Your organization has made an investment in a third-party intent data provider, or is considering one. How recently have you updated your enterprise data governance capabilities and rules?

Data governance refers to the orchestration of the people, processes, and tech needed to use your enterprise data as a strategic asset. And if you are fueling your marketing and sales operations with first- and / or third-party purchase intent data captured from the web, you need to treat that investment as the strategic asset it is.

According to Aberdeen research, failing to provide your business users with timely access to reliable enterprise data has a shockingly negative impact on the ability to make better-informed business decisions – but investing in more effective data governance capabilities can change that.

Those capabilities and the challenges forcing organizations to adopt them are explored in “In Data, We Trust: How Business Users Benefit from More Effective Data Governance,” by Vice President and Research Fellow Derek E. Brink.

The pursuit of “timely access to trustworthy data” is an easy and logical enough concept to understand, but justifying investments in people, processes, and technologies for data governance is a challenge, as shown by the unimpressive net effectiveness index of enterprises’ data governance capabilities.

Reported capabilities for providing accessible, timely, accurate, and complete enterprise data are currently very low, Aberdeen research reveals. On a net effectiveness index ((everyone thinks data governance is highly effective) +100% to -100% (no one thinks data governance is high effective)), organizations score:

  • Business user visibility into relevant data: +5%
  • Organizational trust in data for making business decisions: +12%
  • Speed / efficiency of integrating and preparing enterprise data: -2%

For reference, a net effectiveness index of +50% or higher is considered strongly positive. It’s evident that more effective data governance would increase these low indices, thereby better informing business decisions.

Aberdeen research has revealed four dimensions of effective data governance that support fully informed business decisions when all four are present at once. The more accessible, timely, accurate, and complete enterprise data is, the higher the likelihood of a fully informed business decision (see Figure 1).

As Figure 1 shows, enterprise data is:

  • readily accessible to business users an average of 70% of the time
  • available and relevant to business users in the timeframe needed an average of 75% of the time
  • trustworthy and without error an average of 92% of the time
  • trustworthy and missing nothing an average of 92% of the time

These four dimensions, however, are not in synch and are exclusive of one another – only effective data governance processes and rules can ensure all four dimensions are true for all enterprise data. Investments in more effective data governance, therefore, would logically lead to more consistent performance in accessibility, timeliness, accuracy, and completeness.

Improved performance in those dimensions can presumably lead to better business decisions than those made on intuition and gut feel.

Likewise, if your organization is investing in purchase intent data to better target campaigns and marketing efforts, to find more qualified prospects who are in-market to buy a solution like yours, and to improve all sales and marketing operations, you need to invest in the processes and tech enablers to ensure your BDRs and marketers have timely access to trustworthy intent data and related insights.

Sales and marketing insights today are exponentially more contextual than those of the past – if your context is off, your insights can’t be accurate. If your insights aren’t timely and accurately relevant and complete, any efforts or decisions made will be equally as off-target.

To learn more about Aberdeen’s recommendations for justifying investments in key technology enablers that can improve your ability to satisfy the data needs of your marketing, sales, and other business users, download the research brief here.