Organizing Data Governance: Findings from the Telecommunications Industry and Consequences for Large Service Providers

Many companies see Data Governance as a promising approach to ensuring data quality and maintaining its value as a company asset. While the practitioners’ community has been vigorously discussing the topic for quite some time, Data Governance as a field of scientific study is still in its infancy. This article reports on the findings of a case study on the organization of Data Governance in two large telecommunications companies, namely BT and Deutsche Telekom. The article proposes that large, service-providing companies in general have a number of options when designing Data Governance and that the individual organizational design is context-contingent. Despite their many similarities, BT and Deutsche Telekom differ with regard to their Data Governance organization. BT has followed a more project-driven, bottom-up philosophy; Deutsche Telekom, on the other hand, favors a rather constitutive, top-down approach. The article also proposes a research agenda for further studies in the field of Data Governance organization

A MORPHOLOGY OF THE ORGANISATION OF DATA GOVERNANCE

Both information systems (IS) researchers and practitioners consider data governance as a promising approach for companies to improve and maintain the quality of corporate data, which is seen as critical for being able to meet strategic business requirements, such as compliance or integrated customer management. Both sides agree that data governance primarily is a matter of organisation. However, hardly any scientific results have been produced so far indicating what actually has to be organised by data governance, and what data governance may look like. The paper aims at closing this gap by developing a morphology of data governance organisation on the basis of a comprehensive analysis of the state of the art both in science and in practice. Epistemologically, the morphology represents an analytic theory, as it serves for structuring the research topic of data governance, which is still quite unexplored. Six mini case studies are used to evaluate the morphology by means of empirical data. Providing a foundation for further research, the morphology contributes to the advancement of the scientific body of knowledge. At the same time, it is beneficial to practitioners, as companies may use it as a guideline when organising data governance

Consortium Research: A Method for Researcher-Practitioner Collaboration inDesign-Oriented IS Research

Design-oriented research in the Information Systems (IS) domain aims at delivering results which are both of scientific rigor and of relevance for practitioners. Today, however, academic researchers are facing the challenge of gaining access to and capturing knowledge from the practitioner community. Against this background, the paper proposes a method for Consortium Research, which is supposed to facilitate multilateral collaboration of researchers and practitioners during the research process. The method's design is based on a self-evaluating design process which was carried out over a period of 20 years. The paper's contribution is twofold. First, it addresses the science of design, since it proposes guidance to researchers for practitioner collaboration during the process of artifact design. Second, the method is an artifact itself, hence, the result of a design-oriented research proces

Framework für die Nutzenargumentation des Produktinformationsmanagements

Zusammenfassung: Effizientes und effektives Produktinformationsmanagement (PIM) ist einer der Erfolgsfaktoren für moderne Geschäftsmodelle. Als wesentliche Teilaufgabe des Enterprise Content Management bildet es im Unternehmen eine Querschnittsfunktion, von der verschiedene Unternehmensbereiche profitieren: von der Beschaffung über die Lagerhaltung und Produktion bis zum Service. Gerade aus diesem Grund treten in den Unternehmen jedoch Schwierigkeiten bei der Identifikation und Quantifizierung der Nutzenpotenziale von PIM auf. Für die Nutzenanalyse ist eine PIM-Initiative an Geschäftstreiber zu koppeln, weil nur dadurch der Nutzen transparent gemacht werden kann. Dabei wird deutlich, dass die Verbesserung der Produktinformationsqualität als zentrales Ziel von PIM positiv auf einzelne Nutzendimensionen (Kosten, Zeit, Qualität und Umsatz) wirkt. Mithilfe des dargestellten Frameworks können in der Praxis schnell und einfach geeignete Nutzenpotenziale für die PIM-Initiative im eigenen Unternehmen identifiziert werden. Diese wiederum bilden die Grundlage einer Wirtschaftlichkeitsbetrachtung, die erforderlich ist, um eine PIM-Investition zu rechtfertige