These days, it’s all about the data. How do you use your information to better understand your customer? Or improve your business processes? Or increase profits? Data is a corporate asset – one that shouldn’t reside solely in the silos of the IT department. It’s an asset that drives better decision making, increases business efficiency and drives corporate strategy.

How data is handled and managed should be seen as a source of competitive advantage. When pockets of data are scattered throughout the organization, how can the business be aligned to execute on your strategy? A robust, well-aligned master data management approach, one owned by the business and supported by IT, can be critical.

However, based on our experience, we see that business leaders often don’t feel that they should own and take care of their data. Instead, they usually think it must be one of those “technology trends,” squarely part of IT’s domain. This “not me” approach to the ownership of the data is the source of most of the problems an organization faces when it comes to master data management, better known as MDM.

To explain why a good data governance strategy is the key to better business results, we sat down with Arturo Blasi, one of Clarkston Consulting’s MDM experts.