(US and Canada) Wendy Batchelder, SVP of Global Data Governance & Chief Data Officer of Trust, Salesforce, speaks with Peggy Tsai, Chief Data Officer, BigID, about data management, common data metrics, and the need for collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Organizations can adopt a holistic understanding and management of their data, Batchelder says. It is important to start with setting a goal, working closely with the CTO and business leaders to align it with the capabilities required, and then build the target architecture. Building this blueprint for the future is a huge priority, Batchelder notes.

She then discusses how data leaders can help their organizations generate better insights from their data. Based on her experience, the starting point is setting a common core set of metrics and maintaining it consistently across the organization, which includes consistent terminology and measurement. Making it simple and driving consistency can hugely empower leaders to make better decisions, Batchelder says.

On being asked about the need for data collaboration and knowledge sharing across teams she says that collaboration across the globe should be the norm. This helps in encouraging different perspectives enabling the company and the teams to have the spirit of collaboration, which in turn, breeds innovation.

Batchelder stresses that it is the CDO’s job to set that culture within their organization. She also highlights the need for encouraging transparency regarding information in terms of questions such as “Where is it? What’s the definition? Who is the steward? And what’s the quality?”

In conclusion, she says that  metadata helps in executing this at scale and also by breeding trust and understanding of where the data is.