Data Governance: Why Is It So Important?
At the heart of society’s digital transformation lies data. For many years, leading players in the digital economy have leveraged their ability to efficiently exploit available or collected data as an unmatched growth engine. Traditional businesses are now realizing the value of these digital assets and the importance of properly exploiting them to remain competitive in a digital economy. Investing in data analysis allows them to better understand market needs, anticipate customer expectations, and identify risks and opportunities.
Automated data processing also offers significant operational efficiency gains. With the rise of vast IoT ecosystems and the integration of artificial intelligence into operational processes, organizations need genuine capabilities to exploit data and use it to drive business growth.
Building the Capabilities to Exploit Data
Although organizations increasingly recognize the importance of data, becoming truly data-driven is not straightforward. “Building the capabilities to exploit data first requires establishing good data governance,” explains Eva Gram, Head of Codit Luxembourg, Proximus Luxembourg’s entity dedicated to digital transformation. “It is essential to define the framework in which data can be used while ensuring compliance with regulations, particularly in terms of security, privacy, and data protection. It is also necessary to ensure data quality and implement processes for managing data throughout its lifecycle.”
Defining a Robust Framework
Embedding data valorization within a company requires careful planning. The process involves several steps. First, organizations must assess the data they hold, determine where it is stored, and evaluate its potential against business objectives. Beyond that, storage concerns, processing workflows, access rules, and data-sharing protocols must be addressed. Defining clear roles and responsibilities for data management, enrichment, and exploitation is also crucial.
“A strong data governance framework directly improves organizational performance,” adds Eva Gram. “It helps minimize storage and retention costs while accelerating value creation by facilitating data use and supporting digital business transformation.”
Gaining Maturity
Effective governance equips an organization with the capacity to manage data. Implementation requires attention to regulatory, technological, and operational challenges while ensuring the acquisition of expertise necessary for data management and valorization. “Each company has a different maturity level,” Eva Gram notes. “Starting from good governance, organizations can evolve to extract increasing value from the data they manage and collect. Initially, the focus is usually on producing high-quality reporting to support decision-making. Over time, companies can expand into data monitoring, risk management, analytics, automation, and AI applications.”
Data Quality: A Key Challenge
From solid governance, organizations gradually achieve maturity. Conversely, weak foundations expose them to significant risks. “If data is incomplete, low-quality, or outdated, it can lead to flawed decisions or operational inefficiencies. Poor governance can undermine significant investments or even cause project failures,” warns Eva Gram. “If a company intends to use AI, machine learning, or tools like ChatGPT, it must understand that the quality of results depends primarily on the quality of the underlying data. In other words, AI performance directly reflects the strength of an organization’s data governance.”
Leveraging Expertise
In Luxembourg, Codit supports organizations in implementing robust data governance by providing expertise and practical solutions. Starting from a company’s data strategy and assessing its maturity, Codit teams help define a roadmap and plan actions to achieve strategic objectives.
