MDM_Whitepaper_EDG_Finance

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ENTITY WHITE PAPER IS EFFECTIVE DATA GOVERNANCE A CHOICE OR A NECESSITY IN FINANCIAL SERVICES TODAY? Assessment will lead to recommendations in order to achieve a desired future state, and these recommendations will need to be prioritised as part of a Data Governance roadmap. The programme should deliver value incrementally and ultimately lead to Data Governance maturity across the entire organisation. Data Governance should become part of the DNA of the organisation and not a separate function. Failure to understand the gap between as is and to be and failure to measure processes and progress will inevitably lead to programme failure. Most organisations have an idea that they are not where they want to be, but not where that is or where they are. They never understand how to get there. It is important that all of the stakeholders across business units are involved in the assessment; ideally from business functions that will be improved by Data Governance, identified when defining the business problem. A Maturity Assessment should not be a one-off event. It should be conducted at regular intervals, to measure progress along the Data Governance Maturity Curve for the data relevant to the particular business issue being solved. The results of a Maturity Assessment should be documented and presented to senior decision makers, outlining next steps and priorities key to the success of the Data Governance programme. This helps to ensure continued buy-in and sponsorship. BUILD A ROADMAP Rolling out an effective Data Governance framework and discipline across a complex organisation is not simple, cannot be done overnight, requires buy in from multiple SOLUTION stakeholders and involvement from teams across the entire business. For these reasons, it is impossible to undertake a big bang approach to programme execution. Also, Executive Sponsorship tends to be predicated on successful delivery on an incremental basis and wanes rapidly if this is not forthcoming. The business problems to be solved, together with the Maturity Assessment, allow the identification of a reference architecture to support the strategic aims of the business. A series of smaller, prioritised by business case, more tactical projects can then be defined within the confines of an enterprise programme that deliver the strategy but in incremental units. These early wins facilitate continued Executive Level sponsorship as success and measurable Return-on-Investment give confidence that resources are being allocated appropriately. The roadmap should highlight the types and timings of Data Governance projects that deliver value on an incremental basis. Each project should stand to win its right to resources based on the strength of its individual business case within the programme structure. Key stakeholders should agree and understand which data domains will be governed (meta data, reference data, master data (customer, account, product, etc)) and how implementing policies and processes around them will impact and contribute value to the business. Drawing up a heatmap presenting a two dimensional matrix of all of the ‘information pains‘ identified during the Maturity Assessment, with business value on one axis and investment on the other, provides an objective mechanism to prioritise implementation. It is an effective mechanism to derive and manage the programme roadmap over a period of time. 6 The Maturity Assessment enables Executive Level management to visualise the data maturity of key factors including data quality, data security, data auditability, data consistency, data accessibility and data availability across the organisation. Together with the heatmap, it enables the organisation to create the optimum roadmap for tackling projects incrementally with a view to deriving maximum business benefit as soon as possible.
IS EFFECTIVE DATA GOVERNANCE A CHOICE OR A NECESSITY IN FINANCIAL SERVICES TODAY? ENTITY WHITE PAPER Prioritising the delivery of these Data Governance initiatives, taking into account the practical considerations of resourcing service delivery, is not straight forward but leads to effective planning and management and therefore minimises the costs and timescales of implementation. The roadmap should also include, if it is not already in place, the creation of a Data Governance Council, which will be made up of those key decision makers whose business functions are affected by a lack of properly governed data. Within banks, depending on the business problem, C-Level Executives from risk management, compliance, finance, retail banking, corporate banking, customer service and marketing should consider participation. Any initial and periodic successes should be communicated widely across the organisation (as part of a structured communications plan) as this will facilitate the further adoption of Data Governance across the enterprise. CONCLUSION This paper has sought to highlight some the pressures facing the financial community in terms of compliance, security, privacy, customer service, market consolidation and business centricity. These are recognised as many of the major threats and opportunities in the financial world today. We have sought to highlight that in each case, the management of these threats and opportunities is exclusively down to the effective management and control of the data within the enterprise as an asset of that Enterprise. Data truly is the lifeblood of a modern organisation! For a financial organisation wishing to survive the pressures currently facing it and needing to enhance its competitiveness and agility, it is safe to say that effective Data Governance holds all of the cards. Effective Data Governance is not a choice, it is a necessity. Having drawn this conclusion, however, the world is littered with failed, stalled or ineffective Data Governance programmes that do not deliver value. This is largely because the value and complexity of a change programme that touches the entire organisation is not properly understood at the outset. Success is achieved through hard work and a strong enterprise level programme, a structured, iterative and agile approach with strong leadership and management, an operating group, operating model, reference architecture, data architecture, data management, data quality, data assurance, metrics and measures. Nobody said it would be easy, but the benefits to a modern financial services organisation are immense. Effective Data Governance is truly the key to business success in the 21st Century. ABOUT ENTITY GROUP SOLUTION Entity Group is an information management solutions specialist. Entity provides independent consultancy, software solutions and services that exploit the value of information and deliver competitive advantage to large scale clients across the information management lifecycle; its services range from an information management strategic review, through to analysis and implementation services for Big Data, data modelling, information integration, master data management and analytics. Entity provides information management services across the finance and insurance, pharmaceutical, automotive, media and utilities industries. Entity is committed to long term collaboration with our clients and partners, most of whom continue to work with us over many years and multiple projects. In addition to working directly with end-user organisations, Entity’s bespoke data management and domain expertise often sees the company called in to solve unusual or highly-challenging 7 business data issues on behalf of global IT services companies and software vendors.
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