FOREWORD

Congratulations! By buying this book, you have realized the importance of corporate information. Every byte of data that resides inside your company, and some that resides outside its walls, has the potential to make you stronger by giving you the agility, speed and intelligence that none of your competitors yet have.

With your pursuit of a data governance initiative, you have reached a level of corporate maturity that many others have not achieved. That maturity will set you apart from the competition today and will keep you competitive when data governance becomes a matter-of-fact component of corporate stewardship.

With your new attention to corporate information, you will be better able to comply with worldwide laws that govern corporations. The ability to generate accurate business intelligence, accurate financial reports, and understand your business relies on better processes and personal commitment to clean data. Corporate officers will applaud the availability of solid business metrics and not having to rely so much on instinct. With attention to data governance, your customers will be delighted as you better understand their needs, handle support issues more smoothly and are better able deliver “green” programs as a responsible corporation of our fragile world.

But in order to tap into this strength, you need to take a proactive approach to managing the data. Data does not govern itself and valuable assets like corporate information need to be managed.

Today, there are many technical articles, books and blog entries about data governance and related topics. This book is different. It’s a business person’s view of data governance. This book covers both strategies and tactics around managing a data governance initiative.

If you’ve ever fancied yourself as your company’s data champion, you’ll know that it is often difficult to get traction and build a critical mass of support on data governance. Let’s face it, there’s plenty of day-to-day work to get done and there’s always an excuse to put off data governance for tomorrow. Despite the strategic and competitive advantages of a planned data management program, it may take effort, a strong effort, to get others to see that it is absolutely the right thing to do for the corporation and the world. In this book, we’ll talk about being a change agent in your corporation and breaking through those barriers.

Once your data management program begins to build support, the next hurdle to overcome is to understand exactly how to begin. Most companies that have been successful in data governance programs start with small, high-impact projects, track results, and market those results to the company. We’ll talk about the processes you can put in place to accomplish all of that. We’ll also talk about the tools you can use to make the project more efficient.

Finally, and most importantly, people are really the change agents in a data governance initiative. It’ll be important to know what a data governance team looks like and what their responsibilities should be. This book will cover strategies and tactics for managing a team. Again, tools can play an important role here, too.

So, welcome to the world of data governance, and congratulations on being business users, executives and data champions that have the courage and tenacity to be an agent of change for your corporation.