Do you know how much data is generated per day?
Stats by Forbes suggest that over 2.5 quintillion data bytes were generated daily in 2020 and lots of other studies indicate that 463 exabytes of data will be generated each day as of 2025.
You must be wondering, how is this data used by organizations?
Data can be used by organizations to make business decisions, optimize operations, create new products, services, and improve profitability.
It is not easy for organizations to manage all this data on their own. This is where data governance comes into the picture.
Data governance is more than day-to-day data management. It involves implementing policies and procedures to guarantee enterprise data availability, usability, integrity, and security.
Let’s learn more about data governance!
What is data governance?
Data governance is the process of breaking down data silos across an organization to ensure consistency across departments for data compatibility and accuracy for business intelligence, enterprise reporting, and analytics.
Data governance ensures data is used properly, both to avoid errors and avoid potential use of sensitive data.
Data governance programs are based on four pillars:
- Data stewardship: For implementing policies
- Data quality: A driving force of data governance activities
- Master data management: For ensuring consistent data use across large organizations
- Data governance use cases: These continue to expand as new technologies and threats emerge.
Benefits of data governance
Effective data governance provides a variety of benefits to organizations, some of which are:
- 1. User productivity:Data governance takes care of the inaccurate data on which employees of a particular organization spend hours identifying and eliminating. Data governance allows them to be more productive and use their energy on far more important tasks.
- 2. Data security:Data security must be the number one priority for every organization. They must protect its sensitive and confidential data assets, most notably its intellectual property, personally identifiable information (PII), and protected health information (PHI), both at rest and when being transferred.With data governance, you can prevent incidents of accidental and intentional data modification or loss as it allows you to evaluate your information management policies and strengthen your security posture.
- 3. Decision making:With efficient data management, organizations can make better decisions based on the estimated outcomes. Furthermore, organizations can plan, monitor, and act on marketing promotions, price adjustments, product strategy, and other aspects of business operations in a more informed way.
- 4. Regulatory compliance:Changes in the rules, laws, and regulations are frequent and sometimes it’s hard for companies to keep up with them. This is where data governance comes into play.Many laws require the retention of certain types of records and dictate how long they must be kept. Data governance helps organizations comply with these mandates and avoid steep penalties and lawsuits.
Important data governance tools
Data governance tools aid in the process of planning and maintaining a structured set of procedures, policies, and protocols that regulate how an organization’s data is stored, used, and managed.
Let’s take a look at some of the most important data governance tools:
| Data Governance Tools | Platform | Features & Functions |
|---|---|---|
| Truedat | Cloud, On-Premise | Data governance, data lineage, business glossary, data catalog, data quality |
| OvalEdge | Windows, Unix, Cloud, On-Premise, Web, SaaS | Data governance, automated data lineage, data discovery, data catalog, self-service analytics |
| Alation | Cloud, On-Premise, Web, SaaS | Data catalog, data lineage, data governance, self-service analytics, search & discovery, cloud data migration & management, business & data glossary, data quality management |
| Xplenty | Windows, Mac | Data integration, ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) ELT (Extract, Load, and Transform) |
| Collibra | Windows, Mac, iOS, Cloud, Web, SaaS | Collaboration features, data help desk, automation of data governance & management |
| IBM | Windows, Cloud, Web, SaaS | Data governance, data cataloging, obtaining information for big data projects |
Conclusion
With the increasing amount of data generation, data governance is no more an option but has become a necessity for organizations.
To avail the benefits of data governance, you need to first understand your company’s data needs. Then prepare a layout and pick a data governance tool that fulfills your requirements.
If you need expert advice, data specialists at Jellyfish Technologies can help you. We help brands turn large and complex data sets into elegant and easy-to-understand visual stories that enable them to spot meaningful trends and insights.
