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Client Problem:
A national retailer’s data was spread across POS, e-commerce, merchandising, supply
chain, and loyalty systems.
Definitions conflicted (e.g., “active customer,” “net sales”), lineage was unclear, and
privacy/compliance reviews
were manual. Teams struggled to find trusted data and owners. The client needed a
Collibra-based catalog with
clear ownership, automated lineage, and workflows to embed governance into daily work.
Steps to Solve the Problem:
Stakeholder workshops across digital, stores, merchandising, finance, and data teams.
Defined critical data elements (CDEs) and a phased rollout prioritizing customer, order, and product.
Established stewardship roles and RACI; glossary conventions; certification/attestation cadence.
Drafted baseline privacy and quality policies aligned to regulatory requirements.
Configured communities/domains, SSO/SCIM, roles/entitlements, and admin guardrails.
Prepared adoption dashboards and audit logging standards.
Onboarded EDW/lake, POS, e-commerce, ERP, and BI tools using Collibra scanners/Edge with schedules.
Classified sensitive attributes and applied common tags across domains.
Imported lineage from SQL/dbt/ETL and stitched hops from raw → curated → semantic layers.
Linked CDEs to rules/KPIs and issue workflows for impact analysis and remediation.
Implemented BPMN workflows for data-usage requests, certifications, policy attestations, and onboarding.
Enabled Data Marketplace to simplify dataset discovery and access approvals with SLAs.
Role-based enablement for stewards, engineers, and analysts; comms toolkit and runbooks.
Phased go-live with hypercare and an enhancement backlog for continuous improvement.
How We Achieved Success:
Unified glossary and ownership improved audit readiness; lineage accelerated change impact analysis.
Consistent classifications and attestations reduced approval risk for sensitive data.
Self-service catalog and Marketplace cut dataset discovery time from days to hours.
Automated approvals and clear SLAs reduced email loops and bottlenecks.
Reusable onboarding patterns sped up integration of new sources and product lines.
Runbooks and KPI tracking established a sustainable governance operating rhythm.
By delivering a production-grade Collibra platform with workflows, lineage, and a strong operating model, the retailer unlocked trusted analytics and faster decision-making across channels.