This takeaway leaps out from a recent Deloitte survey: “Many data governance organizations struggle to obtain executive sponsorship, in part because they have not linked data quality to improved business performance.”
Deloitte's Tom Mongoven puts his finger on maybe the crucial disconnect of our times – the failure of enterprises to “get” the importance of data, even while they invest heavily in information technology and salute the information era we live in.
The survey details the disappointingly high number of organizations which don't track business value metrics “like the number of reductions in out of stocks driven by having more accurate product and customer data or increases in discounts from strategic suppliers driven by having more accurate vendor data”. This implies people are building sophisticated management information and ERP systems, doubtless based on specific business cases, and then ignoring the outcomes.
Is it because data governance folks think the benefits of good data are plain obvious? If so, they need to show a few more slides illustrating the measured benefits they're bringing to the business. The link between data and business performance needs to be demonstrated – regularly. This is true for every aspect of an enterprise. Don't take the contribution of data for granted. Deloitte