New Data Governance Capabilities in Adobe Experience Platform Help Brands Manage Data Better

It’s an under­state­ment to say that data is at the crux of busi­ness deci­sion-mak­ing today. That’s pre­cise­ly why so many com­pa­nies are com­mit­ted to democ­ra­tis­ing data across their organ­i­sa­tions, and empow­er­ing sales, mar­ket­ing, IT, cus­tomer sup­port and oth­er teams, to bet­ter under­stand the wants and needs of customers.

While empow­er­ing employ­ees with data to make smarter deci­sions is a best prac­tice, it does cre­ate some chal­lenges from a data gov­er­nance per­spec­tive.

The rise of the data stewards

This explo­sion of com­pa­ny and cus­tomer data, as well as the increase in employ­ees who need access to data to do their jobs bet­ter, has made “data stew­ard­ship” an impor­tant respon­si­bil­i­ty for organ­i­sa­tions today. The data stew­ard isn’t just one per­son with­in the organ­i­sa­tion, either. Many times data stew­ards are a com­bi­na­tion of IT, com­pli­ance and legal, work­ing togeth­er to build out poli­cies for data gov­er­nance and data usage. And while employ­ees across the enter­prise now have access to data for smarter deci­sion­ing, the aver­age employ­ee doesn’t tru­ly under­stand the cor­po­rate poli­cies and/or legal guide­lines around the han­dling and use of data.

Which is why we’re excit­ed to announce new Data Gov­er­nance capa­bil­i­ties with­in Adobe Expe­ri­ence Plat­form.

Data Governance in Adobe Experience Platform

Here’s how it works: Data stew­ards (those indi­vid­u­als who man­age data gov­er­nance with­in their organ­i­sa­tions) can apply their com­pa­nies data usage poli­cies into Adobe Expe­ri­ence Plat­form. These stew­ards can clas­si­fy data using labels avail­able in Adobe Expe­ri­ence Plat­form. They can mark pre­cise geo-loca­tion, for exam­ple, as “sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion,” and email, first name and last name as “per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion” (PII), and then set para­me­ters around how each data type (or label) can be used by oth­er employees.

While most com­pa­nies have like­ly invest­ed in data labelling to some extent, many may have no method of help­ing ensure the data is being gov­erned prop­er­ly at the time of data man­age­ment and data usage. With Adobe Expe­ri­ence Plat­form, data stew­ards can clas­si­fy, build poli­cies to block data, obfus­cate cer­tain data, or even use the clas­si­fi­ca­tion to delete it for data sub­ject requests.

Data stew­ards can also pre-define access to cer­tain data based on var­i­ous roles in the organ­i­sa­tion. For exam­ple, mar­keters may have access to data sets that can be used to cre­ate audi­ence or cus­tomer seg­ments with, while ana­lysts get access to data sets with less sen­si­tive data for analy­sis. Data sci­en­tists, on the oth­er hand, may be grant­ed access to com­bine and cre­ate data sets, while data engi­neers are giv­en per­mis­sion to export from the data lake. With Data Gov­er­nance capa­bil­i­ties with­in Adobe Expe­ri­ence Plat­form, data stew­ards can help ensure that data is used prop­er­ly, and by the right people.

Adobe Expe­ri­ence Plat­form cus­tomers can use the gov­er­nance frame­work func­tion­al­i­ties through UI and extend them using API’s to bet­ter enforce data usage poli­cies and facil­i­tate the prop­er use of their data to com­ply with their reg­u­la­tions, oblig­a­tions and restric­tions. This capa­bil­i­ty is a first-of-its-kind, that pro­vides end-to-end data usage governance.

There’s a lot at stake

Data rep­re­sents con­sumers and con­sumers expect brands to use their data as the brand has promised and in line with reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the han­dling and use of data. If a brand fails to prop­er­ly man­age its data, it risks putting the brand rep­u­ta­tion at stake and los­ing the trust of its cus­tomers, in addi­tion to the poten­tial legal issues.

Here’s an exam­ple: to get that much-cov­et­ed sin­gle view of the cus­tomer, many com­pa­nies today are try­ing to bring their cus­tomers’ online behav­ioral data togeth­er with the data they already have in their CRM sys­tem. The mar­ket­ing team may use this sin­gle view to cre­ate seg­ment­ed audi­ences, by geog­ra­phy or by fre­quent buy­ers. Then they may use these audi­ence seg­ments for var­i­ous busi­ness pur­pos­es, such as cre­at­ing cus­tomer con­tent jour­neys or for ad tar­get­ing. How­ev­er, in each of these activ­i­ties, the cus­tomer needs to be sure that their data is being used properly.

With most of the com­pet­ing data gov­er­nance and data label­ing tech­nol­o­gy avail­able today, the data stew­ards must go into three dif­fer­ent user inter­faces: one for label­ing, anoth­er to cre­ate poli­cies, and one for enforce­ment. With Adobe Expe­ri­ence Plat­form, we’ve com­bined these sep­a­rate func­tions into one cohe­sive user expe­ri­ence so that it’s a one-stop-shop to bet­ter sup­port your company’s data stewards.

To learn more about oth­er enhance­ments announced for Adobe Expe­ri­ence Plat­form, click here.