Data-Rich Companies and Data Governance

By: Cindy Vandecasteele, VP of Product Strategy

Data-driven customer-centricity is crucial for long term, sustainable growth of any data-rich company in the digital age. But, executing on that vision to realize the desired business outcomes can be a daunting task. Data-driven customer-centricity will impact your organization’s way of working. How dramatic the change is will depend on the scope of the strategy and use cases. The impact of the business use case on people and process needs to be assessed so that the operational environment will support the new way of working.

Bringing all of your customer data together creates tremendous opportunities to generate insight and drive personalized actions that didn’t previously exist. However, the pre-condition is that the data is accurate so that you can rely on the generated dashboards and that the automated customer actions can be trusted.

This is where data governance comes into play – a set of processes implemented to empower the right people to take control of data and processes. Then, “doing the right things” with customer data simply becomes complying with the appropriate roles and responsibilities. Governance of the customer experience operating system environment will require the right roles to be set up with the right authorities.

Having the right people with the right skills, supported by the appropriate change management approach, set up to work together in an environment that has the right governance, processes and workflow in place, will significantly accelerate implementation and benefit realization.

How does your organization approach data governance?

For further interest:

• Webinar Replay with Forrester Research: Delivering Smarter Customer Interactions
• Big Data Analytics and Modern Enterprises
• White Paper: The Value of Customer Data