Cigref has published a report on the results of its working group on « Governance and data architecture », co-chaired by Alice Guéhennec, Chief Digital & Information Officer of the SAUR group, and Patrick Mahu, Enterprise Architect at Pôle Emploi.
Ce rapport est aussi disponible en français
Companies and public administrations believe in the value of data. Data is an asset for the entire organisation, not just for one department or business unit. This is why companies and public administrations are transforming themselves to make better use of this data, investing in building and implementing a data strategy that can serve their overall strategy.
For this, organisations identify their motivations and what they expect from this approach and estimate the potential gains, such as better time to market, shares in new markets, operational excellence, improvements and adjustments in their responses to customers and users, and ensuring their solutions and products are compliant. Each organisation has its own environment in which they build their data strategy, allowing them to place it within an overall strategy that suits its mission and structural and conjunctural needs, such as the group’s organisation or a healthcare crisis.
Building the data strategy then follows a few major steps, such as the following:
- Assess the maturity of the company and build the data knowledge of its employees,
- Define specific business objectives,
- Identify the relevant data to be used,
- Prepare the architecture and technical bricks.
This guide to building a data strategy is a synthesis of the various approaches of the contributors to the « Governance and Data Architecture » working group. Of course, it can be amended and adapted to suit the needs of each organisation.
Once the data strategy has been defined, it must be implemented at the levels of technical foundations, governance, organisation and processes. The architecture of the IT system, its history, technological dependencies and the maturity of the data culture are all elements that impact this implementation.
A data strategy requires the company to have dedicated data governance to tackle challenges such as knowledge of the data, quality control, harmonisation of reference data and regulatory compliance. Since all the players must work together to prepare the data to be used, it is important to coordinate the data strategy’s governance with the other governance systems in place, such as the IT strategy, business strategy and the digital transformation, which all contribute to the company’s general strategy.
To implement the data strategy, companies and public administrations must also work on its organisation, i.e., how tasks are distributed among employees and how each person’s role in rolling out this strategy is defined. This issue is increasingly being addressed within the larger issue of the Agile enterprise.
Finally, once the data strategy has been defined and put in place, the company or public administration still must manage and monitor its implementation and evaluate its benefits in various areas. The report shares the indicators and metrics that the participants in the Governance and Data Architecture working group use for these purposes.