Experian’s Data Governance Offering

Experian is a large and long-established vendor of data quality solutions but until now has not had a data governance offering. This has changed recently with its acquisition of UK-based software vendor IntoZetta. The IntoZetta software has a full range of data governance functionality and has a reputation for an easy-to-use interface for business users. It has been deployed in over thirty customers including Wessex Water, Weetabix, Notting Hill Genesis and part of the NHS. The data governance tool will in time be fully integrated into the Experian Aperture Data Studio suite, expanding the capabilities of that established data quality software.

Customer Quotes

“IntoZetta provided exceptional expertise, both in terms of resources and tools, to enable a successful and complex data migration on one of the largest Microsoft Dynamics implementations in Europe.”
Chris Lalley, Programme Director at Clarion Housing Group

At the heart of the offering is a data dictionary which stores information about business data entities and data flows. Technical metadata can be ingested from relational database catalogs and other sources such as Sharepoint, and used as a basis for developing a catalogue of business terms such as “customer” and “asset” and their attributes. These business entities can be assigned data owners and be classified as desired, for example to note whether the data contains personally identifiable information that may require greater care than other data. The dictionary allows users and roles to be defined, such as data stewards, data owners etc and have rules developed around these roles. Data profiling is carried out to further flesh out the metadata, and data quality targets can be established.

Fig 1 – Experian IntoZetta coverage

There is an attractive visual interface to show the data at an overview level. Data flows can be defined and displayed in a visual form too, with basic data lineage shown. Customers can, for example, see all things associated with an entity like “customer”, such as related data, who is the assigned owner for it etc. The tool can interface with specialist data lineage tools for customers who need this. A link exists to Octopai and one is planned for Manta. The technology has a range of dashboards and reporting capabilities. For example, data quality progress can be monitored, as can the coverage of rules and ownership. There is a high-level report that neatly captures overall progress of a data governance initiative at a high level, drawing on the underlying information in the data dictionary. The user interface is intuitive and aimed squarely at business rather than technology staff.

The IntoZetta technology already has some linkage to the Experian Aperture Data Studio suite, so for example some data quality functionality from Data Studio can be invoked from within IntoZetta and the results returned into the IntoZetta Data Dictionary. In addition, Experian Aperture Data Studio can push profile metrics out into IntoZetta, as Experian can with its data governance solution partners. Over the next year or so it is likely that the integration will go deeper.

Currently, the data governance market leaders at the high end of the market have a top-down approach to corporate data governance, as seen in tools like Collibra and Alation. While Experian partners, and will continue to partner, with several of these solution providers. It is likely that Experian will position their data governance tool so as to be suitable for a more bottom-up approach. This may be more suitable for projects within business lines or departments. It will also be well suited to small and medium-sized entities. This would mirror the Experian approach to other software such as its data quality suite, and so would fit easily into its existing sales and marketing channels.

The Bottom Line

Experian is a large and long-established data quality vendor, and given the linkage between data governance and data quality it makes sense for Experian to bring out some sort of data governance offering. By purchasing IntoZetta they can build on an established product that has proven its worth in a number of customers and integrate it into their existing Aperture Data Studio product line. Customers looking for a business-focused data governance tool that is aimed at either SMEs or is suitable for departmental data governance solutions should take a look at the new Experian offering.