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CASE STUDY

Governance that enables business: pick the hardest case to become the trusted partner

Exec summary:  

With a retail/convenience group we flipped the script by positioning data governance at the heart of the business challenges: 

  • Governance isn't about abstract policies  → we made direct connection between how data governance brings value and clarity to business operations. 
  • One focused workshop → we made team to dive as deep as they never did before, to identify true root challenges for "why governance matters". 
  • Acknowledge data foundations - a massive improvement work conformed as absolutely needed, that was strangled for years in planning loops. 

Result: team felt relieved and energized by gaining so much needed clarity and conformed direction for governance work. They were able to made an immediate progress over work that struggled to move for years. 

Audience takeaway: we made governance practical and value-anchored by rallying around a tough commercial metric use case, which opened doors to business collaboration and created visible buy-in. 

 Context:  

The team is modernizing BI while solving architectural constraints and working on a short-term workarounds - the most of the efforts are grounded here. On the other hand, governance program was struggling, as not being tied to tangible workstreams that business would happy to contribute and collaborate with. 

 Challenges (before we started):

• A key commercial metric lacked clear business alignment, leading to ambiguous definitions and blurry rules, preventing company to calculate a true revenue.
• Promotions added another complexity as not being reliably associated to articles/stores.

 What we did (advisory, training & coaching)

• Positioned key commercial metric example as the flagship data-product governance case: pushed for business engagement and clarity on definitions/rules.
• Triggered and supported senior business conversations, acknowledging importance and agreement to support; actions initiated with business experts.
• Tied governance to concrete data work: review promotion-entry process; aim to improve association to articles and stores; document clear rules and exceptions.

 Outcomes so far: 

• Business buy-in secured.
• Concrete governance lever identified.
• Momentum on a “super tough” use case acknowledged by both sides.
• Fast progress made on previously delayed data foundations work - as clear dependency with governance success in business trusting the intention and plan.

 What made the difference: 

  • Framing governance in business terms and projecting definitions into data.

  • Bridge the dependency on data foundations to succeed with data governance.

  • Creating the narrative around key commercial metric to unlock senior engagement and practical actions. 

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