The Data Management Association (DAMA) International defines data governance as the “planning, oversight, and control over management of data and the use of data and data-related sources”. Given this definition, should you view data governance as a necessary compliance chore on your long to-do list or a strategic investment that can grow your organization’s bottom line? There’s strong evidence to demonstrate how it serves both categories. Return on investment (ROI) is highly variable across organizations depending on their size, industry, and their level of data and data governance maturity. Even so, there are many benefits to support the argument that data governance improves ROI.

Besides stronger regulatory compliance, the benefits that data governance offers include data quality, data monetization, customer experience optimization, and data management efficiency.

Stronger Regulatory Compliance

Data governance helps protect sensitive data from unauthorized access and data breaches. This helps organizations comply with data privacy regulations such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Since fines for non-compliance can be expensive, data governance can help organizations save money. For example, since January 28, 2022, GDPR fines reached 1.74 billion (EUR 1.64 billion). This amount is more than double the aggregate value of fines issued in 2021. In addition to fines, legal fees, and reputation damage can be significant.

Improved Data Quality

According to Gartner, poor data quality costs organizations an average of USD $12.9 million each year. Data governance improves data quality by establishing standards, processes, ownership, and accountability mechanisms that promote data accuracy, consistency, and reliability. High-quality data gives you a trusted foundation for decision-making, makes forecasting more accurate, and identifies opportunities to increase revenue and cut costs.

Data Monetization

Monetizing data involves turning data assets into revenue streams. Businesses are increasingly fueling growth through data monetization. The Data Monetization Market size is expected to grow from USD 4.19 billion in 2023 to USD 10.41 billion by 2028, at a CAGR of 19.98% during the forecast period (2023-2028). A McKinsey Global survey found that respondents at high-performing companies “are three times more likely than others to say their monetization efforts contribute more than 20 percent to company revenue”.

Data governance supports data monetization in many ways.  One of its most important contributions is creating and maintaining a comprehensive catalog or inventory of data assets within an organization. This enables data stakeholders to easily discover and access relevant data to identify and support monetization opportunities. Data governance also defines and documents metadata that makes data more accessible and understandable to potential buyers.

Customer Experience Optimization

Customer experience (CX) is how customers perceive all the interactions they have with a company. This is critical, given that 73% of all customers say that CX is the number one thing they consider when deciding whether to purchase from a company, according to PwC. In fact, Gartner reports that 73% of customers say CX is the number one thing they consider when deciding whether to purchase from a company.

A well-managed data governance program helps ensure timely access to accurate and complete customer data to optimize CX. Data governance helps create a unified and comprehensive view of each customer by consolidating data from different sources and systems. This 360-degree view of the customer allows organizations to better understand their preferences, behaviors, and history. A business can use this knowledge to personalize interactions, ultimately enhancing the customer experience and increasing customer loyalty, which drives growth. Access to accurate and complete customer data helps customer support teams resolve issues more quickly and effectively. This reduces customer frustration and enhances their overall experience.

Data Management Efficiency

Data governance streamlines data-related processes (data quality, data standardization, data catalog, and metadata management, data access control, data lifecycle management, data integration, and more) making them more efficient. This efficiency can lead to cost savings and improved resource allocation, which frees up resources to focus on growth initiatives.

Next Steps

In summary, data governance creates a strong foundation for sustainable growth in a highly competitive data-driven business landscape. Data governance contributes to growth by facilitating compliance, ensuring trusted data for decision-making, enabling data monetization, optimizing the customer experience, and increasing data management efficiency.

The Actian Data Platform includes many capabilities that can assist you in implementing data governance. These include the availability of the same platform on-premises and in the cloud to improve consistency. Robust data profiling and transformation functions make data more consistent. Support for structured and semi-structured data and the ability to maintain metadata and associated linkages to unstructured data stored outside the platform simplify access. Try the Actian Data Platform for 30 days with a free trial.

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Implementing sustainability initiatives is a huge win for manufacturers who are not only helping the environment, but also helping themselves, since sustainability and profitability often go hand in hand. In fact, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, firms with a better Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) track record than their peers produced higher three-year returns, had stocks that were more likely to become high-quality stocks, were less likely to have large price declines, and were less likely to go bankrupt.

Data analytics can provide your business with valuable insights and inform data-driven decisions that lead to a more sustainable future. There are many areas where sustainability analytics can contribute to environmental conservation and protection. In this blog, I’ve decided to focus on greenhouse gas emissions since these are the biggest culprits in global warming.

Here’s a look at how you can use data analytics to track and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by optimizing three of its largest sources in manufacturing: transportation, energy consumption, and production.

Sustainable Transportation

Transportation should be a leading priority for sustainability in your business given its huge impact on the environment. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states that transportation generates the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions (28% of 2021 greenhouse gas emissions). Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation primarily come from burning fossil fuel for cars, trucks, ships, trains, and planes.

Although transportation is one of the biggest challenges for sustainability, it is also an area where data analytics can have the most impact. These benefits are at the top of the list:

• Identify fuel conservation opportunities such as upgrading vehicles, reducing idling time and optimizing speeds
• Determine fuel-efficient routes and schedule deliveries to minimize travel time
• Maximize shipment utilization based on weight limits, available capacity, and more efficient packaging
• Predict potential delays due to traffic, weather, or other factors, adjust schedules, and reroute vehicles to minimize waste. 

Sustainable Energy Consumption

Cleaner sources of energy are gaining ground, but most electricity is still generated by burning fossil fuels. Electric power generates the second largest share of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States (25% of 2021 greenhouse emissions). This is why it’s so important to install energy monitoring systems and smart sensors to collect real-time data on energy usage by equipment across different areas of your business.

Analyzing energy consumption data from these devices helps detect and resolve issues faster, which in turn leads to greater sustainability. Examples include equipment defects (heating and cooling equipment, lighting, ventilation, refrigeration, etc.), poor insulation, lack of weather-related controls, and occupant activity. Accurate forecasts of your energy consumption can also help you spot problems. If energy use is either less than or greater than what you would expect you may have a problem.

Sustainable Production

Greenhouse gas emissions from industrial production primarily come from burning fossil fuels for energy, as well as greenhouse gas emissions from certain chemical reactions necessary to produce goods from raw materials (23% of 2021 greenhouse gas emissions).

Implementing smart sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) devices to collect real-time data on various aspects of the production process, including equipment performance, material usage, and quality control is a must to achieve sustainable production. Analyzing this data can help you implement more energy-efficient equipment and processes, and detect defects or anomalies early in the production process to reduce scrap and rework. Also, simulation modeling can help you understand the impact of process changes before you implement them.

Sustainable production can also benefit from accurate demand forecasting and inventory analytics to help ensure that production aligns with actual demand to prevent overproduction or underproduction. Both of these situations can result in energy inefficiencies.

Sustainability Analytics with Actian

By analyzing transportation, energy consumption, and production data, you can greatly reduce your organization’s negative impact on the environment. The key is to continually gather data, analyze it to make data-driven decisions, and then adapt processes based on the insights gained from data analytics.  More than a set of disconnected tools, the Actian Data Platform is a flexible and easy-to-use solution to connect, manage, and analyze your data, enabling you to drive greater sustainability through informed decisions.

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