Data governance: the missing link between analytic value and strategic decision making

Utilities have long been chasing the promise of complete transparency into their day-to-day operations by investing in technologies that unlock a tremendous volume of granular infrastructure data. Most businesses now receive, store, and maintain massive amounts of digital information from diverse sources — from internal sensors on pumping stations and pipelines, to GIS systems, meters, clients, markets, and more.

These digital information capabilities have been built with the understanding they will enable insightful and informed decision making across the enterprise, including the ability to:

• observe and quickly respond to operational issues (e.g., outages),
• gain timely insight into supply and market trends, and
• recognize and efficiently address strategic priorities.

Unfortunately, many utilities have not managed to fully leverage this data to enhance their analytical capabilities, much less align these capabilities with their strategic priorities. Lacking these critical connections, businesses struggle to fully realize on the endgame of improved efficiency, operational insight, and predictive capabilities.

You have the data, now what?

Far from affecting just utilities, useful and actionable analytics remain a common challenge in many industries. According to the 2021 Talend Data Health Survey, 64 percent of executives work with data every day, but 78 percent have challenges making data-driven decisions.

Some of the most common issues driving this disconnect include:

• low data quality,
• existence of data silos,
• sub-optimal data access, and
• lack of trust in organizational analytics and business intelligence reporting.