Five Key Reasons Enterprise Data Governance Matters to Finance … and Seven Best Practices to Get You There

• Published date: 01 January 2016
• Author: Gilles Demarquet
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22121
• Date: 01 January 2016

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© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI 10.1002/jcaf.22121

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Five Key Reasons Enterprise

DataGovernance Matters

to Finance … and Seven Best

PracticestoGetYouThere

Gilles Demarquet

Are you able

to close your

books and

report faster than

your competitors,

or are you spending

too much time fix-

ing issues related to

a misaligned chart

of accounts slowing

down your close and

reporting?

A study on the

financial close process

uncovered that 88%

of surveyed organi-

zations were facing

issues when closing

the books due to a

misaligned chart of

accounts, which had

a direct impact on the

time to create corporate report-

ing (Dynamic Markets for

Oracle and Accenture, 2012).

It was reported that up to 20

man-days are being spent to fix

these issues in order to produce

accurate financial reports. This

is a large amount of lost time,

showing the direct impact of

bad data quality on reporting.

Often, the chart-

of-accounts change

process is to blame

(inadequate), and

better handling of

the chart-of-accounts

change process will

simplify the report-

ing flow and help

speed up the close

and reporting process

dramatically.

Enterprise data

governance becomes

the critical tool for

finance to help main-

tain alignment of the

chart of accounts

through the change

process and to drive

consistency between

all business applica-

tions (Exhibit 1). Enterprise

data governance is defined

as encompassing the people,

processes, and information

technology required to create

Trends from a recent survey show that enterprise

data governance initiatives are more predominant

in 2015 than they were in the past. This change

is due to CFOs realizing that strong governance

around hierarchies and dimensions are critical

for enterprise success. Many organizations are

planning to reduce by half their use of spread-

sheets and e-mail for enterprise data governance

in 2015, and this reduction is matched by an

increase in the planned use of packaged enter-

prise data governance solutions. There are seven

best practices to work on to attain strong data

governance in your organization. Some may be

facilitated through the use of software, but many

are just good practices that must be adopted and

adhered to by your company. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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