What is Digital Governance?

There is one component that I add religiously to every digital roadmap I create for a client. Digital Governance.

Digital governance is all about creating oversight over your technology adoption. When companies are young and growing quickly there is a premium placed on acting quickly to address problems. The focus on solving problems is at the departmental level. The sales department buys Salesforce, the finance department implements Sage, manufacturing starts using SAP. The inevitable outcome of a departmental approach is a Tower of Babel - multiple applications that are not integrated and do not exchange data. This is fine if no other department needs access to the information stored in the departmental system. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case.

Everyone wants to know the status of an order, they want to know when an opportunity is going to close, they need to know what stage of production a custom build is at. With a lack of integration, this leads to an ongoing stream of emails and phone calls asking for updates, often prompted by a request from a customer. All these communication attempts eats up a lot of time and effort, and creates a great deal of inefficiency.

To overcome this inefficiency it's necessary to re-architect the governance of technology within the organization. This starts with the adoption of some basic principles. Examples:

In this company, we strive to solve problems through the application of technology
Technology investments must be in line with our digital strategy which is a linchpin of the overall business strategy
Any system that stores data required by more than one department must be integrated with the main system, or be part of the main system.
Enter once, access anywhere (with appropriate security clearance)
Capture data at the source
Information at your fingertips, preferably in the form of a personalized dashboard

These principles can form the foundation of a governance program.

Digital governance should be overseen by a council or committee charged with reviewing digital investments and overseeing digital policies and standards. It does not have to be complex. The digital council can be an offshoot of the regular management meeting or board meeting and can start with as few as a couple of members. If you want to get more folks involved you can set up sub-committees covering topics like data management, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies. These sub-committees can help develop junior staff who may be slated for promotion in the future.

A simple example of how the council could manage standards would be a case where someone wanted to buy a MacBook despite the fact that the corporate standard was Windows laptops. The person who wanted a MacBook would have to justify why the standard should be ignored in their particular case. If they can't put together a compelling argument, their request would be denied.

Centralized oversight of all things digital can be instrumental in ensuring that your firm is getting the most out of their digital investment and is leveraging technology to the fullest. Digital Governance should be an integral part of your overall Corporate Governance.

Ken Tucker is the founder and lead consultant of Connaught Ealing Solutions (CES). CES helps their clients with digital transformation, ERP Review and Selection, and through fractional CIO services.