Empower your Data Governance Policy with Matillion ETL and OvalEdge

Data governance is a hot topic right now. For companies today, ensuring proper data asset management and curating a culture of accountability over user data is rightly a high priority.

Many organizations believe they already have some form of data governance in place but, on closer inspection, it becomes clear that there are missing components. Ultimately, these missing components play a pivotal role in ensuring a robust policy.

Modern businesses have numerous tools in their data stack and it’s the connection between these platforms appear. This is why strong communication between integral tools is key to empowering your DG strategy and enabling your organization to have access to the trustworthy data they need.

The relationship between ETL/ELT platforms and data governance

Matillion provides world-leading capabilities that enable you to transform your data. The platform is easy to use with a low/no-code solution to get your data into a state which enables your organization to speed up decision making.

However, as these procedures take place during the data ingestion phase, there is a  possibility that it isn’t suitable to deploy a governance policy that your data engineers may not be empowered to enforce.

It should be recognized that governance is just as important downstream as it is upstream. And, it’s at this point that organization-wide governance culture comes into play.

Fostering a culture of governance

Data governance is a cross-functional effort and it requires collaboration across departments in order to be effective. At Matillion, we believe that it begins with a shared understanding that data governance is a strategic enterprise-wide asset. Containing this asset within a framework that all adhere to will empower the accountability required for a robust DG policy.

Each organization is different, but many face a common challenge: C-suite level buy-in. Why? Because ultimately it’s difficult to quantify the true value of governing your data assets beyond compliance requirements.

Yet DG provides so much more value beyond regulatory compliance, for example, DG can remove organizational bottlenecks which prevent departments from accessing the data they need.

Just look at the lead time from the moment a ticket is raised with a data/IT department, to generating a report to it being delivered to the individual who requested it.  impact of an incorrect report being submitted or even worse, incorrect data being used to make decisions.

 that these scenarios are common in many organizations. So, removing these problems with a structured policy is an easy sell.

If you get the C-suite on board, what next? It’s important to define a framework that provides structure and formalizes data management. This framework also ensures the right individuals are in place to facilitate your DG strategy. For existing teams, this will take some change management.

As the user journey matures through the change and accountability for data assets is established within an organization. The benefits of DG will soon become glaringly obvious.

• Data is accessible to those who need it.
• Data is high quality and trustworthy.
• Data assets are secure and compliant.
• Data classification helps the organization of data assets
• A business glossary for standardizing terms improves cross-department communication.

Obviously, initiating a framework isn’t something that happens overnight but DG tools will empower this process.  OvalEdge’s program framework is a powerful guide for ensuring a structure is in place to make your governance journey a success.

Automate and accelerate your data governance with Matillion and OvalEdge

Your data department is a crucial part of your DGpolicy. Matillion is here to make sure that whilst we are a world-leading ETL solution, we are also hugely aware of the importance of our role in your governance framework. That’s why our partnership with OvalEdge is designed to ensure that making that connection between our two solutions is quick and simple.

Powered by our Metadata API, Matillion and OvalEdge can share source and target information from orchestration and transformation jobs to be cataloged and available to view in OvalEdge’s intuitive interface. Once jobs have been run, OvalEdge will crawl the updated metadata and display end-to-end data lineage.

All of this is easily instigated in the UI via the Matillion connector. First, securely provide OvalEdge with your Matillion login credentials then select the project you wish to crawl - a simple integration completed in 30 seconds. Once completed, you can take advantage of the powerful features that OvalEdge provides.

Importantly,  this is an automated step in your workflow, all the way from ingestion. Data engineers working in Matillion are included in your organization's data governance policy as the integration between the tools is defined as part of your framework.

This inclusion helps to promote accountability from data being transformed to data being consumed all the way up the chain. Matillion becomes the enabler of your framework and OvalEdge the enforcer, governance is covered at the start and data quality is improved end-to-end.

Ultimately, data is no longer a siloed, untrustworthy element of your business. Instead, your data becomes your most valuable asset because you can trust it to empower your decision.

See this video to understand how OvalEdge helps to empower your data governance policy: