Data Governance – The other part of Material MDM
We started off the year with a deep dive into material master data quality and what the phrase signifies. While getting material data to an acceptable level of quality is essential, material master data management consists of another, equally important part – data governance.
What is Data Governance?
The Data Governance Institute defines data governance as – “Data Governance is a system of decision rights and accountabilities for information-related processes, executed according to agreed-upon models which describe who can take what actions with what information, and when, under what circumstances, using what methods.”
Data Governance in material MDM
While data governance is a very broad term, in the material MDM context it refers to the rules and framework put in place after the existing data has been cleansed. It specifies who, when, and how materials can be created and searched, ensuring that duplicate material creation is eliminated. It also involves making sure that relevant attributes are captured during data creation, minimizing the need for data cleansing in the future. Data governance is an important tool in keeping the material data clean on an ongoing basis.
Data Governance Stakeholders
In most cases, the IT or Data Management team has de-facto responsibility for data governance efforts. However, this scenario is slowly but surely changing as companies have begun to realize that taking decisions regarding data requires subject matter expertise. This makes the role of data stewards increasingly important while making material master data management an initiative that expands to the edge of the enterprise.
This blog post is a cursory glance at the critical process of data governance and we’ll discuss it in detail in the following weeks. Meanwhile, please feel free to share your thoughts on all things material MDM in the comment section below.

Arthur Raguette

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