Businesses are starving for insights as they drown in data. Businesses construct complex infrastructure, employ data scientists, and spend millions on analytics platforms.
However, the majority of data projects fall short of expectations. Neither talent nor technology are the issue. What ties these diverse regions together is the lack of a single, cohesive government.
It seems that data governance is a bureaucratic process that results in policies nobody reads. But without it, businesses have disjointed systems that are unable to communicate with one another, noncompliance that leads to fines from the government, and analytics that are based on dubious data. Over time, the cost of this dysfunction accumulates.
The Problem of Disintegration
Numerous data systems are run concurrently by modern businesses. Data is produced and consumed by financial databases, marketing automation tools, communication channels, analytics environments, and customer relationship management platforms.
Every system has its own retention guidelines, quality standards, and access restrictions. Alternatively, there might be no policies.
Because of this fragmentation, failures are predictable. The definition of “qualified lead” varies amongst systems, so marketing cannot depend on sales data. Finance has trouble reconciling numbers because different departments use different versions of the master data.
Uniform access controls cannot be implemented across a platform by security teams that lack a thorough understanding of it.
Communications data fragmentation is the most hazardous. Important business information can be found in text messages, messaging apps, email, and collaboration platforms. However, these channels are frequently found outside of official data governance frameworks.
Unstructured communications are often completely ungoverned by organizations with strict controls over structured data in databases.
Compliance Becomes Impossible
Organizations must understand what data they hold, where it resides, and who can access it in order to comply with regulations such as the CCPA, GDPR, and industry-specific requirements. It is practically impossible to provide precise answers to these fundamental questions in the absence of unified governance.
Think about a straightforward request for access to data. A client requests access to all of the information the business has about them.
In the absence of unified governance, dozens of systems must be manually checked in order to fulfill this request. Something will inevitably be overlooked. Significant fines and harm to one’s reputation may result from that oversight.
In regulated industries where communications need to be tracked and preserved, the difficulty increases. For example, financial services companies must adhere to stringent regulations regarding the supervision of digital communications.
It takes more than just archiving emails to fulfill these responsibilities. Businesses require thorough control over all forms of communication that staff members use for work-related objectives.
Because they offer the unified governance layer that guarantees uniform policies across email, messaging platforms, collaboration tools, and new communication channels, Digital Communications Governance and Archiving vendors become crucial in this situation. In the absence of this cohesive strategy, gaps appear where violations of compliance are concealed.
Data Quality Deteriorates
Without governance, data quality becomes everyone’s problem and therefore nobody’s responsibility. Duplicate records proliferate. Inconsistent formatting makes integration difficult. Nobody owns the process of validating data accuracy.
Analytics teams spend most of their time cleaning data instead of analyzing it. By some estimates, data scientists spend 80% of their time on data preparation. This isn’t because they lack skills. It’s because upstream systems lack the governance to ensure clean data flows into analytical environments.
The problem cascades. Poor data quality leads to unreliable analytics. Unreliable analytics erode trust in data-driven decision making.
When executives stop trusting the numbers, organizations revert to intuition-based decisions despite significant investments in data infrastructure.
Security Gaps Multiply
Inadequate governance leads to security flaws. When data is transferred between systems, access controls that operate in silos break down. When sensitive data is transferred to a system with less stringent security measures, it becomes vulnerable.
These risks are increased by the distributed nature of modern work. Workers have access to data from a variety of networks, devices, and locations.
Protecting sensitive data turns into a game of whack-a-mole in the absence of unified governance that defines and consistently enforces security policies.
More often, governance failures rather than complex attacks cause breaches. Data is exported to System B, where access controls are less stringent, by an employee who has authorized access to System A.
Long after their engagement is over, a contractor still has access to the data. In organizations without unified governance, these situations occur frequently.
The Price of Doing Nothing
Initiatives for governance are put off by organizations because they appear costly and disruptive. In actuality, it is much more expensive to operate without governance. Redundant systems, breach remediation, and compliance penalties are examples of direct costs.
Poor decisions based on incomplete data, lost opportunities from insights that never come to pass, and competitive disadvantages due to a slower time-to-insight are examples of indirect costs.
The issue gets more difficult the longer organizations put off implementing unified governance. Systems proliferate, data builds up, and technical debt increases. Proactive action turns into a crisis that necessitates costly emergency cleanup.
Establishing the Basis
Clear ownership is the first step toward effective data governance. Someone needs authority and accountability for data quality, security, and compliance across the organization. This can’t be delegated to IT alone. Governance requires business leadership, technical implementation, and executive sponsorship.
The governance framework must span all data types and systems. Structured databases, unstructured documents, and communications all need consistent policies for access, retention, and quality. Although governance is primarily about people and procedures, technology aids in the enforcement of these regulations.
Companies are better positioned to reap the benefits of data investments when they approach governance as a foundational element rather than an afterthought.
Their analytics are trustworthy because they’re built on quality data. Their compliance posture is defensible because they know what data they hold. Their security is robust because controls are consistent.
Without governance, data strategy is just costly infrastructure that doesn’t work. The question is whether you can afford not to invest in unified governance, not if you should.
