Understanding Data Governance

Data has been hailed as oil of the 21st century, and organizations have finally woken up to a world where data is no longer packets of information being exchanged between individuals. Now, individuals are organisms, swimming in a bottomless ocean of data that they are constantly creating!

As a matter of fact, 95% of C-level executives are already using data to form their business strategy. In light of this, companies across the globe have realized the importance of having a formalized system of data governance, which is essentially a methodical approach of dealing with a company’s data.

It provides a structure of policies, protocols, procedures, and metrics to help companies dodge risks and liabilities, as well as a set of tools to mine data for its maximum value. Further, it can also control how data is used, stored, and operated. It assists everyone in an organization to use data effectively, efficiently, and responsibly.

Why do you need Data Governance tools?

As data and its applications have become crucial for organizations, the importance of data governance tools to safeguard the integrity of data assets has increased.

While it’s true that a successful data governance program is built upon careful planning and valuable insights from people in business operations — data governance tools are just as important as any other factor, if not more. Here’s how data governance tools help you:

∇ Empowered decision making

∇ Improved data quality

∇ Streamlined master data-management

∇ Higher data interoperability

∇ Superior data lineage

Tailored Data Governance policy is essential

No data governance policy can suit all organizations. Decision-makers, data experts and members from business operations need to work together and tailor a data governance policy that meets data requirements of that particular organization.

Around 49% of organizations believe that human-error is a major cause of data inaccuracies, which makes the participation of all departments crucial for the success of these policies. Some of the important factors that dictate data governance decisions are:

∇ Internal functionality requirements

∇ Data collection methods.

∇ Quality & size of data

∇ Business goals

∇ Data storage framework

∇ Extent of automation

The first step of creating a data governance policy tailored to your organization is designing the framework for various data operations depending upon functionalities needed and analytical capabilities.

Once the framework is decided upon, the decision-makers and various stakeholders need to get on the same page. This can be achieved only if the framework is beneficial and drives value for the different cross-functional partners.

Once the broad goals of the data governance policy are finalized, you need to start looking for data governance tools that suit your framework and data operations. Let’s take a look at some of the key data governance tools and how they might be helpful to your organization:

1. COLLIBRA

Hailed as an enterprise-wide data governance tool, Collibra is known to automate data operations and keeping cross-functional teams on the same page. While it’s a fact that no solution can truly meet the needs of all organizations, Collibra has been tailored to meet the needs of frameworks varying in a wide spectrum with different data governance policies.

The semantic search capabilities offered by Collibra is an amazing feature that gives it an edge over conventional data governance tools in the market. Governance and data stewardship tasks can be automated to make workflows more efficient and reliable. With the pre-built integration templates offered by Collibra, teams can easily link to data-lakes and metadata in a streamlined manner.

2. TALEND

Talend defines its data governance tool as a unified cloud platform for trusted data. From metadata management to improved data lineage, this data governance tool has a lot to offer. Not only this, this data governance tool makes cloud integration of your data simpler as well. To introduce and acquaint your data operations team with the tool, you can even use the free-to-use open-source version of this tool.

3. IO-TAHOE

IO-TAHOE is another great data governance tool that can maximize the output from your data governance activities. Data quality can be verified and new sources of information can be uncovered with this tool. The high extent of automation in Data visualization and it’s discovery leads to high interoperability in your data operations, hence streamlining the flow of information in your organization. Compliance with key regulations such as GDPR, Dodd-Frank, and CCAR is also ensured when your framework uses this data governance tool.

4. IBM

Data governance solutions provided by IBM can be a real catch for your organization. The best part about this tool is its flexibility to suit various data governance strategies, which is a deal-breaker for many organizations with multiple entry-points of data from a number of cross-functional teams.

Another great feature of this solution by IBM is data cataloging. These data catalogs are powered by machine learning algorithms and results in faster harvesting of metadata and cultivation of data assets. With its security infrastructure being backed with bleeding-edge technology of IBM, you can rest assured about the protection of data and privacy of your users.

5. INFORMATICA

Informatica provides a quick fix for compliance and data governance which can be implemented on-premise or in the cloud. It offers strong visualization of data lineage and history, master data dashboards for proactive monitoring of data quality and dynamic masking for data security. It also provides the functionality to detect and protect sensitive customer data, managing GDPR data risks, and ensuring contact information is current, accurate and complete.

Informatica is hailed as the ultimate tool when compliance with regulations such as GDPR is the ultimate goal of your data governance framework. Apart from this, the tool offers strong visualization and improved data lineage that boosts the efficiency of your data operations.

Proactive monitoring of data quality possible with Informatica helps your framework to perform well with even the most complex data lakes. Because of the special care given to data security while creating these solutions, it ensures that your data governance framework is fit to protect the customer data.

In Conclusion

From meta-data harvesting to the level of data security you expect, and from the data storage practices, you follow to the data visualization techniques you employ, each and every one of these factors dictate the decision of which tool you should go for.

So, these were the 5 of the best data governance framework tools in the market. Picking the right tools for your data governance framework is not so much about the tools as it is about knowing the goals and objectives of your own data governance strategy.