Metadata Management vital to the success of big data governance success

Today like never before the data is seen as the backbone of any business and more importantly the focus on big data governance is unprecedented.  Businesses are gaining more information about their customers, products and markets with big volumes of data integrated from a variety of data sources. Many organizations rely on this data for taking informed decisions. However experts view that the data may be inconsistent, redundant or duplicate, in other words the data may be far from perfect. As decision support system is seen as a source of competitive advantage, failure to fix the shortcomings can lead to costly mistakes.

 It is a matter of fact that companies are deploying and investing heavily on ERP and other applications to manage business processes. While there is little doubt that these systems will help manage a business effectively but the biggest challenge facing these organizations is data integrity. Availability of data from multiple channels in huge volumes and in multiple forms is among the benefits an organization reaps from big data. However the issues plaguing the organizations is the data itself, which poses significant challenges. There is a growing need for quality and accurate data that will help organizations gain vital insights besides helping them take well-informed and well-timed decisions. Governing the data is seen as an effective solution to the problem of how to tackle data inadequacies.

What is Data governance: It is seen more as an effort to ensure the data is meeting standards and meeting compliance requirements. The success of data governance to a large extent is determined by metadata management because the absence of the later makes implementation of data governance a futile attempt. It may not come as a surprise that the entire data governance process revolves around metadata.

Enterprises cutting across industries can leverage the benefits of governing data and there is no better way of achieving than by gaining better control of metadata management. Data-intensive organizations today are recognizing the fact that relying on decision support systems is fast becoming inevitable to create an effective source of differentiation. In fact big data solutions are basically meant to handle challenges similar to these.  Organizations generally deploy and invest in off-the-shelf systems to fulfill their requirements. But they see little success because these systems fail for a variety of reasons and falls short of meeting the expectations. Soon the investments made in these systems may soon prove costly because they fail to overcome the challenges of big data and conversion.

An effective system will fasten the project delivery by automating the metadata mapping process this will go long way in bringing the needed competence and usability to minimize project risks and costs.

Big data governance initiative is good for organizations because it will help unlock the potential of big data. However as with any initiative in business the success of big data governance depends on a number of factors including team employed to execute the project, a proven methodology and implementation road map.