What is Data Governance?Data Governance may be defined as the overall process used to manage data in an organization. Management activities include acquiring and organizing data, data cleansing and integrity, database management, data security and communications within an organization regarding these functions.What follows is a lightly edited transcript of Episode 3 of the Inevitable Success Podcast with Damian Bergamaschi and special guest Gary Beck. TranscriptDamian: Today we cover how to make sense of your customer data. As marketers, every stimulus causes either action or inaction even the absence of data is data. Let’s dig in with resident customer data expert Gary Beck.Gary: Damian thanks again for having me today. It’s always a pleasure.Damian: So Gary, probably the best place to start is I am a brand, I’m getting transactions, I have email databases, where else can all this data come from? What are the sources? Where does that come from Gary?Gary: Well, data comes from all sorts of places. There are times when I will start to work with clients and ask clients that very same question. “What kinds of data do you have?” “Where do you keep it?” There have been times where a person will start the conversation by saying “Well we have warranty cards” and I will then ask the logical question, Can we get access to the warranty cards?” and there have been times when clients have pulled a box out from under their desk and provided me with a box of warranty cards.Gary: “Here are the latest people that have filed or submitted these warranty cards” and that box of warranty cards is the beginnings of a database. We can’t retrieve information electronically from it yet. But it is a collection of customers.Gary: So any collection of information that we retrieve for the purposes of tracking customers is a database of sorts. But of course, in our business today we want to digitize all that information and make that information retrievable and extract intelligence from it. Sometimes customer databases are maintained in Excel files for example. Then, of course, there are the times when we have sophisticated database management systems that organize the data, allow us to query it, and give us the ability to categorize information in a way that is relevant to our business.Gary: There are many different types of data. We can talk about it from a business perspective and then we can touch on some of the technology associated with it. From a business perspective, there’s personal information or information that allows us to address customers directly. So, things like your email address, your postal address, or your telephone number. All of that is personal, addressable information.Damian: Like P.I.I. type data.Gary: You have personally identifiable information. Absolutely. There is transaction information. What have you purchased from us? When did you purchase it? How much did you pay for it? Did you have to return it for any reason? What are the dates for all those events? That transaction information is very valuable information.Gary: We have promotion history information and promotion history information might be the most valuable information of all and is frequently the information that we don’t always have complete data about.Damian: Can you give me an example of that type of data?Gary: Promotion history information includes the type of communications that were sent to you, perhaps via e-mail or perhaps by direct mail. It includes the date and time if we can get that. It includes the creative treatment. So, what was the actual collateral that was exposed to the c...