The Data Asset

An indispensable guide that shows companies how to treat data as a strategic asset

Organizations set their business strategy and direction based on information that is available to executives. The Data Asset provides guidance for not only building the business case for data quality and data governance, but also for developing methodologies and processes that will enable your organization to better treat its data as a strategic asset.

Part of Wiley's SAS Business Series, this book looks at Business Case Building; Maturity Model and Organization Capabilities; 7-Step Programmatic Approach for Success; and Technologies Required for Effective Data Quality and Data Governance and, within these areas, covers

• Risk mitigation
• Cost control
• Revenue optimization
• Undisciplined and reactive organizations
• Proactive organizations
• Analysis, improvement, and control technology

Whether you're a business manager or an IT professional, The Data Asset reveals the methodology and technology needed to approach successful data quality and data governance initiatives on an enterprise scale.

Fore! word, by Ron Powell vii

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xv

Part One Building the Business Case for Data Governance 1

Chapter 1 Making the Case for Better Data 3

Chapter 2 Risk Mitigation: How Quality Data Keeps Your Company Out of Trouble 19

Chapter 3 Controlling Costs with Accurate and Reliable Data 31

Chapter 4 Optimizing Revenue with Quality Data 47

Part Two The Data Governance Maturity Model 61

Chapter 5 Governing Your Data 63

Chapter 6 Undisciplined Organizations: Disasters Waiting to Happen 77

Chapter 7 Reactive Organizations: Trying to Get Beyond Crisis Mode 87

Chapter 8 Proactive Organizations: Reducing Risk, Avoiding Uncertainty 97

Chapter 9 Governed Organizations: Trust in Data Pays Multiple Benefits 111

Part Three Utilizing People and Processes to Achieve a Quality Culture 119

Chapter 10 The Quality Culture 121

Chapter 11 People 129

Chapter 12 Processes 143

Part Four Closing the Loop: Selecting the Right Technology for Your Organization 163

Chapter 13 Undisciplined Organizations: Discovering the Value of Data Quality Tools 165

Chapter 14 Reactive Organizations: Choose the Technology That Gets the Most from Your Applications 181

Chapter 15 Proactive Organizations: Bridging the Chasm and Becoming Proactive 191

Chapter 16 Governed Organizations: Moving Beyond Data to Business Process Automation 201

Glossary 209

Index 213

Tony Fisher is President and CEO of DataFlux, a wholly owned subsidiary of SAS, that enables companies to analyze, improve, and control their data through an integrated technology platform. He has guided DataFlux through tremendous growth as it became a market-leading provider of data quality and data integration solutions and speaks throughout the world on emerging trends in data quality, data integration, and master data management, as well as how better management of data leads to business optimization. Many organizations find that they cannot rely on the information that serves as the very foundation of their business. Unreliable data-whether about your customers, your products, or your suppliers-hinders understanding and affects your bottom line. It seems simple: better data leads to better decisions, which ultimately leads to better business. So why don't executives take data quality and data governance more seriously?

The Data Asset: How Smart Companies Govern Their Data for Business Success explores the new shift in the way that successful businesses are thinking about and treating data, moving from simply producing data to a focus on consuming data.

Providing you with guidance for building the business case for data quality and data governance, this book also helps you develop the methodologies and processes that will enable your organization to better treat your data as a strategic asset.

Author and data quality expert Tony Fisher outlines the rules of data governance and looks at how your business can improve data quality, as well as plan and implement an effective data governance program, with discussion of:

• Risk mitigation
• Cost control
• Revenue optimization
• Data quality and data governance
• Undisciplined organizations
• Reactive and proactive organizations
• Technologies required for effective data quality and data governance

Part of the Wiley and SAS Business Series, The Data Asset: How Smart Companies Govern Their Data for Business Success reveals how to get your data to work for you without breaking the bank or scrapping your current solutions. Making the case for ridding your organization of undependable data and the opportunities that exist when you treat data as a strategic advantage, this book proves-regardless of the industry that your company is in or the business issues that you face-that managing your data is vital to achieving your goals and keeping your business successful.

"If we accept that the key assets of today's organizations lie in data, information, and human intellectual capital, then we must also recognize that harnessing these assets requires a relentless focus on data quality and data governance. I simply don't see another reasonable alternative for a business looking to exploit this latent value. Tony Fisher's book manages to put forward this case in a compelling way without the usual vendor recourse to technology for the sake of technology."
—Ian Charlesworth, Practice Leader, Ovum Software

"Especially for businesses with massively complex day-to-day marketing risk, and channel decisioning, until data quality is understood as having the potential to be the deciding factor in whether a business succeeds or fails against its competition, it will always be seen as a support function. The Data Asset positions data quality as being that deciding factor. The Data Asset has taken data quality beyond an IT function to the C-level, which, unless this is done, never seems to get accomplished."
—Peter Harvey, CEO, Intellidyn

"The phrase 'data as a corporate asset' has been adopted by business and IT professionals alike. Finally, there's a book that deconstructs the phrase and gets to the meat of what matters: information as a business enabler. Tony's book not only justifies a newfound investment in data, it explains why the time for formal and sustained information management has come. And not a moment too soon."
—Jill Dyché and Evan Levy, cofounders of Baseline Consulting and authors of Customer Data Integration

"In this book, Tony Fisher has provided an articulate presentation of the wide range of business impacts attributable to the absence of organizational data quality management, and then provides a practical guide for baselining and improving enterprise data governance. Tony's years of experience in helping organizations have infused this text with many valuable recommendations that will lead to continual organizational maturation and improvement in the value of the enterprise data asset."
—David Loshin, President of Knowledge Integrity, Inc., and author of Master Data Management and Enterprise Knowledge Management