A Manager's Guide to Data Warehousing

Chapter 8. Managing Data As a Corporate Asset

"Data as a corporate asset"—what does that really mean? In simple terms, any asset a business owns must contribute to the success of that business or it is not really an asset. Many businesses have assets on their books that are not making a positive impact on the success of the business. If you add up the total investment in data, including operational systems to run your business, business intelligence systems to manage your business, staff to build, maintain, and use these systems, it will probably be one of the largest assets on your books. Is all this data you collect really working for you? Is it really a corporate asset? How can you turn data into a real asset?

This chapter is an introduction to information management concepts and principles, which provide the mechanism to turn data into a corporate asset. This is accomplished through strong partnerships between business and IT communities and corporate commitment. The topics covered here include the following:

• Understanding master data management

• Data governance

• Understanding data ownership

• What "high data quality" means and how to get it

• Ideas for setting up a data dictionary

• Practical steps to get started with information management

These concepts are briefly introduced in this chapter, but are not intended to provide a comprehensive guide. Many other resources are available for any readers who are interested in learning more about these concepts and how to develop and execute a comprehensive ...