Data Governance Uplift: 40% to 90%

Context

As part of the global team, getting a clear view of marketing investment across 40 markets was a constant struggle. Even with standardisation guidelines in place, not every market followed them, which left the data broken and scattered and made meaningful strategic governance difficult.

Solution

We revised the marketing taxonomy across all media channels, with a clear roadmap and timelines. It started with onboarding the local teams and offering one-on-one support to each market. We introduced visual dashboards so every market could see its current status and ongoing progress at channel level, with a further breakdown of the platform hierarchy so local colleagues could pinpoint taxonomy issues right down to account, campaign, and ad set or ad group level.

Results

Within the target timelines, data quality rose from 40% to 90%. The quality of strategic governance improved with it: the data started to make sense, which sharpened performance and optimisation discussions and gave the global team room to provide better and additional reporting, with quicker turnaround for management.

My role

I co-led the project with the analytics team. My primary remit in the global team was paid search, but for this project I also took on social and display, coordinating and consulting the local teams throughout, and drawing on the channel specialists in my team where I needed their input.

My take

Data quality is one of the most underrated topics in most organisations. A media expert who understands several platforms across channels can add real value here, while the analytics team leads the setup.