Bad product data impacts your customer satisfaction, and business operations…improve the quality of your product data.
To ensure that your product information is accurate, consistent and reliable, you need to have good quality product data governance techniques. Here’s some of the key components of good product data governance.
A product data governance framework
Create a framework outlining roles, responsibilities, processes, and tools for managing product data.
Establish clear policies that define how data should be managed, updated, and used.
Set up key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure data quality, such as accuracy rates, completeness levels, and error rates.
Conduct periodic audits of data governance practices and data quality to identify issues and areas for improvement.
Provide ongoing training for staff on data governance policies and the importance of data quality.
Incorporate these best practices into your everyday product data management
Data ownership: it is really important to define who is responsible for various aspects of your product data. Data owners are tasked with maintaining data quality and ensuring adherence to governance policies (which are listed above).
Data standards (and policies): To have strict governance, you will need to develop and enforce standards for all data formats, definitions, and terminologies to ensure consistency and accuracy throughout your organisation. This can be achieved it you establish policies for data entry, updates, and usage.
Data classification and categorisation: Your data management will become easier if you classify data according to its type and sensitivity. Plus categorising products in a structured manner will facilitate easier management and retrieval. A PIM (Product Information Management system) will help you achieve this.
Data security and privacy: implement security measures to protect your product data from unauthorized access, and ensure compliance with privacy regulations (e.g Australian Privacy Principles).
Compliance management: ensure that your product data management practices comply with industry standards and regulations, such as labelling requirements and digital accessibility guidelines.
Data quality: maintain your product data to the highest quality. See our (7 pillars of quality product data article)
It is worth tackling governance, if your organisation is serious about improving the quality of its product data. By creating a few new policies, procedures, standards, framework and controls, you’ll ensure your product data integrity, compliance, and effective management.
