I empower organisations to lead through data-driven strategies and data governance
frameworks that unlock real
value.
I'm guiding businesses to leverage data for strategic decisions, driving growth, and achieving leadership in their industry.
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a seasoned interim data governance, data strategy, and master data quality expert with almost 25 years of experience.
I offer strategic and hands-on support to bring your data governance initiatives to life, partnering with you from initial planning through full implementation. As an expert consultant and problem solver, I ensure that your processes run smoothly and effectively, leaving your organisation well-prepared for future challenges. Comprehensive, practical, and grounded in quality.
I have led multiple high-profile projects, including data governance frameworks for companies like IKEA, Lloyds Bank, Johnson & Johnson, E.ON, Billiton, and UBS. My approach is highly business-value-oriented, focusing on delivering measurable business value through robust data strategies and data governance practices.
My Consulting Approach
I work with clients with various challenges from data and AI governance to the realisation of technological solutions. Whether your organisation has just stepped onto a data journey or needs to move to the next level, I support you on your data and digital transformation journey.
To deliver high-value business value, by bringing together the best team, deep industry knowledge, hands-on technical experience, functional expertise, and a client-first driven mindset; your success is of my upmost importance
Business Value Focussed Approach
Following the agile "5 E's Approach", we set out on a journey of Data Governance and Master Data Quality evolution to:
- Engage in understanding your data-driven needs
- Evaluate business priorities and road map a way forward
- Evidence what your data-driven future could like
- Establish your organisation's concrete case for data-driven change
- Execute deliver targeted business value projects on your data-driven strategy.
Certifications
Design and integrate scalable data strategies and architectures aligned with your business goals to unlock the full value of your data assets.
Together we build and implement data strategies and data governance frameworks tailored to your business, maximising data potential and aligning it with your enterprise architecture and business processes for sustainable growth.
Explore how tailored governance strategies align data initiatives, ensuring that data use not only complies with regulations but also unlocks its full potential according to your business targets. Guidance includes hands-on frameworks for responsible data governance integration, better data quality and aligning future AI initiatives with ethical practices and industry standards.
Possible Deliverables: Custom governance strategy documents, AI ethics frameworks.
Added Value: You gain structured data governance practices that foster responsible data and AI use, enabling ethical, compliant, and business-aligned deployments.
Building tailored and robust data governance structures that ensure master data quality, data ownership, and compliance across your organisation.
Designing and implementing robust governance frameworks enhances accountability, promotes data ownership, and streamlines processes. This service covers policy design, data governance roles, and structures like the data governance council that support master data quality, security, and business objectives across the entire organisation.
Deliverables: Comprehensive data overnance policy manuals, business glossary, role-based responsibility matrices.
Added Value: By establishing clear data ownership and accountability, organisations improve decision-making speed and accuracy, minimising data silos.
Empower your entire organisation with customised, white-labeled eLearning modules on data governance, based on industry standards.
Deliverables: Interactive training modules, assessment quizzes.
Added Value: This service empowers teams with data governance skills, fostering a data-driven culture and increasing compliance with best practices across the board.
Evaluate your organisation’s data governance effectiveness with customised maturity surveys.
Deliverables: Interactive webbased assessment, growth report
Added Value: This service empowers organisations to get better insights in existing data governance skills, fostering a data-driven culture and increasing compliance based on best practices across the board.
Centralise and harmonise critical business data to maintain accuracy, consistency, and integrity across all systems.
Master Data Management optimises essential business data by centralising, standardising, and synchronising information across all platforms. This reduces redundancies and enables accurate data access, ensuring your organisation makes data-driven decisions with trusted, consistent information.
Deliverables: Centralised master data model, data domain model, improved data quality, data integration roadmaps.
Added Value: Ensures data consistency and integrity, reducing errors and enhancing data reliability for better strategic decision-making.
Guide your organisation through successful data transformation by managing the cultural and operational changes effectively.
Transformations require both cultural shifts and structural adjustments. This service emphasises engaging stakeholders, managing resistance, and establishing a smooth transition to new processes, ultimately ensuring sustained adoption and aligning data initiatives with your company's values.
Deliverables: Stakeholder engagement plans, change-readiness assessments.
Added Value: Helps you to achieve seamless adoption of data initiatives, ensuring that transformations are supported by both cultural and operational changes.
Support your organisation's journey by leveraging data to optimise processes, improve customer experience, and innovate faster.
Designed for Chief Data Officers, this advisory service helps refine strategy, structure, and implementation processes. Topics include managing data-driven change, enhancing customer experience, and identifying opportunities to innovate while maintaining regulatory compliance.
