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"Data is going to be your enabler." — Lindsay Savage, Senior Director of Business Platforms and Data Governance, Georgia Pacific
Data has become the backbone of ecommerce. It helps brands understand what customers value, what engages them, and what opportunities their organization can capitalize on to drive growth and profitability.
But unlocking the full potential of data requires good data governance — something many companies still struggle to master.
Georgia Pacific isn’t one of them. The company has been on a 13-year data journey that has transformed how it manages, deploys, and activates data to drive process improvements, customer engagement, and new strategic opportunities.
Lindsay Savage, Georgia Pacific’s senior director of business platforms and data governance, joined a recent episode of the "Unpacking the Digital Shelf" podcast, "Best-in-Class Data Governance Takes a Community," to share how Georgia Pacific has strengthened and continually improved its data governance processes.
Georgia Pacific began its data journey in 2011, initially focusing on reporting, defining terms and metrics, and documenting its data processes.
At the time, the company had four separate divisions, each with a dedicated role focused on maintaining product and customer data. As ecommerce evolved, Georgia Pacific decided to centralize its data governance function. It also launched an enterprise resource planning (ERP) transformation project, accelerating its data transformation.
"We knew, going into something that big, that we needed to have a pretty good handle on our master data." — Lindsay Savage, Senior Director of Business Platforms and Data Governance, Georgia Pacific
From there, Georgia Pacific began to supercharge its data governance efforts, especially with ecommerce data.
Within ecommerce, Georgia Pacific has centralized its data governance function, placing supply chain data, digital assets, and marketing content under Savage’s team.
"Now what we have is an organization that touches the product from development all the way through syndication to our retail partners," Savage says.
This has led to better collaboration. When brand teams are exploring product changes, Savage’s team often collaborates with them around these initiatives. Working collaboratively mitigates any potential negative impacts downstream and ensures product changes meet customer’s needs.
Savage’s team also collaborates with brand, category, marketing, and supply chain teams, creating a holistic approach to data governance that advances Georgia Pacific’s larger strategic goals.
"We are a team that is pretty much working with every process area out there — technical or not — which I find very fulfilling because that's really how you see the big picture," Savage says.
Savage says getting leadership buy-in and engagement has propelled Georgia Pacific’s data journey. The company’s senior executives were often looking at different numbers on profit and loss (P&L) statements and other reports. Better data governance presented a solution to this challenge.
"If this data is not set up efficiently or accurately, these are the things that could go wrong," Savage says she communicated to executives. "That really put it in perspective of how this impacted their roles or their organization. There were a lot of light bulbs that went off that said, 'OK, I get it.'"
Savage’s team also went on a roadshow of sorts to improve data literacy throughout the company. The team conducted “Master Data 101” sessions, having targeted conversations with different stakeholder groups about improving data sharing and collaboration.
As a result, different departments now share information more readily, which drives better business decisions.
Georgia Pacific also has developed data stewards and a data dictionary.
The company’s data stewards help to define new data terms, measures, and calculations. Savage’s team works with them to review these elements across different process areas and ensure alignment.
Georgia Pacific has a data dictionary where it stores all these elements. Within it, stakeholders will find definitions for things like net revenue.
Previously, everyone in the organization defined it differently, which led to inaccurate data that affected strategic decision-making. Now, key stakeholders must all agree on a definition before it’s included in the dictionary.
"Before we could all agree on moving forward with that new definition, we had to loop in warehouse, supply chain, IT, marketing, sales, and pricing," Savage says. "We looped everyone in and said, 'OK, here's the opportunity, and here's the value of doing this opportunity.'"
The team also follows the same process for making changes to the dictionary.
"Any time there is a recommended change, we always start with, 'What's the opportunity, what's the problem statement, and then what is the value associated with doing this type of change?'" Savage says. "Because if it's just to do it, to do it, then it's not worth all of the effort and costs."
Savage has learned several lessons from Georgia Pacific’s 13-year data journey. For other brands looking to advance their data governance program, Savage suggests establishing operating principles and starting small.
Developing these principles is the key to staying aligned as an organization. It ensures everyone has the same understanding and is working toward the same goals.
Savage says it’s also important for leaders to set a vision and continuously communicate it to ensure clarity and continued motivation among their team.
Good data governance isn’t built in a day. As Georgia Pacific illustrates, it takes years of sustained commitment.
"Start with [that] handful of critical fields that you know drive a lot of your business process or drive your ecommerce process," Savage says. "Start there and establish ownership — clear ownership — for who is going to maintain those fields and make sure that is clear within the organization. Over time, that will just organically grow as you learn more of how things are connected within your system."
Making sure that IT and the business work together effectively is critical for success, according to Savage.
Georgia Pacific has done this by ensuring better coordination between its business and IT teams. The company has created a community center of excellence with its business process and IT platform leads, which nurtures a better partnership between the two groups. Savage has an IT counterpart with whom she works closely.
"We are joined at the hip," Savage says. "We don't do anything without making sure the other is aligned."
Establishing a good working relationship across diverse functions will be crucial for any brand that wants to advance its data maturity and strengthen data governance.
"You really have to work hand in hand for you really to accomplish the vision that you set forth for yourself," Savage says.
To hear more of Savage’s data governance best practices, listen to the full episode.
