Accurity Glossary - Cornerstone of Data Governance Initiative at BRD

BRD implemented a central management application for storing all business data definitions with all required metadata and links to the physical location of the data.

Challenge

BRD wanted to implement a company-wide Data Governance strategy that was driven by the BCBS 239 regulation that mandated implementing data governance principles in all banks in Europe. They identified that the cornerstone of any such strategy is having a defined list of all business attributes linked to the physical location of the data. BRD found that there was no solution in their infrastructure that could store the information in the way they wanted it. BRD had to solve numerous challenges:

There was no central management application for the business model and everything related to the conceptual model
They needed a common language for everyone that is managing the business data model and its definitions, so they can all understand what specific terms mean
There was a lack of a common methodology for defining metadata, and a general approach and understanding of how to apply and work with the Business Data Model across the company

Project in numbers

BRD is one of the market leaders for individual customers in Romania with 2.3 million customers, who are contacting the bank through classic branches, Internet, mobile, and a high performance call centre. The majority shareholder is French Société Générale financial group who holds a 59.37% stake.

15,000+

Attributes

3,000+

Data mappings

150-200

View users

~60

Active editing users

Objectives

BRD needed a solution that would fit to their roadmap for building a Data Governance culture across the company, not only to fulfil the requirements of the BCBS 239 regulation but also to advance their maturity of working with data. They wanted to have a central management application for the DWH business data model and have it linked to the physical location of the data.

Solution

The BCBS 239 regulation gave BRD extra incentive to move forward with the project, but ultimately, they wanted to create a company-wide Data Governance culture.

BRD implemented Accurity Glossary as the central location to store the whole DWH business data model, its definitions, and links to the physical location of all the data. Accurity Glossary is built specifically for such use cases and as such is independent from other systems and is very easily integrated within a bank’s infrastructure.

They used Accurity Glossary to document and define over 15,000 attributes with over 3,000 data mappings. It is being used by almost every department in the bank with 50-60 active editors and between 150 and 200 users spread across 19 departments.

Benefits

A major trigger for this project was the BCBS 239 regulation. However, BRD also wanted to drive change in their Data Governance culture. By implementing Accurity Glossary, Robert Buruleanu, BRD’s Data Management Officer, was able to drive the definition and mapping of all their business data. BRD used the REST API to connect to Power Designer to create a tree-view diagram of all mapped data in their infrastructure.

Using Accurity Glossary, BRD now has a single location with a defined business data model and links to the physical location of the data.

Daniel Marin, BRD’s Chief Data Officer, believes the biggest benefit felt is that the data culture in the company is starting to change. The culture is moving forward towards thinking about data quality, trustability, definitions, and usability. BRD is now working in quite a mature methodology due to using Accurity Glossary. The platform sits at the beginning of their data processes and all implementations are connected back to Accurity Glossary for consultation.

It has taken 18 months to permeate the way of speaking and thinking related to how to define attributes, entities, terms, and so on. Accurity Glossary is seen as a major success story in BRD as it gave them a central management application with a common language for all that helped to disseminate their Data Governance strategy throughout the company. And the flexible support from the Accurity team helped BRD with the implementation including adjusting to their extended timeline and their switch from on-premise to remote work.

“

Accurity Glossary is the cornerstone of our Data Governance strategy. It is helping to disseminate the data governance culture throughout BRD pushing people to think about data quality, trustability, definitions, and usability."

Daniel Marin

Chief Data Officer

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