Customer Data Integration: Reaching a Single Version of the Truth

CHAPTER 6

Who Owns the Data Anyway?: Data Governance, Data Management, and Data Stewardship

In Chapter 4 we discussed how data governance was bigger than customer data integration (CDI). Data governance is the organizing framework for establishing strategy, objectives, and policies for corporate data. It pervades the enterprise, crossing lines of business, data subject areas, and individual skill sets—but so does CDI. The difference is that while you can—and should—have data governance without CDI, the inverse isn’t sustainable. We’ve written this chapter because we have clients for whom establishing a clear data governance framework is a meaningful and necessary step toward CDI implementation.

Ironically, we’re asked regularly by CDI vendors if we would mind calling their prospects and introducing ourselves and our data management services. It seems that many companies recognize the need for CDI, and yet they postpone CDI adoption because their data is such a mess, no one knows where the expertise lies, or data ownership issues are fuzzy. This chapter presents a workable framework that you can adopt and use in your own organization as a foundation for a more formalized and sustained data management effort. Practicing some of the tenets we discuss here eliminates some of the well-worn excuses for not delivering integrated data.