Don't Start Missing LightsOnData

Data governance council – what is it and why do you need one?

Data Governance, Free Downloads, Master Data Management

July 18, 2018

I get these questions a lot from organizations wanting to start a data governance program or who are in the early stages of planning. A data governance council is a governing body responsible for the strategic guidance of the data governance program, prioritization for the data governance projects and initiatives, approval of organization-wide data policies and standards, …read more

How to create an inventory of your data sources

July 11, 2018

A data sources inventory is meant to record basic information about the different systems across and/or outside your ecosystem from which you are capturing, producing, acquiring or procuring data. The data sources tend to be well known to their end users and administrators, but not so much to the organization as a whole. I believe …read more

Business Intelligence

10 components of the Business Intelligence landscape

July 4, 2018

Data is only meaningful if it serves a purpose. This purpose is to have it transformed into meaningful insight, hindsight, and foresight for an organization to take advantage of. Similarly to how raw materials go through a complex conveyor belt system in a factory before the end product is created, so does the data before …read more

Estimating the cost of poor data quality in 5 steps

June 27, 2018

According to the IBM Big Data & Analytics Hub, poor data costs the US economy $3.1 trillion every year. Ovum Research reported that poor data can cost businesses at least 30% of revenues. These numbers are staggering and in my opinion, they should be enough to motivate any organization to start investing in data governance, …read more

Business Intelligence

5 graphs you should always use

Data Governance, Data Stewardship

June 21, 2018

It’s been long proven that the human process of comprehension and insight is faster with visualizations than with plain numbers or tabular data. Since the 14th century, when Nicole Oresme used a bar chart in “The Latitude of Forms” to plot velocity of a constantly accelerating object against time, charts and graphs have been used …read more

Understanding the different types of a data steward

Data Governance, Data Quality, Data Stewardship, Metadata Management

June 13, 2018

Data stewardship roles can be segmented and categorized in multiple ways, depending on their responsibilities and required skills, as well as the organization’s structure, industry, goals and objectives and its data management needs. There is also an argument to be made that everyone is a data steward, but for the scope of this article I …read more

Adapting data governance to big data in 4 areas

June 6, 2018

It’s generally accepted that any organization working with data needs to adopt data governance. Readily available frameworks, tools, and services can be adapted to the requirements and environment of your organization, yet when it comes to big data governance, the options are a bit more complex. Organizations must adapt to big data in four important …read more

What is data stewardship?