagine a messy cupboard full of files and you surrounded by hard copies trying to go through each document carefully to find a single file you need to send. Data governance tools and resources are very useful in quickly finding and sharing files with users in your organization.
2. Data Reusability
The central idea behind implementing data governance is the need to reuse data time and again. Consider this, if you run a construction company, then it is given that there would be a lot of documents that need to be revised and reused like blueprints or construction plans by multiple people including the architects, structural engineers and others working on the project. Without a data governance tool, your paperwork could be a shoddy mess with unnecessary exchange of different versions of the same document. With a data management tool, you could share and reuse the same data frequently and notify other members about the changes made.
3. Data Analytics
How do you know if you are headed in the right direction of your progress chart? The answer is analytics. Businesses that don’t have data governance as a part of their company structure often face difficulties in analyzing the data at hand. Poor analysis of data results in poor management level decisions. The data generated in an organization keeps on growing exponentially and hence it is important to analyze and organize data for better re usability. Fast growing small businesses, especially, quickly outgrow manual analyses and soon find it hard to deal with larger amounts of data. Analyzing data conveniently also decreases the time taken to solve consumer queries.
4. Data Backup
Have you ever imagined the amount of damage a crashed computer hard drive can do to your business? If your data is not backed up, this risk multiplies manifold. Data governance simplifies storage and backup of data.
5. Data Security
Data is the most integral asset of an organization. Misuse of data or other such deliberate activities could give you serious legal woes at the worst or give you a bad name amongst clients at the least. Data governance tools provide data security from external as well as internal members with permission sharing and file hierarchy.
It doesn’t matter if you are a small business venture or a large organization; to stay ahead in the race, you need a data governance system in place. Implementing a simple document management system such as GLOBODOX is perhaps the easiest and most effective method for an organization wishing to move towards data governance.
