On Data Governance & Data Management

Data Management without Data Governance will not be effective; Data Governance without Data Management will not be efficient.

Data has never been more important in business as it is in this period in time. Every organization that wants to stay relevant in their industry and to their customers and that has goals to grow will put in place either a Data Management strategy or a Data Governance strategy.

Unfortunately some organizations will only implement Data Management without considering putting in place the right authority on how their data is governed and some organizations do not invest on a technology that can enable them to manage their data in a scalable and efficient manner.

That is why both Data Governance and Data Management should be properly planned, executed and maintained as part of an organization's data strategy.

Data Governance will ensure that there is the right authority in place for defining data ownership, data policies & standards and data stewardship while Data Management will put in place the right process and technology that enables correct, complete and timely data for the organization.

For example, the data policies & standards defined by data owners and executed & maintained by data stewards can be best implemented across the organization using the right data management platform (e.g. Master Data Management or MDM). Every request for creation & update of a master data can be controlled and checked against a set of standards and policies defined within the MDM platform. All data quality checks (e.g. matching, merging, de-duplication, synchronization, standardization, etc.) based on standards and policies by the Data Governance Council (DGC) can be defined in the MDM platform and executed in a scalable and efficient manner by the data sterwards.

On the other hand, if you only implement an MDM without the right data policies and standards, you will soon find that your MDM will not add value to the business and to the organization.

That is why you need to have both Data Governance and Data Management in place for your organization's Data Strategy.