Data Governance

Establishing Scalable Governance for Cross-LOB Analytics

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Key Words: Data Governance, Analytics, Transition Management, Omni-channel Customer Experience

 

Situation:

At a major financial institution, data collection practices varied significantly across business lines, leading to inconsistent analytics, fragmented customer insights, and growing regulatory exposure. Each team used its own approach to event tracking and data sharing, complicating compliance with evolving privacy standards like CPRA and GDPR.

An enterprise-wide effort was launched to strengthen data governance across the MarTech ecosystem and enable consistent customer intelligence. The work required defining a unified strategy and structuring alignment across previously disconnected data, analytics, and platform teams.

 

Opportunity:

This program created a path to unify behavioral data collection, establish a consistent governance model, and improve the institution’s ability to manage and activate data across digital channels. Rather than treating governance as an afterthought, the effort was designed to create a sustainable platform model that enabled compliance, scalability, and more intelligent customer engagement.

 

Obstacles:

​Establishing governance across decentralized business units required alignment on technical standards, data contracts, and privacy enforcement. Teams were accustomed to operating independently, and reconciling differing tagging practices and data sharing models created architectural and organizational challenges. There was also significant effort involved in transitioning to new tools and workflows while maintaining continuity across production environments.

 

Activities:​

A governance strategy was defined to centralize oversight of behavioral data while supporting flexibility at the business unit level. The program established a new operating model to coordinate data collection, analytics, and compliance functions under a unified framework. Tealium was selected as a foundational enabler for this transition. It provided the infrastructure to standardize customer data collection using a Unified Data Object (UDO), enable server-side enrichment, and support privacy controls. Migration to the new platform was managed in phases to reduce risk and ensure compliance at each step. Cross-functional working sessions aligned engineering, product, legal, and data teams on governance protocols. Detailed documentation and onboarding processes were created to support adoption. Progress was tracked centrally, and status updates provided visibility into migration readiness and policy compliance.

 

Results & Impact:

The program established a repeatable governance model for behavioral data across the enterprise. Inconsistent practices were replaced by standardized collection, tagging, and sharing protocols supported by Tealium and overseen through a coordinated governance structure. Privacy compliance was improved through controlled access and data minimization. The organization gained greater confidence in customer insights and analytics, creating a more scalable foundation for future personalization and marketing initiatives.