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CHAPTER

The data governance

business case

4

A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
dPeter Drucker

THE BUSINESS CASE

Data governance is a business program; therefore, it needs to add value to the business. However, since
data governance is a program dealing in abstracts (data as an asset), it is similar to other programs
where tangible results are hard to see, such as marketing or finance. The CEO will acknowledge the
need for marketing and certainly the need for a finance area, but a detailed, hard-dollar justification for
these areas (as for DG) is usually not sitting in a folder on a desk somewhere.
Is a business case even required for DG? Suppose the CEO says, “I know we really need this, and it
is like marketingdso proceed without a business case.” There should be an intrinsic understanding
that the treatment of information as an asset leads to a tightly connected businessdthus, an infor-
mation value proposition is not enough. In fact, a business case is required even if it is not requested.
There are several reasons for this:

• DG is a holistic effort requiring enterprise attention. But there will be naysayers and you need to be
able to handle them. A common form of resistance is for a department head to state there is no time
to participate on a new committee or learn new procedures. After all, there is a business to be run.
However, it becomes harder to throw resistance up in the face of a business case tied to a goal of
making hundreds of millions of dollars for the organization.
• DG will not succeed if it cannot be measured, and the success measures must come from a set of
business-oriented metrics.
• There may be a de facto business case for DG tied to a large initiative. There may be overwhelming
data-quality issues or strong pressure from regulators. There may be a large implementation of an
ERP package planned. DG becomes a necessary part of these projects, therefore it can be launched
as part of a larger project. Another common example is in the form of a data-quality effort. All of
these scenarios create a risk of developing sets of similar yet non-united DG teams. The bottom line
is you do not get a sustainable program. DG is “dumbed down” from a business program to
a business interest that is then passed to IT where it becomes a project. This progression, of
course, directly conflicts with the essential aspect that DG is an enterprise effort.
• Strangely, there is another persistent obstacle facing DG programs. It is the insistence in many
organizations on developing a hard-and-fast business case with “real” benefits and strong
financial returns that are based on traditional benefits like headcount reduction or reduced
business costs. In this event, a business case with tangible returns seems impossible because
Data Governance. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-415829-0.00004-6 33
Copyright Ó 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.