customer information with software and product development, for example, so they can properly invoice
and extract revenue with additional licensing and royalty management rigor. That’s often done today
through costly, manual audits. The ability to automate the process could potentially lead to a significant
amount of savings and revenue generation.
Use Cases for Data Governance
Fortunately, siloed organizations are ripe for a centralized data strategy, shared governance, and data
management/quality methodologies to connect the dots across business teams. This presents tangible
shared targets, especially for top- or bottom-line goals that lead to executive buy in. Because at the end
of the day, data management implementation should be a business decision around market share, cost
reduction, and revenue generation. It’s not a technology decision.
Use cases for data governance, data quality management, and metadata management are pervasive
across all industries. Below are some specific examples.
Enforcement of Service Level Agreements: Component-intensive industries rely on service level
agreements to ensure parts are properly repaired and available to use. These agreements call for
remediation when vendors are out of compliance. With data governance, manufacturers can enforce
contracts by doing away with error-prone spreadsheets and by providing their vendors with accurate data
they can use to stay compliant.
Supply Chain Management: Reducing maintenance costs is a recurring theme for organizations,
especially those that operate long supply chain cycles like aviation. They need every tool at their disposal
to ensure spare parts are properly stocked and positioned to avoid service interruptions. Data governance
makes the huge amount of sensor data coming off modern-day aircraft manageable so that airlines can
avoid AOG (aircraft on ground) events by anticipating maintenance needs before something breaks.
Control of Personally Identifiable Information: Numerous regulations around the world, including the new
General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union, require companies to control who can access
customer PII and how that data is shared. Having the right roles and groups associated with the PII is
essential, and data management is the key process needed for compliance.
Rapid Product Release: The challenge of managing the rapid rate of change in taxonomy, definitions,
and business rules (metadata) is a critical success factor to deliver rapid product release cycles. By
streamlining the metadata management operations, organizations increase collaboration and knowledge
sharing across their development teams and improve communications between the technical and
business teams. Foundational metadata management operations enable data stewardship and improves
product release cycle time across large, complex IT ecosystems.
These use cases are about sustainability and scalability. With data governance in hand, supply chain
and maintenance operations, for example, can do away with quick-fix patches that only hold until the next
crisis. Getting your data management fundamentals right leads to long-term benefits.