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The term Data Governance probably is not the hot topic buzzing around your sales organization. It's often viewed as a “nice to have,” rather than a crucial business function. Sales executives frequently put other topics on the list of priorities, but Data Governance is one of the most essential factors of an effective data-driven sales strategy.
You might be wondering what Data Governance is, so let’s start with a definition. Data Governance is a collection of practices and processes which help to ensure the formal management of data assets within an organization. It’s a “must have” and it’s crucial to your data-driven sales success. Without governance, an organization’s entire data set and the decisions that come from it are built on a weak foundation. It’s “quality control” for your data and it empowers companies with reliable and consistent data that allows them to make the right business decisions. Companies with strong Data Governance models gain remarkable benefits like substantial cost and time savings, and confidence in their data. The right governance program supports and complements your overall data strategy, and it’s key to driving value from data.
Data Governance saves money, and it helps make money too. When there is a lack of confidence or confusion about the meaning of data, sales organizations frequently blame their tools or technology. These problems are often because of data governance issues, not because of the technology. As a result, they’ll make the mistake of ripping out and replacing functional systems. This is a huge waste of time and money. Data Governance also helps to save money because it minimizes data duplication and reduces duplicate management efforts. With better quality data, companies understand their data, helping them to avoid errors, increase data efficiency and bring costs down.
In addition to saving money, governance can also help to generate new sales revenue. Having a firm grip on how you define core metrics, as well as your targets, segments and attributes of customers helps you better understand your sales data – which in turn means a better understanding of customers, and that’s key to data-driven sales decisions.
Data Governance also ensures that data is reliable, consistent and repeatable. Effective governance leads to a clear understanding of what metrics mean, which metrics are most important, and where there might be gaps and risks. With this clarity, sales teams have confidence to quickly make data-related decisions. Data-driven sales is about generating and acting on insights in real-time, and data governance builds the confidence that’s needed to get closer to that goal.
Compliance and ethics are also a factor that cannot be forgotten. There are growing legal and financial consequences for the mishandling of the collection, storage and the use of data. Poor data management can lead to fines, upset customers and a bad corporate reputation. Strong governance models ensure that these issues are avoided by following relevant privacy and security policies.
Conclusion:
A strong Data Governance model gives your sales organization access to quality data and empowers it to turn data into actionable sales insights. Although governance may not be a trending topic within the sales organization, it’s crucial to data-driven sales success and it needs move to the top of the list of priorities for executives.
