New study from Nephos Technologies determines UK businesses are blind to the critical value-add opportunities delivered by their data governance programmes

New figures from Nephos Technologies, a specialist data services integrator, has revealed that the majority of UK businesses that took part in its recent study are missing out on critical value-add opportunities readily available through their data governance efforts. Furthermore, over one third of those who participated in the survey said they were either not aware, or did not know, if their company had a data governance strategy.

When asked to rank the top three most important outcomes of their data governance programs, crucial value-add benefits including greater efficiencies, better data quality, better decision making and improved business performance were all considered less important outputs than compliance, according to 71 percent of respondents. 

Respondents were also asked about the relative importance of a range of data governance capabilities – as part of their overall data governance strategy. Again, compliance was the most popular response with 50 percent saying that ensuring compliance against required regulations and legislation was most important. This was followed by demonstrating ROI (20 percent), driving demonstrable data outputs (19 percent) and simply completing a box-ticking exercise (11 percent).

The survey also questioned respondents around the importance of the foundational components of a data governance program. Discovery & Classification was considered to be the most important (37 percent), followed by Privacy Management (29 percent), Data Management (26 percent) and People & Processes (8 percent).

Michael Queen, co-founder and CEO at Nephos Technologies, commented: “The lack of awareness around the importance of People & Processes is a clear indication of where organisations are failing to drive value from their data governance strategies. For any project to succeed and drive value, the correct people have to be engaged at every stage, and data governance processes must guide both where and when they will be needed.”

He concluded: “The crux of the issue is that with experience and skill sets at a premium, many organisations are struggling to take the raw outputs from their governance toolsets and turn them into tangible business outputs. This means they’re missing out on critical business intelligence that could enable them to deliver on even the most ambitious data governance objectives.” 

The survey was conducted at Big Data London in September 2022 and secured responses from 103 attendees.