Building a business case for data management

Overview

To build a business case for data management, IT leaders should attach financial values to these pain points and show how better data management would improve the financial position of the organisation. In this, open source solutions are invaluable, even if they are used for no other purpose than to provide a low- or no-cost test-bed with which to demonstrate ideas to a nontechnical board.
A simple example might be to sample the customer database and from this sample estimate how much duplicated customer data the organisation has. It would then be a case of demonstrating where opportunities are missed or mistakes with financial penalties are made and attaching values, including the cost of storing duplicated data in terms of hardware, energy and staff effort.