Data has become an asset that boards want to use, yet it is also a liability when it is inaccurate, poorly protected or impossible to trace. Governance and stewardship are the disciplines that manage this, but they compete for funds with projects that promise clearer revenue. Programmes that cannot speak the language of finance struggle to win and keep investment.

This course gives data and finance professionals a shared financial vocabulary. Participants begin by placing governance, quality and stewardship activities within an operating model and identifying where costs arise: people, tools, remediation and compliance. They learn techniques to estimate the cost of poor data quality, to link data issues to process failures and financial outcomes, and to prioritise investment by risk and value. The programme then covers business case construction, discounted cash flow methods, benefit mapping and ownership, followed by budgeting, forecasting, vendor and licence negotiation, cloud cost control and internal cost allocation.

Participants also explore performance measurement, including quality scorecards, issue resolution metrics and value tracking reported to executives and audit committees. Work is practical: spreadsheets, templates and case files from financial services, telecommunications and public sector settings. Each participant completes a costed governance roadmap and a draft business case for their own organisation.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Identify the cost elements of governance, data quality and stewardship programmes.
• Estimate the financial impact of poor data quality on operations, compliance and revenue.
• Build a business case using NPV, payback and benefit realisation methods.
• Prepare multi-year budgets and forecasts for a governance function.
• Evaluate build, buy and managed service options for data management tools.
• Allocate costs through showback and chargeback models.
• Define value metrics and scorecards that report outcomes to executives.

The course serves professionals who fund, run or oversee data governance work, including:

• Chief data officers and heads of data governance
• Data stewards, data owners and data quality analysts
• Finance business partners and budget holders
• IT managers and enterprise architects
• Information management and records managers
• Internal auditors and risk officers reviewing data controls
• Programme and project managers in digital transformation
• Statistics, M&E and research data managers in public institutions and NGOs

Participants leave the course with:

• A cost-of-poor-data-quality model they can populate with their own figures.
• A draft business case for a governance or quality initiative.
• A multi-year budget template covering people, tools and remediation.
• A build, buy or managed service comparison matrix.
• A value scorecard that links data metrics to business outcomes.
• A short executive pitch for sustained governance funding.

The course combines finance technique with data management context. Participants will take part in:

• Spreadsheet labs for cost modelling, discounting and budgeting
• Case files from banking, telecommunications and public sector governance programmes
• Challenge sessions in which a mock finance committee questions each business case
• Template clinics for scorecards, budgets and benefit registers
• Peer review of each participant's roadmap and pitch

On completing the full programme and its exercises, each delegate receives a CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion from Vision Reach Global Consultancy, which they can add to their professional development record.