How Watermarks Can Transform Your BI Program

This is the fourth in a series on self-service analytics and the basis for an upcoming report by Wayne Eckerson on the same topic.

Are you drowning in reports? Are your power users using new self-service tools to create a tangle of conflicting metrics and reports? Are your regular business users confused about which reports to use? And whom to go to request custom reports?

If any of these scenarios plague your BI environment, you are a prime candidate for report watermarks. 

A report watermark or stamp is a seal of approval that is affixed to a report to indicate that the data in the report has been vetted and approved by data experts in the organization. It usually contains a timestamp and an icon of some sort indicating approval that can be seen at the top or bottom corner of every page of a report or dashboard. (See figure 1.)

Figure 1. Sample Watermark

In essence, a report watermark is the visible evidence of a data governance process that enables organizations to combat spreadmarts and renegade reporting environments without unduly repressing self-service activity. The existence of a watermark can totally transform a Wild West, self-service reporting environment into a healthy governed, data delivery environment.

“Our watermark [above] has really changed behavior in our organization. When executives open a Tableau report, they first look for the watermark in the bottom right corner. If it’s not there, they ask why not and question the data,” says a manager of business intelligence and data warehousing at a major forestry product company. “As a result, our Tableau users are eager to go through the governance process to get the watermark.”

Essentially, a watermark indicates to business users that a report is “safe” to use for decision making. The mark helps users distinguish between curated and non-curated data. Before long, business users start refusing to use reports that don’t carry the seal of approval. This creates a culture of governance from the ground up. Rather than work independently, power users recognize the value of working through formal channels to publish reports for broad-based consumption.

Data Governance Process

A watermark presupposes the existence of a data governance program and a commitment by executives at the top and the organization as a whole to standardize key metrics and data elements. It requires a data governance process to promote and review reports submitted by both BI and business users. (See figure 2.)

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