There are many tools on the market now that can help you with your data governance initiative. In particular, there are numerous products that hold and manage your data glossary, data catalogue and data dictionaries. These have proved very popular and the number of players in the market has increased over the last few years.

If you are lucky enough to have the budget to purchase such a tool, please make sure that you're well prepared so that you can choose the right vendor for your organisation’s needs. If you select the wrong tool, it won’t help your Data Governance initiative and even worse it could distract from or even derail it!

To help you avoid making such a mistake I want look at some of the common pitfalls in DG tool selection and the kind of questions you need to ask your vendors, so that you are really clear on what you're looking for before you embark on a tool selection process.

Let's look at the most common pitfalls first. The three main ones that I've seen are:

· Little or no business user involvement

· Unclear requirements

· Overly complex initial implementation

Taking each of these in turn:

Firstly, there's little or no business involvement early in the process. Many people wait until the tool is purchased and even being implemented before they involve business users. In my experience, this is a huge problem and should be avoided at all costs.

I have seen a few implementations go wrong because the eventual business users were not involved in selection. Think about it from their point of view. They have not asked for such a tool, nor does it help them to do an existing task more quickly or easily. So, when you come to implement your shiny new tool, the business users feel they're having some IT tool foisted upon them. Generally they do not react well and I can recall one instance when the whole implementation had to go back to the drawing board. Once the business users understood what they needed to use the tool for, their requirements were vastly different from what had been delivered.

The second pitfall is being unclear on what you require of the tool. Often someone has latched on to the fact that a tool could help them and dived straight in and bought one without being really clear what they want the tool to do. Please make sure that you take time to work out what your objective is from having the tool. Once you've worked that out, progress to defining some clear detailed requirements (just a requirement to have a data glossary is not sufficient).

Finally, another common pitfall is trying to make the initial implementation too complex. Some of the more established tools on the market have been around for a while and have evolved over time to provide a multitude of functionalities, all of which can facilitate and enable your data governance and data quality activities. But please, when you're looking at selecting a vendor initially, be very clear what you want a tool to do now. Also, consider what you definitely want it to do in the future. Finally, you can make a “nice to have” list. Just make sure you take a thorough approach to determine clear requirements.

I've seen implementations of tools fail or the wrong tool selected because of vague or overly complex requirements (just because the tool does it, does not mean that your business really needs it).

Now we've looked at what the main pitfalls are. I wanted to share with you a few questions that would be useful to ask the vendors to ensure they're a good fit for you and your data governance initiative. Since I've highlighted the need for objectives and clear requirements, the first question to ask them is, how does their tool meet your requirements. Notice I say how does it meet… and not does it meet. If you ask “does your tool meet our requirements”, most vendors will say yes.

What you want to know is how. Is it simply out of the box functionality that is ready to go or will there have to be manual workarounds, or even worse a lot of customisation or configurations in the tool that may make future upgrades very difficult for you.

Secondly, I'd ask what implementation support will be given to you. You have to remember these tools are by their very nature, flexible, and you need to set them up in a way that works for your business. This means that you will need some support from the vendor. So make sure that you are very clear upfront about what kind of support they will be giving you. Knowing what is and isn't covered will prevent any nasty surprises in the future.

Thirdly, ask what training they provide for both you and the team implementing it. Perhaps they may even support training your business users on how to use their tool. Definitely work out what training you want and ask what training is available.

Some final thoughts on how to choose the right Data Governance Tool for your organisation:

I’ve said it already but please remember that to successfully choose the right tool for your company, it is absolutely vital that you are very clear on what you need the tool to do before starting a selection process. Clear requirements should be the start of the process.

Make sure that you understand not only the support arrangements of the tool (as I mentioned in the last section) but also the upgrade path of the tool. I've come across more than one situation where an organisation has customised a tool to such a degree that is not possible to follow the upgrade path. On one occasion they needed a project to redesign and implement a new data glossary to be able to upgrade and take advantage of the new functionality.

Lastly, I would say that when you're working with vendors, going through workshops or maybe an RFP process you are going to meet a whole variety of personalities. Bear in mind that these are not the people that you will be working with if you choose and select this tool. Whether you like or dislike them, do not be swayed by the personalities. They will not be around for the implementation, and the ongoing support will be provided by other people. So don't let yourself be influenced just because you like or dislike their sales team!

Just remember that such tools can be great enablers to your data governance initiative, but they need to be put in place once your data governance initiative is already going so that you are very clear on what you want.

If you are currently looking at choosing a data governance tool why not book a call to discuss how I can support you through the process:

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