Data Governance Business Case

Turn promises into owned, reviewable evidence

For every significant promised benefit, record the baseline, intervention, expected behaviour change, KPI, target, Benefit Owner, evidence source and review date.

The project team can deliver capability, but the business Benefit Owner owns whether the promised outcome is realised.

Benefit side

• Discovery productivity: consumers × annual discovery/access hours × measured improvement × productive-time recapture × loaded hourly cost.
• Reuse / duplication avoided: avoided duplicate builds × evidenced average build/support cost.
• Reduced support / SME effort: avoided recurring queries or manual handling × average handling time × loaded cost.
• Reduced remediation: avoided or shortened quality/compliance remediation × measured staff effort/cost.
• Federation capacity benefit: central escalations or delayed decisions avoided × evidenced handling/waiting effort.
• Risk reduction: monetise only when probability, exposure and attribution are defensible; otherwise report it as a non-financial benefit.

Investment side

• Technology: relevant Purview licensing/consumption and related platform costs.
• Implementation: architecture, configuration, onboarding, integration, metadata/API automation and testing.
• People capacity: Governance Domain Owner, Data Product Owner, Steward, Custodian, SME and governance-team time.
• Enablement: training, Guided Enablement, communications and support.
• BAU operation: administration, source onboarding, reviews, DQ, health management, forums and continuous improvement.

Decision metrics

• Gross benefits: sum of evidenced benefits over the period.
• Total costs: implementation + technology + people + BAU costs.
• Net benefit: Gross benefits − total costs.
• ROI %: (Gross benefits − total costs) / total costs × 100.
• Benefit/Cost Ratio: Gross benefits / total costs.
• Payback period: time until cumulative benefits exceed cumulative costs.

External evidence: context, not a promise

The framework cites a 2025 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact study commissioned by Microsoft. It modelled Microsoft Purview broadly for a composite organisation, not Unified Catalog alone.

The study modelled a three-year ROI of 355%, payback of less than six months, 2,000 end users, a baseline of 12 hours per user per year for discovery/access/records activities, a 75% reduction in that time, a 90% reduction in time spent recreating content and 50% productivity recapture.

Forrester interviewed representatives from organisations using Microsoft Purview and combined their experiences into a composite organisation; the resulting financial model was risk-adjusted.

Data SkyLab Studio evidence rule: use external studies to show that value is plausible, but calculate the organisation-specific business case using local baselines, local costs and locally approved assumptions. Do not imply that broad Microsoft Purview economic results are Unified Catalog-only outcomes.

Read the Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact study commissioned by Microsoft.

Illustrative calculation only

500 consumers × 12 hours × 75% improvement × 50% recapture × £45/hour = £101,250 potential productive capacity recovered per year.

This demonstrates the calculation method only. Replace every assumption with locally measured or finance-approved values before using the figure in a business case.