Inside Applied Data Governance: Expert Perspectives from the ADGP Program Episode 3: Proving Value and Sustaining Momentum with John Ladley

From your perspective, why is establishing value and ROI for data governance so important for organizations?

Well, we said in the prior two podcasts, you've got to Talk about governing data from a standpoint of value and benefit to the organization.

Even though it is at its philosophical roots, it's an overhead function.

It's something we want to disappear.

We want it into the background noise of an organization.

It still needs to have perceptive or perceived value.

And the only way an organization understands that is to talk about it in numerical terms.

whether you like it or not.

It's like we talked about, if we want to communicate with leadership, they don't need to learn Technobabble.

We have to learn business talk.

Well, we also have to learn to talk in terms of metrics.

We have to learn to talk in terms of, well, we did these certain data oversight capabilities, which enabled certain business things, and that added value to the organization.

You need to tie it.

Remember, direct...

Bottom line benefit of an overhead function is, from an accounting standpoint, not permitted.

That's something that most talking heads won't talk about.

They'll say, oh, yeah, we can do ROI.

We're a big consulting firm.

We'll do ROI on your governance program.

We'll show you 20% a year.

You're lying, lying, lying.

No, that means they don't understand it's an overhead fund.

They're treating it as another project that's got an ROI on it with a cash flow or something.

You are enabling other resources and your value comes from seamlessly and efficiently and cost-effectively enabling these other capabilities.

And any good business person will tell you that a good back office team is invaluable to the front lines, right? And they can be measured.