by Angela Guess
Ian Murphy of Data Informed recently noted that the unwillingness or inability to break down data silos within a company remains a major challenge to effective Data Governance. He writes, “Failing to address this problem can lead to inefficiencies and lost opportunities at a time when analytics can help a company use data sets from diverse sources more effectively, to save money or find new business opportunities. Paul Barth and Randy Bean, both managing partners of the Boston-based management consulting firm NewVantage Partners, have worked with Fortune 1000 companies since 2001 on information strategy, data management and governance and digital strategy. In an interview with Data Informed, both said the key to sharing data is to provide incentives and create systems that make it easy.”
Bean told Murphy, “Historically most organizations have organized by products… As a result, often they’ve operated very independently, with their own [profit and loss statements], and they’ve been judged and measured independently. There hasn’t been any incentive to share data on an enterprise basis, and data really [should be] a shared resource.” Murphy added that, “Barth said breaking down such barriers starts with quantifying the benefits—time saved, revenue gained, costs avoided—of the work involved. ‘First thing you do is very clearly and with a degree of rigor identify the business opportunity of having the information,’ Barth said.”
