Exploring Microsoft Purview’s integrated Data Governance solutions.

In today’s world, being data-driven is critical to achieving long-term success. Whether you’re a small organisation looking to use data for operational efficiency or a large organisation implementing AI, data is essential. However, managing and organising this data can be challenging. 

This is where Data Governance comes in. It’s the framework for managing availability, quality and security of your organisations data by assigning responsibilities and setting guidelines. In this situation, Microsoft Purview emerges as a comprehensive solution designed to simplify and unify data governance. 

This blog will unravel everything you need to know about implementing a robust Data Governance strategy and show you how to leverage it to gain deeper insights, and foster seamless collaboration within your organisation.  

What is Data Governance?

At its core, Data Governance establishes a framework for organisations to manage the availability, integrity and security of their data. It addresses questions like: 

• Who has access to what data  
• How is data used and shared. 
• How Is data quality maintained. 
• How is security ensured 

This process ensures accuracy of your data across various systems.  

In a data-driven organisation, every task relies on data in some way. Therefore, Data Governance is important for both micro and macro level tasks. Which means having secure and high-quality data is crucial for achieving your organisational goals.

What can a Data Governance strategy do for you?

A good Data Governance strategy can help organisations achieve goals and make progress. Without proper Data Governance organisations can struggle with:  

• Data Silos: Data scattered across different systems, making it difficult to access and analyse.
• Unclear Data Definitions: Different teams using different terms for the same data, leading to confusion and errors.

This is where Data Governance can be a critical asset to your organisation. By implementing a robust Data Governance strategy you can streamline your processes and ensure that the integrity of your data remains intact. Here are some ways Data Governance can help your business:

Enhanced Operational Efficiency
By eliminating data silos and making a single, reliable source of data, Data Governance can help you reduce costs and increase efficiency in your operations sector. For instance, a Housing Association analysing maintenance requests would benefit significantly. Without Data Governance, data resides in disparate systems (e.g., call centres, online portals, emails), requiring staff to manually gather and clean data. This delays analysis and decision-making, hindering timely repairs. With a unified data source, maintenance teams can quickly identify trends, prioritise repairs, and allocate resources efficiently, leading to improved service delivery and enhanced customer satisfaction.  

Data Discovery and Understanding
Since Data Governance helps you build one single source of data, it makes it easier to safely find and access your data. Imagine trying to find a specific piece of information buried within a sea of disjointed data silos. Without Data Governance, this can be a daunting task. However, by establishing a single source of data and implementing clear data definitions, Data Governance makes it easy to find, access, and understand the data you need. After getting access, it’s also easier to understand what the data was used for and if it can be used by the person accessing it. 

Data Standardisation
Data Standardisation ensures consistency across datasets by aligning formats, definitions, and structures, enabling organisations to streamline operations and improve decision-making. For example, in the higher education sector, variations in formatting student IDs, course codes, or grading scales can cause inefficiencies in reporting and planning. Without standardisation, administrative staff must manually reconcile these discrepancies, delaying reports and impacting important decisions. By implementing data standardisation, universities can ensure seamless record management, quicker reporting, and resource utilisation. 

Enter Microsoft Purview

If you are looking to step into the world of Data Governance, Microsoft have made it extremely easy with the introduction of Microsoft Purview.  

Purview allows you to implement data security, data compliance and data governance under the same umbrella. By simplifying these critical elements, Purview allows you to keep your data secure, govern your data and manage risks effectively to unlock the full potential of your data assets. 

While Data Security and Data Compliance are a critical part of Microsoft Purview, this blog is focused on Data Governance. Purview has a few different Data Governance capabilities at its disposal. Data Discovery is an important part of Data Governance because it helps in understanding and finding your data. Data Curation in purview aids data discovery by curating data into business domains which makes them easy to discover.  

Purview also allows you to manage quality and access to these data products through its Data Management capabilities. Monitoring and improving your Data Estate Health in purview is another useful capability that promotes data ownership.  

The Purview Advantage

It is easy to understand that Microsoft Purview offers all the basic Data Governance capabilities you might need. But how does it give you a competitive advantage? These are the distinct features that give purview the upper hand:

Business Domains 

Business Domains help you in organising your Data Estate. Storing your data in a single list can get messy and business domains allow you to categorise them and divide your data according to your organisation. 

Critical Data Elements 

Critical Data Elements make it easier for you to implement Data Standardisation across your organisation. You can store important data into logical groupings and then implement access policies and data quality rules on these groupings for effective data management.  

Glossary Terms  

Glossary Terms are another way of streamlining data usage across your organisations. These terms are basically a vocabulary for business users that they can use when they are looking to find a specific piece of data. Access policies can also be applied at term level which results in better Data Governance.  

Conclusion

In an era where data is a cornerstone of success, implementing effective Data Governance is no longer optional—it’s essential. With effective features like Business Domains, Glossary Terms, Critical Data Elements and Data Estate Management, Microsoft Purview is a no brainer when it comes to unlocking the full potential of your data. It can help you ensure long-term success and gain a competitive edge across your industry.  

How Simpson Associates can help

Are you ready to embark on your Data Governance journey, but don’t know where to start? Don’t worry! Our expert team at Simpson Associates can help you implement a robust Data Governance strategy with the help of Microsoft Purview.  

We take a 4-stage structured approach to Microsoft Purview:  

• Assess and Design
• Provision
• Configure
• Apply

This proven approach ensures successful implementation and is delivers the desired outcomes.  

If you would like to explore Microsoft Purview further, visit our Purview Accelerator page to learn more or reach out to us via our live chat for more specific needs.