The Role of Data Governance in an Organization - Data Governance: Creating Value from Information Assets - page 4

supports an organization's strategic approach involving planning, choos-
ing, and sometimes improvising or shifting approaches dynamically based
on the competitive environment. Data governance supports the systematic
management and use of information to achieve objectives that are clearly
aligned with and contribute to the organization's objectives.
To compete in the global arena, organizations adopt two broad strate-
gies types: either Adaptive/Defender or Proactive/Prospector strategies.
Organizations pursuing the Defender strategy type respond to competitive
forces with better management of costs and reliance on internal strengths
for their positioning in the marketplace. Organizations pursuing Prospec-
tor strategy type utilize marketing strengths in response to competitive
pressures. In both the cases, data and information are utilized to assess,
evaluate, and formulate these business strategies. Data and information
internal to the organizations are used in Defender strategies to lower
operating costs and achieve efficiencies to better position the organiza-
tion in the competitive marketplace. Similarly, data and information of
external environment and marketplace play a strong role in the formula-
tion of proactive strategies. Organizations with Prospector strategy are å
and marketing-oriented, focusing on identifying and satisfying the needs
of customers with value, quality, and product offerings based upon their
knowledge of customer and industry trends. Good data governance poli-
cies and procedures are invaluable in the management of data and infor-
mation in organizations of both types of strategies, and contribute to
building distinctive competencies for the organization.
DATA GOVERNANCE ACROSS INTRAFIRM NETWORKS
“Intrafirm networks” are a set of formal and/or informal relationships
among business units of the same legal entity (Achrol and Kotler, 1999).
Each business unit has a sufficient degree of freedom to make its own
resource allocation and data governance decisions while still working in
close cooperation with its affiliated business units. Business units obtain
and utilize data and information from within their formal boundaries and
from other business units. In order to acquire this data, business units
within the organization must follow some procedures and policies.
Data governance across the business units in an organization facilitates
easy and timely access to each other's data and to data from businesses