OpenText brings decades of expertise to help you unlock data, connect people and processes, and fuel AI with trust
Unify data seamlessly across your enterprise to eliminate silos, improve collaboration, and reduce risks
Get AI-ready and transform your data into structured, accessible, optimized information
Meet regulatory and compliance requirements and protect your information throughout its lifecycle
OpenText helps people manage content, automate work, use AI, and collaborate to boost productivity
See how thousands of companies around the world are succeeding with innovative solutions from OpenText™
Our people are our greatest asset; they are the life of the OpenText brand and values
Learn how we aspire to advance societal goals and accelerate positive change
Find a highly skilled OpenText partner with the right solution to enable digital transformation
Explore scalable and flexible deployment options for global organizations of any size
Local control. Global scale. Trusted AI
Your cloud, your control
Free up resources, optimize performance and rapidly address issues
Run anywhere and scale globally in the public cloud of your choice
See information in new ways
AI that understands your business, your data, and your goals
Say hello to faster decisions. Your secure personal AI assistant is ready to get to work
Gain better insights with generative AI for supply chains
Power work with AI content management and an intelligent AI content assistant
Improve your security posture with AI cybersecurity and agile threat detection
Enable faster app delivery, development, and automated software testing
Elevate customer communications and experiences for customer success
Empower users, service agents, and IT staff to find the answers they need
See information in new ways
AI that understands your business, your data, and your goals
Say hello to faster decisions. Your secure personal AI assistant is ready to get to work
Gain better insights with generative AI for supply chains
Power work with AI content management and an intelligent AI content assistant
Improve your security posture with AI cybersecurity and agile threat detection
Enable faster app delivery, development, and automated software testing
Elevate customer communications and experiences for customer success
Empower users, service agents, and IT staff to find the answers they need
Predict, act, and win with real-time analytics on a smarter data platform
Give users access to the answers they need, faster and easier, with multi-repository AI-based search that lets you contextualize everything from clicks to conversations
Connect once, reach anything with a secure B2B integration platform
Reimagine knowledge with AI-ready content management solutions
Supercharge intelligent workspaces with AI to modernize work
Integrated cybersecurity solutions for enterprise protection
Purpose built data protection and security solutions
Reinvent threat hunting to improve security posture with the power of agile AI
Ship better software—faster—with AI-driven DevOps automation, testing, and quality
Reimagine conversations with unforgettable customer experiences
Get the clarity needed to cut the cost and complexity of IT operations
Redefine Tier 1 business support functions with self-service capabilities from private generative AI
Build custom applications using proven OpenText Information Management technology
Build it your way with OpenText Cloud APIs that create the real-time information flows that enable custom applications and workflows
Protect what matters, recover when it counts
Get greater visibility and sharper insights from AI-driven information management. Ready to see how?
Break free from silos, streamline processes, and improve customer experiences with secure information management for AI
Improve efficiency, security, and customer satisfaction with OpenText
Run processes faster and with less risk
Achieve digital transformation with guidance from certified experts
Modernize your information management with certified experts
Unlock the full potential of your information management solution
Turn support into your strategic advantage
Extend IT teams with certified OpenText application experts
Discover training options to help users of all skill levels effectively adopt and use OpenText products
Modernize your information management with certified experts
Unlock the full potential of your information management solution
Turn support into your strategic advantage
Extend IT teams with certified OpenText application experts
Discover training options to help users of all skill levels effectively adopt and use OpenText products
Information is the heartbeat of every organization. We build information management software so you can build the future
OpenText partners with leading cloud infrastructure providers to offer the flexibility to run OpenText solutions anywhere
OpenText partners with top enterprise app providers to unlock unstructured content for better business insights
Discover flexible and innovative offerings designed to add value to OpenText solutions
Discover the resources available to support and grow Partner capabilities
Get expert product and service support to accelerate issue resolution and keep business flows running efficiently
Explore detailed services and consulting presentations, briefs, documentation and other resources
Today’s ultra-competitive, fast-moving and rapidly evolving business environment means only the smartest, fastest and most innovative enterprises will emerge on top. Such success though is increasingly unachievable in the absence of a robust data governance program. With the average business today capturing massive volumes of internal and external information, there’s a need to leverage this data in order to maximize value, reduce cost and manage risks. Information governance is the discipline that helps enterprises do just that.
For many organizations, there isn’t just one enterprise-wide data repository. Big data, unstructured data, increasing complexity, information diversity and operational intelligence creates a business environment with numerous moving parts that demands a thorough and consistent overarching data handling strategy.
Data governance is the set of policies, processes, standards, metrics and roles that ensure the efficient and effective utilization of information in order to support the organization in the realization of its objectives. In simpler terms, information governance is a framework that helps organizations better manage data assets.
It establishes the responsibilities and process that make certain of the security and quality of data across an entire organization. Data governance clarifies who is mandated to take what action, on what data, under what circumstances and using which techniques. A well-thought-out information governance strategy is crucial for all enterprises including those that work with big data.
For example, businesses must know and understand what the term ‘customer’ means in different contexts and how the understanding of the term in each context implies for the management of customer data.
Data governance delivers a wide range of benefits for the enterprise. These include:
Minimize risks
A violation of the quality, security, privacy, integrity, availability and reliability of business data carries significant risks. First, the very operations of the organization are in jeopardy if the information that decisions are founded on is not of the required standard. Second, there’s the threat of regulatory action if the business is found to have violated a key law such as GDPR and HIPAA. Third, the company’s reputation may be shattered as customers and employees start to distrust the data. Data governance lowers risk by systematically addressing the key risks that could endanger the business in the aftermath of poor data handling.
