Enterprise Data Governance Enables Digital Strategy

A healthcare payer utilizes a non-traditional, transparent pricing model and requires a lot of data to drive its business. Like many organizations within the healthcare industry, getting data isn’t the problem, but organizing that data into meaningful insights that are aligned with and support business objectives and strategies can be a real challenge.

The payer’s stated business goal was to double membership in 5 years, but the current state of their systems, architecture, and data presented a risk in achieving this level of growth and scalability. Leadership recognized the importance of effective enterprise data governance as a key enabler of its digital transformation strategy.

Establishing & Operationalizing Enterprise Data Governance

Enterprise data governance involves stakeholders from across the enterprise who gather to discuss, make decisions, and resolve issues related to data assets, such as how they are defined, gathered, stored, used, and disposed of. Previous efforts at the payer to implement data governance had not matured as fast as required.

At this point, it was critical to get it right. Leadership engaged Impact Advisors to develop, establish, and operate an enterprise data governance organization—based on proven standards and leading practices and configured specifically for the payer—in support of their ongoing digital transformation.

Proven Model, Tailored to Fit

The team set the project foundation by defining enterprise data governance guiding principles and end-state business goals, then aligning and customizing traditional “out-of-the-box” data governance entities and activities to these (e.g., working groups, etc.). Piece by piece, Impact Advisors tailored industry-leading practice enterprise data governance to the payer’s unique organization.

The biggest area of “tailoring” was identifying who was going to be involved and at what level. At the heart of enterprise data governance is a forum of decision-makers. At this client organization, the existing membership (defined through previous efforts) consisted of motivated volunteers. However, to be successful going forward, the payer’s data governance decision-making committee members had to be empowered to make decisions with the right span of control to represent the whole enterprise.

The group also needed strong leadership to organize and prioritize their efforts and to ensure their focus was directed where it would deliver highest value. Impact Advisors helped define and fill a new Director of Data Governance role (i.e., drafted job description, screened resumes, provided sample interview questions, and participated in candidate interviews). Impact Advisors filled the role until a permanent placement could be found. The Director and project team worked with the committee to define an overarching roadmap for establishing and operating data governance with clear roles and responsibilities for committee members and stakeholders.

Quickly Demonstrating Value

Within four months, the payer’s enterprise data governance model was operationalized through strategically selected exercises in support of the digital transformation. The organization now had a “playbook” for translating enterprise business strategy into data strategy and data governance activities.

Guided by the playbook, the team identified, categorized, and cataloged over 700 key data elements—data that is most important for running the payer’s business. These elements are also used to monitor data quality and therefore require common definition and rules. The team organized key data elements into 10 data domains, or logical groupings, with defined data domain owners, data stewards, and 36 sub-domains.

To operationalize the model, the team:

• Identified, planned, and sequenced high-priority digital transformation activities
• Identified responsibilities and trained data governance resources
• Led initial enterprise data governance committee meetings
• Onboarded a newly hired Director of Data Governance to take the organization forward

Despite the narrow scope requested for the project, news of the data governance organization’s effectiveness and analytics value quickly spread, and individuals from across the enterprise started reaching out for help with their projects.

Effective Change Management – Keys to Success

• Engaged Leadership: Having a committed and engaged executive sponsor (direct report to CEO) was critical in reinforcing the idea that implementing data governance is a marathon not a sprint.
• Strategic & Deliberate Communications: The project team was diligent about tightly controlling communications until senior leaders were completely aligned.
• Team Inclusion: Impact Advisors’ consultants worked closely with client personnel to fully understand their efforts to date to establish data governance. They reviewed artifacts (policies, procedures, org charts), met with prior project members to get input and realign perceptions, and considered how each change would impact the culture.