The New Impacts of Regulations and Perceptions on Effective Data Governance and Compliance
“The consumer and corporate market demand for data, combined with the increasingly complex regulatory compliance environment, continues to push organizations to be more responsive and responsible for the data that they collect, store, and share among customers and partners. In fact, companies are now firmly positioned as Data Custodians with strong consumer, shareholder, and government agency expectations on how data is handled for the benefits of companies and consumers,” begins CEO of Ascention, W. Daniel Cox, III.
Today, an organization’s success demands data governance practices that are adaptive to a business context and enable the realization of business opportunities. Such new approaches include innovation and exploration, robust risk and security management, advocacy and cultural transformation practices, and trust-based procedures that consider curation, lineage, and certification – such practices need to be applied consistently across a complex and varied application landscape. To solve this problem, Ascention is aiding organizations to achieve an effective Enterprise Data Asset Management strategy with a data governance model that is practical and pragmatic. “We look at the Data Management capability of each organization and how they can collect, maintain, share, and store that information within the regulatory compliance framework as a single data asset,” explains Cox. Ascention works with its clients to optimize the full potential of their data assets while aligning them with the ever-changing legislation and compliance requirements.
The Old Rules of Management, Governance, and Sharing of Data Have Expired!
Inadequate data visualization due to incomplete, or sub-optimal data quality has time and again proven to deprive businesses 
of operational excellence. In order to mitigate such hindrances, Ascention delivers Shared Data Asset Management strategies focused on the clients’ most critical use cases. By enhancing the quality, consistency, and completeness of data assets, the company’s clients have been able to produce accurate insights that aid in data-driven decision-making processes, improve planning operations, and increase profits. The company helps clients transform disparate internal and external sources into invaluable data assets available for business uses. Shared data assets include outcomes such as; Master Data Management, Reference Data Management, Metadata Management, Business Glossaries, Data Catalogues, Data Security and Entitlements, and Hierarchy Management.
These capabilities also enrich the quality and accuracy of the enterprise data warehouses, rich visualizations, and interactive dashboards. Using its significant experience in the areas of visualization and planning, Ascention supports data management professionals in gaining a heightened understanding of how information is maintained and its subsequent effect on the technologies and capabilities in the succeeding phases of development. “Over the last decade, it has become an imperative for enterprise data to be governed and controlled by organizations to gain accurate business insights through visualizations and proper planning of business operations resulting in higher efficiencies and better execution on business strategies,” comments Cox.
“For example, a tier-1 Australian telco client needed to find a better way to harness the many sources of customer data across the enterprise. There was a lack of consistency in definitions and completeness of information, which was resulting in inaccurate views on who the customer is and the associated business relationships. We implemented a single customer view that all applications can share along with governance practices and toolsets to ensure ongoing effectiveness of this initiative.
Similarly, a tier-1 financial services client needed to find a simplified and consistent way to manage their product portfolio and their customer data, which is distributed across a complex application portfolio. To address this challenge, we implemented an enterprise solution to govern this on a single platform,” further explains Cox.
Why a Customized Service for Unified Data Management is Critical in Today’s Environment!
Ascention specializes in Advisory, Implementation, Training, and Managed Services. The company’s holistic and vendor-agnostic approach aims to deliver effective data management, resulting in higher quality information for decision-makers. Ascention continually monitors, reviews, and selects the most appropriate technologies to support the client’s desired outcomes.
Technical experts at Ascention offer a comprehensive range of services to help clients govern and manage data, in order to achieve client use cases like customer or product 360 views, increased efficiencies and accuracy of mergers and acquisitions, metadata management, data security, entitlements and regulatory compliance. These advisory services enable clients to identify priorities and gaps, assess data quality, evaluate business options to establish an optimum framework, and ensure that all stakeholders embrace change to maximize productivity.
Ascention works collaboratively with its client’s stakeholders to ensure that business outcomes are delivered in alignment with their priorities, thereby overseeing early benefits and high satisfaction. This helps accelerate the implementation of the client’s solution to achieve the expected business benefits rapidly. Ascention’s Managed Services guarantee a seamless transition at all stages of the Data Management journey. The company provides a customized package of managed services that change over time as clients’ solutions mature. Managed services can include specialized support, ongoing training, on-boarding of client users, custom SLA’s, managed hosting on Azure, AWS, or on-premise infrastructure and application requirements. Furthermore, Ascention offers various training channels to its clients on data maintenance solutions.
The services are aimed to ensure the ongoing effectiveness of the client’s solution by imparting knowledge to its users, aligning service delivery with business priorities through meaningful SLAs, and managing risk via ITIL aligned proactive project governance disciplines.
The Critical Value of Speed and Agility of Service
“We pride ourselves on attracting highly experienced team members. Most of our staff members have 10 to 20 years of experience in Data Management,” states Cox. Since its inception in 2004, the company has orchestrated Shared Data Management solutions to help organizations of all types to improve performance.
To illustrate the in-depth experience and expertise of Ascention’s team, Cox cites a case-study where Northern Territory (NT) – Attorney General & Justice Department had approached them for assistance in Master Data Management. The objective was to enable a single constituent view across the Integrated Justice Continuum (IJC), which is comprised of multiple agencies such as the Northern Territory Police, Director of Public Prosecutions, Northern Territory Correctional Services, the Motor Vehicle Registry, and more. Furthermore, each agency had its regulatory demands of data and reporting. Using an Agile methodology, Ascention implemented TIBCO EBX to address these objectives: reference data harmonization/ standardization, matching for duplicate detection, configurable user permissions, and publishing party change notifications. Moving forward, the NT Government is focused on mastering and integrating new domains of data, such as new sources of reference data from NT Families, warrants, and criminal history. In the long run, the client intends to tie Master Data Management more closely with the applications all along the IJC. Ascention’s solutions and services have hit the sweet spot with the changing requirements of clients. 
Thanks to its team of experts, Ascention has made its presence felt across the APAC region and is reviewing growth into Southeast Asia as part of a robust growth roadmap continuing the delivery of Data Management to clients outside the ANZ market. The company is currently experiencing a significant growth phase with plans to double its staff in the Sydney and Melbourne areas and the recent establishment of an office in the city of Canberra. Cox says, “It is critical that clients have immediate access to our experts and that we have high contact with their entire teams and see the operating markets firsthand.
To maintain our exceptional service levels across Asia, we have opened offices in SE Asian countries.” For its technological roadmap, Ascention is keen on exploring data virtualization and data quality enhancement as supporting technical genres that will help organizations in the overall data management avenues.
The company has also been working on integrating Master Data with IoT devices. With data-intensive technologies such as IoT and artificial intelligence establishing a strong foothold in the enterprise landscape, companies are adopting data governance and shared data asset solutions to maximize the value of data for operational effectiveness, decision-making, and regulatory compliance while also minimizing operational and financial risks. Traditional approaches to the governance and sharing of data and information are no longer sufficient, especially in the face of ever-changing market dynamics, regulations, and cyber threats. These factors remain poised to disrupt traditional ideologies and frameworks, requiring companies to re-strategize data governance and data privacy processes beforehand to stay compliant and in control.
Ascention takes into account such business prerequisites and energizes the technological infrastructure of clients, creating an efficient business framework for clients.
Link to CIO Advisor April 2020 edition: https://www.cioadvisorapac.com/magazines/April2020/Data_Analytics/