Data governance tools: A selection checklist

If you’ve decided to embark on a journey of data governance, you’ll want to check out the full ebook “Data Governance: An Executive’s Survival Guide.” The following is but one chapter of the guide.

Tools available for data governance

By outlining and implementing data quality control guidelines, data governance software helps organizations meet regulatory standards, improve security, and increase employee efficiency. While some software is designed explicitly for data governance, it's also possible to find master data management and data quality software with built-in tools for data governance processes.

To be considered a data governance tool, software must facilitate data lifecycle management by providing data classification, discovery, and de-identification tools. It must also allow organizations to enforce standards and compliance requirements to ensure their data is secure and protected from unauthorized access or theft.

Additionally, data governance software should provide recommendations for improving governance processes, such as identifying areas of data quality improvement or areas where compliance requirements are not being met.

By using data governance software, organizations can effectively manage their data governance processes and ensure their data is secure, accurate, and up-to-date. This not only helps to improve business operations but also helps to build trust with customers and stakeholders by demonstrating a commitment to data security and regulatory compliance.

With the right data governance tools, organizations can streamline their data management processes and focus on making data-driven decisions that drive success.

Data governance tool checklist

When choosing a data governance tool, it's essential to have a clear checklist to guide your decision-making process. Here are some key factors to consider:

• Establish clear goals: Before selecting a data governance tool, you must clearly understand your goals and objectives. This will help you narrow your options and choose a tool that best fits your needs.

• Use your data governance framework as a guide: Your data governance framework should be used when selecting a tool. Ensure the tool aligns with your framework and can implement your desired governance strategies.

• Budget: Determine your budget and ensure the tool fits within your financial constraints.

• IT restrictions: Check with your IT team to see if there are any restrictions or controls on new technology, such as cloud-only solutions.

• Enterprise or tiered solution: Decide whether you need an enterprise-level solution or if a tiered solution is an option.

• Vendor fit: Determine which vendor best fits your requirements and aligns with your business needs.

• Business user involvement: Ensure sufficient business user involvement is included in the selection process to ensure the tool meets their needs.

• Implementation timeline: Determine how long it’ll take to implement the tool and ensure it fits within your business timeline.

• Complexity: Ensure the initial implementation makes sense for your business and isn’t too complex.

• Training and support: Determine what training is given for the data governance team and business users and what the product support, bug fixes, and enhancements look like.

Considering these factors, you can select a data governance tool that best fits your business needs, is easy to implement, and provides adequate training and support to ensure success.

How Smarty ranks

Smarty's address cleansing tools offer an excellent solution for cleaning, standardizing, deduplicating, and enriching new and existing address data. The fast and secure Smarty Address Validation APIs help improve your business's address data quality, a crucial aspect of data governance.

However, address data is just a part of the bigger picture of data governance. Pairing Smarty's address cleansing tools with other data governance software may be helpful. If you're looking for data governance software, consider the following questions during the selection process.

If you'd like to see how Smarty compares with other Address Data tools, you can check out a G2 comparison here

Next steps

Selecting the right data governance tool is critical for businesses looking to streamline their data management, improve data quality, and ensure regulatory compliance. With so many options available, determining which tool best suits your specific needs can be overwhelming.

However, by keeping the above questions in mind and considering popular providers such as Collibra, Egnyte, and SAP, businesses can begin their search with confidence. Other providers like Alation, Immuta, and Talend may also offer unique features that align better with your specific data governance goals.

Ultimately, selecting the best data governance tool is a process requiring careful consideration and a deep understanding of your organization's unique requirements. By identifying your goals and outlining your data governance framework, you can take the first step towards selecting a tool that will support and enhance your data management efforts for years to come.

Download the free ebook today