ROI for Governance and Lineage

No one commits to a purchase, a new employee, or a project without an ROI analysis. There is strong ROI for detailed lineage.

ROI is defined in many ways for organizations: NPV, IRR, payback period, and others. Some only consider hard-dollar savings (computers, software, consulting) which we will address, but there are also soft-dollar savings (efficiency, productivity, risk avoidance) that can be quantified. Contact us for help in designing a lineage proposal!

Companies like Google travel the roads to map cities and routes at a detailed level. Data lineage scans your systems to create detailed locations of reports, databases, and applications where data rests/is stored, then maps the multiple processes and data transformations between those stores. Everyone benefits from detailed maps of the multiple systems and scripts across the organization. Better knowledge is an important soft-money ROI that lineage provides. Think of a map where the data stores are connected by roads of data processes.

Clients have found significant general soft-money benefits from lineage:

Enterprise One-stop shop to catalog IT assets and their relationship to business. Different tools, scripts, data stores, and user solutions are hard to track and maintain manually. See Government and Privacy
Risk Mitigation Several ROI cases provide soft-money ROI by mitigating technological and human risk. Small errors can trigger large expenses if not caught early. Change to one minor system can negatively impact other major systems. Starting new projects without detailed lineage roadmaps risks rework, missed goals, and cost overruns. See The Cloud, Root Cause Analysis, and Excel
Efficiency Support staff can find and diagnose data issues more rapidly, saving time for both staff and users. In fact, any authorized user can see data pathways, branches, and even “dirt roads” that feed downstream reports or systems. The user does not need secure access to the data itself to use lineage. They may be able to diagnose issues themselves or have a common discussion with the IT people who do. See Internal Audit
Body of Knowledge Descriptions, metrics, policy, and experience can be appended to the “map”. This preserves history and lessons learned, saving research time for staff and users. See Corporate Initiatives
Lifecycle Lineage may be invaluable to prepare legacy applications for retirement. Some corporate applications are not documented well or are written in old languages. See Streamlined
Project Costs Enterprise and Project architects have a new tool to plan, analyze, and even model. Every ROI story involves project costs and overruns.

Click on specific use case/ROI stories how clients use lineage to change how they leverage one of an organization’s most important assets—its information. Each story includes hard-money and soft-money ROI justifications:

Meeting Government Compliance

Periodic government reports have a legal requirement that we can show where the numbers come from
GDPR/CCPA/Privacy legal actions: we need to find personal information wherever it exists in our data ecosystem and do something with it

Big Executive initiatives

“Everybody’s moving stuff To the Cloud!”
“I hear that our information and computer systems need to be streamlined”
“Our [CIMM, Three Lines of Defense, Information Lifecycle] corporate initiatives cost a lot and I don’t see value”

Limited Business/IT Understanding and Crisis

Our Internal Audit and IT Project departments are almost overwhelmed
Coping with Data Crisis through root cause analysis of operational problems across multiple systems and divisions

Everyday information projects

We need better control over our [Business Intelligence/data quality/metadata/data science/AI] installations.
We have sprawling, uncontrolled Excel spreadsheets that run big parts of this company

Contact us for help in designing an ROI-based lineage proposal! We have long experience with designing successful proposals and projects for our customers.

We look forward to working with you.