Why I started to use data governance for my business

Running a business is the new lifestyle! Well, being an entrepreneur is part of the lifestyle where people become financially independent, have a lot of freedom, and spend time with their family and friends often. 

We can see this trend all over the internet. People share their stories and journey how they became successful entrepreneurs. They offer courses, expertise, strategies, and methods on how to start a business, grow and thrive a business. 

I was working in a company where I was not very happy and I always had this idea of running my own business. For a long time, this was just an idea or dream in my head. But after a while, I took the courage and started my own online business. 

To be honest, I was naive for a long time. I thought it will be so easy for me to handle and manage everything. In the beginning, everything went pretty well. I got my first orders, had good reviews, people liked my work! I was very happy about it. More and more work came in. I started to have a range of regular customers, and a growing number of new clients. As I said, I strongly believed that I can manage everything with the tools I have.

Well, as business started to grow, the problems increased as well.

I underestimated the importance of collecting, saving, and analyzing data! I had to get back to work I have been working on some months ago, and this is where I realized it, to redo some aspects of the work. It took me quite a long time to find the documents. Later I lost some data completely or maybe never saved them properly. Let´s say it clear: I messed up my data management. In the beginning, I thought that everything is well organized and under control. But as the data was growing things became complicated. 

I lost a lot of quality time by just looking for certain information and sometimes had to admit that I can´t find the data anymore. 

That is an inexcusable mistake with major consequences and fallouts. Customers will see a low quality, orders will decrease, mistakes increase, and the reputation will be bad.

I had to learn this the hard way. I did this mistake by not managing data properly, I lost the trust of many regular customers, I did failures, I delivered work late and my reputation was going down. 

I realized that proper data management and data governance is the fundament. 

What is data governance? Data governance is a process/collection of tools and software that assure the effective management of data. Data will be secured, available, and usable. That means that all information, from the master data to details about the customer, work, and purchases will be managed professionally. With data governance, people with permission will be allowed to access certain data, work with them, change and transfer them. With strict guidelines, the company can assure the safety and integrity of the data as well as accessibility and communication.

Using the tools for data governance is fundamentally important for a company because data will be safe, well organized, and accessible for the right people for the right purpose. 

Efficient data management avoids all the problems and mistakes I described before. A business can show its high quality, trustworthiness, and efficiency with professional data governance.

As I started to use software for data governance for my business, I realized its importance. I was able to grow, work efficiently, and especially professional on a high level of quality.