Markets Insider Features Vincent Yates on Getting Value from Data Governance

Ariel Hooper

Markets Insider Features Vincent Yates on Getting Value from Data Governance

With data generating at a rapid pace of 2.5 quintillion bytes a day, businesses are faced with a technological goldmine that can be daunting to manage. As data continues to inundate organizations that don’t have strong data governance in place, valuable opportunities slip away, internal functions fall behind, and business leaders lose trust.

Markets Insider recently featured Credera’s Chief Data Scientist, Vincent Yates, to discuss this pressing issue. "Many companies lack the strategic alignment to harness the full potential of data. To be a data-driven company, your data strategy must be the same as your corporate strategy," Yates says. "If that's not true, then you are not data-driven, and your corporate strategy is probably misaligned because you are not taking advantage of your data."

Yates shares three ways businesses can begin creating a data strategy that gives meaning to underutilized data, maintains consistency across business functions, and paces itself in a high-stakes world. Here are his suggestions:

1. Give your data a purpose.

Rather than rush to create an unfit data governance system, organizations should assess what they’d like their collected data to accomplish. Considering 80% of data stored by organizations lacks purpose, zeroing in on business goals avoids the risk of misallocating resources on data dead-ends.

2. Keeping things in sync.

Curious how a Fortune 1000 company could see a $65 million increase in their net income? According to Forbes, the answer lies in increasing data accessibility and synchronization. No matter the size of your company, ensuring the foundation of your data system is able to update changes in real-time saves you from bad data leaking its way throughout various systems and onto your customer’s lap.

This isn’t to say you should run out and implement a fully centralized data system. Not every branch of your organization has the same data goals, nor will they use data the same way. Establishing a structured data lake and avoiding data swamps respects the complexity of the pipelines through which data flows, ultimately providing high-quality, consistent data from the source.

3. Not leaning in too hard.

Data will not always be relevant to everyone in your organization. While you may be itching to alert everyone about all of the changes in company data, the truth is people will begin to unsubscribe from these constant updates. Notifications should be reserved for data making a significant difference to your business; otherwise, vital information faces the risk of becoming background noise.

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Continuing On Your Data Journey

As data continues to experience twists and turns that require adaptability, Yates’ three recommendations help provide a foundation well-suited for data’s turbulent ecosystem.

At Credera, we’ve helped organizations of many different sizes and across industries navigate their data goals and challenges. If you’re interested in starting a conversation, reach out at findoutmore@credera.com.