ESTABLISHING THE PILLARS. of a Successful Data Governance Program

Transcription

1 ESTABLISHING THE PILLARS of a Successful Data Governance Program 1

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS DATA GOVERNANCE IN THE ENTERPRISE 3 TAG AUDITING 4 GOVERNANCE DOCUMENTATION 6 COMPLIANCE TESTING 8 DATA GOVERNANCE BOARD 10 MAKE DATA GOVERNANCE A PRIORITY 12

3 DATA GOVERNANCE IN THE ENTERPRISE Data governance monitors and verifies the collection, quality, accessibility and application of data across the enterprise. To put it simply, data governance is the act of answering the questions: Is the data there? Is the data in the format I expect it? To build a governance program from the ground up or to piece together the fragments of what could be a powerful data implementation you need to start with the fundamentals. Tag auditing, governance documentation, compliance testing and a data governance board all play an important role in data governance programs. Use the following information to assess your current situation and build a governance framework founded on the pillars of a successful data governance program. 3

4 TAG AUDITING HOW IS YOUR DATA IMPLEMENTATION PERFORMING RIGHT NOW? Why Tag Auditing? Tag auditing helps you ensure your analytics and marketing tags are present and performant. Through consistent tag auditing, you will be able to ensure tags and variables are present and in the proper format. How? To audit your tags, you will need to identify your most important: MarTech solutions (e.g., Adobe Analytics, Google Adwords, etc.) Categories of pages (e.g., /product/, /confirmation/) User paths (e.g., shopping cart, signup, etc.) You will then need to audit these assets, either manually or using an automated data governance tool. Auditing MarTech and web pages means ensuring tags are firing when, where and how expected. To do this manually, you will have to visit each page and check the network request to make sure all required variables are being passed. Testing user paths requires you to verify that tags are firing as events occur (e.g., clicks, scrolls, etc.). 4

5 Automated Tag Auditing Manually validating scores of pages for accurate data collection is impractical and inefficient. Through automated audits and journeys, ObservePoint helps you test your implementation efficiently and at scale. Automated audits are broad discovery tools. They look for problems occurring across the site, such as with page templates. Journeys are sequential micro-audits. They allow you to simulate the interactions of a user with your website or mobile app, validating that eventtriggered tags are firing as required. 5

6 GOVERNANCE DOCUMENTATION IS YOUR IMPLEMENTATION DOCUMENTED AND UP TO DATE? Why Governance Documentation? Governance documentation outlines all of the information having to do with your implementation, specifically vendors, tags and variables. Known by various names, including a solution design reference (SDR), variable strategy, tagging plan or tech spec, governance documentation is the standard by which your implementation should live. Data governance documentation makes it easier to promote order in your data implementation and easily communicate implementation architecture. For example, bringing on a new analyst or developer is much easier when you have clear documentation for them to review. How? The format of governance documentation will vary from organization to organization, but there are some standard pieces of information you should include when structuring your documentation. Your governance docs should describe where, when and how tags and variables should fire, outlining at least the following information: Status: Active or inactive tag Use Case: How the user interacts with the site Variable: Variable Description: Example: When to Set: Where to Set: Notes: Predefined, such as pagename or utmdt, or a custom variable, such as evar10, or cd10 A quick explanation of the variable What you expect the values to look like Page load, click or other A URL, stating where this variable will be placed Additional notes about the technology 6

7 In principle, your documentation should be readily accessible and highly dynamic. That is to say, governance documentation should not live on one analyst s computer. All professionals involved in analyzing or building your implementation should have access to the documentation to avoid duplicate requests for data or inconsistent data collection. That being said, you should have an established protocol for updating governance documentation. Every new technology and variable should be vetted before being added to the documentation to ensure there is not already a solution in place. Governance Documentation Assistance If you find yourself without any governance documentation, you can use an ObservePoint audit to scour your current implementation for all existing technologies and reverse engineer documentation. You can also use ObservePoint s Rules Library to build and store governance documentation in the format of rules. Rules allow you to validate the values collected during an audit against expected values. 7

8 COMPLIANCE TESTING IS YOUR DATA IMPLEMENTATION COMPLIANT WITH CORPORATE AND LEGAL REQUIREMENTS? Why Compliance Testing? Compliance testing is the act of verifying your implementation meets corporate and legal requirements. While compliance testing could be considered a subsection of the tag auditing process, we list it as its own principle of data governance because the costs for non-compliance can be significant. Regular compliance testing helps protect your data by keeping it private and secure, and helps your company avoid potential infractions, costly in terms of both dollars and user loyalty. Compliance testing is dependent on clear-cut governance documentation. How? Compliance testing requires a clear understanding of company policies and government regulation (including international governments). The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an example of an international regulation with global impact. Your company will first need to construct its own compliance document that includes both internal and external regulations to validate against your implementation. Legal teams should cooperate with analysts, marketers and other data stakeholders to outline potentially dangerous infringements of data security and privacy laws. For example, your company could suffer severe repercussions if a rogue technology collects or transmits personally identifiable information. 8

9 Automated Compliance Testing With ObservePoint, you can adjust your audits and journeys with rules that correspond to your compliance requirements. Rules look for custom data based on predefined conditions created by the user. When a rule fails, ObservePoint immediately notifies the user. Rules are highly useful for ensuring unauthorized technologies or data collection practices are not present on a site. ObservePoint Tag Hierarchy also helps ensure compliance. With Tag Hierarchy, users can easily visualize what tags are firing when, including hidden piggybacking tags. 9

10 DATA GOVERNANCE BOARD WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR DATA GOVERNANCE PROGRAM? Why a Governance Board? People tend to not want to talk about data governance until something goes wrong. You shouldn t wait for fires to start burning before you have the data governance discussion. A data governance board brings company leaders together to frequently assess data quality and review the governance program. The goal of a data governance board is to keep data quality assurance at the forefront of the minds of all data-driven stakeholders. When company leaders are proactive and consistent about data governance, more fires are prevented and data is more usable. How? Assess the current status of your governance leadership by asking yourself the following questions: Who heads up data governance, if anyone? Are all relevant parties involved in the governance conversation? What is the protocol for implementing new technologies on a site? 10

11 Your data governance director, manager or officer should have the following attributes to be an effective leader: A strong technical background Familiarity with MarTech solutions Understanding of development frameworks/content management systems Organizational seniority Understanding of the business value of data Thorough data orientation All parties affected by data (Marketing, Sales, IT, Operations, Finance, Human Resources, etc.) should have a senior-level representative participate in a quarterly data governance council. That being said, a data governance board might start off as a party of one. If you feel like the lone ranger of data governance, work to keep consistency and demonstrate to other leaders the importance of governance in their respective disciplines. Data Governance KPIs Because data quality sometimes seems like a vague concept, data governance programs can lack clear information to sustain them. By providing a clearcut data quality score as a data governance KPI, ObservePoint gives data governance boards something to talk about. Using ObservePoint, governance boards can evaluate data quality over time to review progress and have visual feedback of their improvement. 11

12 MAKE DATA GOVERNANCE A PRIORITY Focusing on the above fundamentals will give you a starting point to build your own custom program. The results will be more accurate data collection, greater confidence in data and less fires to put out. To get you started, request a free audit from ObservePoint. REQUEST A FREE AUDIT 12