Single enterprise-wide understanding of data
The average organization today captures, stores and manipulates a vast and complex quantity of data. This data is captured through tens, hundreds or thousands of interfaces spread across multiple business units. It’s relatively easy for each business unit to be sucked into a silo and develop its own definition, understanding and classification of the data it uses. This only leads to conflict during data handoffs or inconsistent application of data handling policies.
Data governance harmonizes the understanding of data by developing common terminology that’s applied uniformly across the organization (even though business units may be given some leeway if that is what is needed for them to successfully discharge their responsibilities).
Improved data quality
Data drives enterprise decision-making. Poor quality data inevitably leads to poor decisions. For example, think about a business whose primary target is Baby Boomers and is looking at launching a presence in a city it’s not been to before. Some of the data it needs to know that it’s making the right decision is the population of Boomers in the said city. If the data it relies on is incorrect or outdated, then every decision made using it will be inherently flawed.
Data governance creates a working environment that ensures data consistency, completeness and accuracy.
Data mapping
There are so many interfaces through which data is created or received in an organization that over time it can become difficult to have a clear picture of just what information is in the company’s custody.
Information governance gives businesses the ability to map the location of all data. This makes data assets retrievable, usable, easy to integrate and easier to connect to strategic outcomes.
Consistent compliance
Data governance improves the customer experience, reduces operational costs, increases revenue and enhances efficiency. But for many organizations, the information governance initiative is primarily driven by the need for regulatory compliance. The actual data handling regulations a business is subjected to will vary depending on industry and jurisdiction.
The regulations and standards may include HIPAA, GDPR, SOX and PCI DSS. The penalties for non-compliance can be severe. In cases of repeated violation, non-compliance may even lead to the revocation of a business license.
Improved data management
The terms data governance and data management are often used interchangeably but data management is in fact a subset of data governance. A good information governance framework brings the human touch to a technology-driven and highly automated world.
It establishes best practices and codes of conduct in data management that transcend the traditional excessive focus on system controls. It ensures that the compliance, security and legal areas of data management are applied consistently and comprehensively.
Better and quicker insights
A data governance implementation exercise helps streamline and organize enterprise information. Such organization not only improves the quality of the data itself, but it also leads to better and quicker insights.
Oftentimes, the distributed, irregular, inconsistent and varied nature of business data can make it hard to extract conclusive insights. It’s not unusual for the process of generating a business report to take hours or even days simply because of the formatting and harmonization that must be done before the data can be gainfully utilized.
Information governance forces data consolidation and integration in a way that speeds up the extraction of insights.
Better collaboration
A business could have great employees. But having great employees doesn’t necessarily translate into effective departments. And individually effective departments won’t always translate into an effective organization. The better the collaboration between departments, the better the quality of the organization’s overall work output.
Implementing a data governance initiative means breaking down walls between departments and encouraging a coordinated approach toward data handling. Even when the process of rolling out the data governance framework is complete, the established channels of collaboration as well as the camaraderie between departments is likely to linger long after.
In addition, the high data quality and the consistent handling of data across the business will eliminate many of the previously existing points of friction.
Increased data value
It’s only over the last decade or so that businesses have started to appreciate the place of data as a business asset in the same breath as buildings, automobiles, cash and employees. Nevertheless, the value of business data is in its ability to efficiently propel the enterprise toward its strategic goals.
A data governance framework improves the quality of data and thereby makes it more of an asset for the corporation.
Reduced costs
Poorly governed and managed data increases business costs in multiple ways. Ill-advised strategy, inter-departmental conflicts, flawed models, misinformed product development, and poor planning are examples of the different ways poor quality data can trigger decisions that end up costing a company dearly.
Information governance improves the quality of business data and thereby eliminates the unnecessary expenses that would otherwise be incurred by the enterprise.
Information governance isn’t all about technology, but it’s virtually impossible to implement data governance in any meaningful way without some dependence on IT systems. After all, the bulk of enterprise data today is held in electronic form. There are many information governance tools one can choose from. Their cost and functionality vary broadly.
Apart from looking at the basic considerations such as your budget, there are several aspects you must pay attention to in order to be certain that you select the most appropriate data governance technology. These include scalability, compatibility with existing systems, quality of customer support and the reviews of previous users.
Implementing a data governance framework isn’t something you can accomplish at one go. Instead, it’s a complex and long-term process. This means there’s a danger of participants and stakeholders losing enthusiasm over time. To make the project more exciting and relatable, it may be advisable for you to apply the agile method of project management.
Ergo, break down the initiative into work stories and then identify the stories that are of highest priority to start on. Run these priority stories through the agile workflow iteratively until they satisfy the expectations of the information governance framework. As you complete some work stories, take on new ones. This way, the governance initiative will feel manageable and finite.
Key business drivers will determine what stories and data needs highest priority. For instance, if one of the drivers of your data governance initiative is to ensure the protection of healthcare information (in compliance with regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR), then one work story would be to protect patient data during capture, storage, transit and use.
The data governance council should make sure it asks all the right questions at the start of the initiative to business unit heads and other stakeholders. This ensures the project takes off on the right footing and with a clear picture of the current status of governance and the end goal of the initiative.
Gain insights with knowledge discovery for any repository or format
Backup and recovery for diverse enterprises
Manage, secure, and protect user data and endpoint devices
Reimagine knowledge with AI-ready content management solutions
Deliver remote workforce solutions to work securely anywhere, anytime, on any device
Secure unstructured data and prevent unauthorized access
Backup and protect critical infrastructure and cloud platform data
Centralize archiving to meet regulatory and data compliance standards