A New Data Governance Model Uses a Familiar Name

Remember hub-and-spoke networking? Well, now it’s emerging as a popular governance model among organizations embarking on new data projects. And instead of switching technology, we have the data or digital team at the center of the hub.

At a recent panel discussion during the CDOTrends Digi-Live Summit series, two digital leaders from diverse organizations invoked the benefits of the hub-and-spoke model as they aggregated and distributed data through their organizations.

But while the digital team is at the center of the hub, all digital leaders were strong advocates for the democratization of data as a catalyst for broader transformation, with security delivered through a zero trust model.

Sue-Lin Tin, the head of technology for Pacific and Singapore at real estate company CBRE told the summit that she was six months into her data project. She advised companies to begin with a small number of use cases, get them right, and then repeat them in other areas throughout the business.

While working on a local Asia Pacific data strategy, the global CDO looked at data from an enterprise perspective and provided data and data governance as a service across the organization.

“We also want to have interoperability between the data so we can harness the richness that is there,” said Sue-Lin Tin.

“So it is a hub and spoke model in that the centralized data team will provide the guidance frameworks, the recommendations on tolls and so on, and then the local markets will have an opportunity to implement that as well.”

From vertically integrated wine company Treasury Wine Estates, Clare Kitching said she was pursuing a similar approach.

As the general manager of data, insights, and analytics, Kitching said she was the hub.

“I might be the hub, but we are setting up the spokes, and what I’m doing now is working with the spokes to ask, ‘hey, let’s think about the strategy and how do we work together on this? What are the skills you need, and how are we going to grow?’” she said.

“We are talking about the opportunities and how we link that strategy to a technology roadmap, but as we have so many parts of our business, it’s interesting to get into the detail of where data and analytics can help.”

Platforms and governance

Kitching, who has only arrived at Treasury Wine Estates this year, says the company is only in the first stages of maturing its data strategy, to which there are three pillars.

“One is developing our platform and making sure that we have the priority datasets available and structure well on the platform for use by the business divisions,” she said. “So we are working division by division to ask, ‘how do we work with you, where’s the value, and what do you want to achieve?’”

“The second pillar is really about initializing our data governance approach, and we are working with the divisions to identify what data we have, what are the data quality issues, who will be the data owners or stewards, and how we will be implementing data governance tools,” she continued.

“We want to be able to give our supply chain a view of the daily stock by store so they can have that information and use it easily, and that’s out of our reach at the moment”

The third pillar is “around uplifting our data literacy.”

“This is really about letting people know the power of data, identifying who has the skills, and developing apps or communities of practice to give people the support and access to the training they might need,” said Kitching.

The third panel member was Dominic O’Halloran, the head of data and analytics at the Australian cosmetics company MECCA Brands.

O’Halloran explained that he has two strands of work currently. There is the “business as usual” work the company needs to keep going while at the same time, he is working on a new and more future-looking data architecture.

The first part is understanding the “roadmap” for analytics and the supply chain. It is emerging that a decentralized approach could be more appropriate than “just having a big pool of analytics requests coming into a central place.”

“The next project is about defining and working out our architecture for the data platform, and then we can understand more about our new data warehouse and the rest of the technology we need,” said O’Halloran.

“We can start to do proof of concepts and move a certain reporting workload onto the new platform and see how that impacts our end users. We have really high engagement, but there are a lot of issues and challenges. So, we’re starting to define different areas of the business that use analytics and also understand the gaps in our reporting layer that we need to fill.”

Where’s the value?

The three panelists were asked how they believed their data projects would ultimately benefit their organizations.

MECCA Brands’ O’Halloran conceded that “the things that people want to be doing with data in the business is just unattainable at the moment.”

“We want to be able to give our supply chain a view of the daily stock by store so they can have that information and use it easily, and that’s out of our reach at the moment,” he said.

“So the business case is about enablement and building those foundations, and then the cherry on the top is when we can start adding more advanced analytics and bring machine learning and AI into what analytics can offer the business.”

Treasury Wine Estates’ Kitching said that the initial benefits from the early data projects were access to data and improved automation for data and reporting.

“For us, it’s about improving consumer engagement and better understanding our supply chain,” she said. “I think there’s also a burning platform that if we don’t have this data connected across the business, then we’re going to miss out tomorrow. And I think sustainability is a really good example here.”

“We all have sustainability targets, but if we can’t track this across our supply chain all the way back to the vineyards, then we’re going to miss out on customers stocking our products and consumers choosing our products. So I think we’re in danger of missing out if we don’t do this,” she observed.

Finally, CBRE’s Sue-Lin Tin said that once her organization surmounted data quality issues, it could get quality data into systems and drive adoption and data use.

There were also issues of “basic hygiene,” which would come from moving data from a “multitude of excel files” and providing automation and improved operational efficiency

Echoing Kitching, she said sustainability was also an issue at CBRE.

“Being able to connect the dots across all that data and provide sustainability targets — that is something our clients are adopting,” she said.

“If we’re not able to provide that level of service, that level of data and inside [the organization], then we’re behind the competitors.”

Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and the NextGenConnectivity editor. He remains fascinated with how businesses reinvent themselves through digital technology to solve existing issues and change their entire business models. You can reach him at [email protected].

Image credit: iStockphoto/tifonimages