The Need of a Business Glossary for a Successful Data Governance Initiatives and its Benefits
In the era of the enterprise data-driven world, it is vital for organizations to clearly define and understand the business terms across business to achieve success. An incorrect interpretation that might be caused by polysemy or clusters contributes to misunderstandings and increases the risk of having poor information and which in turn may lead to poor decisions. Business Glossary is used to avoid such risks.
Business Glossary is defined as a collection of data-related business terms that can be described in a lucid and simple language that everybody across the enterprise can understand. It is just like speaking the same language by avoiding any type of ambiguity in the business operations and terminology. In any enterprise, there are different departments such as manufacturing, information technology, and sales and employees in each department have their own business language usage which other department employees may find difficult to understand or sometimes may not understand at all. Business Glossary helps to create a common business vocabulary which enables communication more effectively.
Business glossary provides instructions for creating various reports enabling the employees to determine the metrics of their respective tasks for any specific purposes from time to time.
Business Glossary helps avoid errors caused due to misinterpretation of data or data fields, for example the word Bank can have 2 interpretations: a financial institution or a side of a river. Business Glossary should not be confused with the terms such as Data Catalog, Data dictionary, and Business Data Dictionary.
Steps for building a Business Glossary
Step 1:- Identify the Critical Data Elements The first and primary step of building a business glossary is to identify the data elements. Data elements are the data attributes that are used in running a company and that data which is required to get the job done. However it may be noted that data which is critical in one business may not be critical in another.
Step 2:- Identify Owners and Link Policies After identifying these elements, you have to assign ownership to them accordingly.
Three important questions are vital in this context. Who creates these elements? Who approves them? Who uses them and Why?
Step 3:- Setup Standard Operating Procedures You must create standards and policies around the elements. You should also document and build processes to assure the integrity and quality of your data. You will see roles, ownership, and responsibilities are vital in establishing controls.
Step 4:- Drive Organizational Adoption The business glossary is effective only if it is used by the people. To drive the adoption, you must communicate to the business users about the business glossary’s availability, and educate them on how to find it.
Business Benefits of Opting for Business Glossary
Enhances Communication – Business Glossary facilitates a consensus with proper meaning and usage of business terms that are used in the communication. It further helps to communicate between different departments, 3rd party enterprises, and between the employees. A Business Glossary is equipped with examples, synonyms, definitions, employees will be able to communicate without any type of issues. Furthermore, a business glossary helps in effective training for both existing and new employees. A business glossary helps everybody to be on the same page by enhancing the communication among different roles such as IT team, sales manager, customer service and public relations Officer etc.
Defines Data Governance Roles – A business glossary helps to define the business terms to the team members of an organization by following standard policies and best practices. Business users are assigned roles for all the multiple tasks that are associated with building, editing, approving, and publishing business glossary content. This enables accountability and end-to-end traceability of the items in the business glossary and the respective people involved in the processes. It is always vital to republish and revise the business glossary on a regular basis depending on the organizational needs and requirements.
Establishing Ownership – Establishing ownership is part of the process when any person is building the Business Glossary in the organization. The terms and their definitions and associated characteristics are added to the business glossary, someone needs to to verify the legitimacy of the related terms and approve them that someone in this context is their owner.
Creates Trust in Data – Creating and using the correct definitions to the concerned data helps to avoid any type of miscommunication. Data that is used to make decisions can be trusted as it is based on data quality, traceability, consistency, and transparency. Enterprises use business glossary information as a source to all the information assets which will support the Data Governance initiatives.
To know more information and any services related to Business Glossary and Data Governance please feel free to contact us at sales@amurta.com and you can also call us at +1 888 840 0098. We will be happy to assist you.
