Retail manufacturer establishes data governance approach

Client background

The client is a manufacturer and retailer of underwear, sleepwear and sportswear for men, women and children, with a long history of manufacturing high quality, innovative products.

Client business challenge

In preparation for a major ERP migration, the client had a need to better manage critical datasets throughout their application and reporting platforms. It was a challenge for users from disparate teams to coordinate and communicate around shared data assets for different operational purposes. There was a lack of documented standards and definitions which led to inconsistent data usage and interpretation.

Strategy and solution

Baker Tilly engaged in a strategic initiative to establish a data governance program and framework to support the client’s organizational goals, including:

• Setting up a focused data governance charter to establish a baseline for the item master data effort
• Defining data owners and steward roles and responsibilities for item master data
• Establishing data governance policies and standards around security, technology, collaboration, master data and data quality
• Creating documentation resources for critical data element definitions, metadata and ownership over application datasets
• Training governance roles and responsibilities to execute on governance activities

Baker Tilly worked with the client to establish a governance framework, forming a committee to continue to run and evaluate data governance after the project closed. The program was developed collaboratively with key business and IT stakeholders, ensuring smooth change management processes leading to an effective program. With the establishment of a data governance program, the client can efficiently manage and consistently analyze data to achieve better insights and improve operations and outcomes.