Deliverables: Strategic roadmaps, customer experience data insights.
Added Value: As a CDOs you gain actionable guidance for fostering innovation and optimising data governance structures to drive competitive advantage.
Ensure your data is accurate, complete, and reliable to support strategic decision-making and operational efficiency.
Ensure your data is accurate, complete, and reliable to support strategic decision-making and operational efficiency.
Effective data quality management is essential for accurate reporting and analysis. This service assesses data quality across systems, implements correction processes, and establishes ongoing maintenance strategies to ensure your data remains valuable and reliable.
Deliverables: Data quality rules/rulesets, data quality audit reports, cleansing workflows, one-time cleansing activities of addresses, product, customer and vendor data.
Added Value: You benefit from consistent, high-quality data, which enhances operational efficiency and confidence in analytics and reporting.
Design scalable ERP data strategies and architectures aligned with your business goals to unlock the full value of your data assets.
ERP migrations (like an SAP ECC to S/4 Hana migration) can disrupt data continuity. This service ensures data alignment with business requirements, mapping data flows, and implementing data management processes that keep systems running smoothly post-transition, maximising ERP benefits.
Deliverables: Data migration blueprints, quality control checklists, cleansed data, data creation- and change-workflows
Added Value: Ensures smooth ERP integration, maintaining data integrity and supporting a scalable foundation for future growth.
Ensure that your data handling practices comply with regulatory standards like GDPR, ensuring privacy and protection.
Ensure that your data handling practices comply with regulatory standards like GDPR, ensuring privacy and protection.
Navigate complex regulatory landscapes like GDPR with confidence. This service offers audits, risk assessments, and privacy practices that align with regulatory requirements, protecting data integrity and fostering customer trust.
Deliverables: Compliance audit reports, data privacy training guides.
Added Value: Protects against regulatory risks, enhancing customer trust and supporting sustainable data practices.
Effective Reference Data Management maintains consistency across systems by defining and controlling data.Improved reference data consistency leads to more reliable analytics, streamlined data operations, and reduced risk of errors..
Effective Reference Data Management maintains consistency across systems by defining and controlling data such as country codes, product categories, and organisational hierarchies. This service includes developing standard reference data models, applying validation rules, and creating governance structures to handle updates. Organisations benefit from accurate reporting, simplified data integrations, and better alignment with regulatory standards. Improved reference data consistency leads to more reliable analytics, streamlined data operations, and reduced risk of errors that can impact business decisions.
Deliverables: Standardised reference data models, data validation rules, and controlled vocabularies.
Added Value: Ensures consistency across critical data domains by centralising and managing reference data, like codes, categories, and classifications. This reduces discrepancies in reporting and analytics, simplifies data integration, and enhances compliance with regulatory standards. Clients benefit from streamlined operations and improved data quality, as reference data discrepancies are minimised across systems and departments.
Enhance data discovery and classification with structured metadata management practices, improving data usability.
Enhance data discovery and classification with structured metadata management practices, improving data usability. Metadata empowers data discovery and lineage tracking. Through classification, tagging, and cataloging, this service enables faster, more intuitive data search and retrieval, enhancing transparency and usability across your organisation.
Deliverables: Metadata catalogs, data classification frameworks.
Added Value: Facilitates efficient data discovery and usage, reducing time spent searching for information and increasing data transparency.
“We have worked intensively with Harro this year in order to develop a company wide data excellence framework for ista SE. Our specific request was to adopt data management best practices to our company wide agile model. Harro brought profound know how on data management to the table and helped our organisation to excel in data.”
- Nils Arwed Engelke - CIO ista SE “Harro has enormous practicle expertise and willingness to react very flexible according to customer requirments - also in case of outside of international (IT) standards. He has a very hands on mentality and it really makes fun to work with him. Even under extrem pressure it is possible to work with him in a very positive ans creativ way.”
- Gerhard Kampl - Innovator & Communicator “Harro helped a lot my team to set up right data governance. I wish we will had him on board from the beginning of the project - this would save us a lot of time and have proper data strategy. If you are thinking about implementation of the new system don't forget about DATA and here Harro can support You!”
- Jacek Sobański - Mayr-Melnhof “Harro is wise manager of change with great attitude and passion to shape an impactful ecosystem.
He
is a extraordinary expert with a strong balance of strategic thinking and down to earth
implementation
skills.
It was an amazing pleasure to collaborate closely on regional level!”
“I had the great pleasure of working with Harro on various data governance topics in Alpiq. I was very impressed by Harro's ability to quickly absorb and consolidate information about our business model, internal structures, and way of working. Combining that with his profound industry and domain knowledge resulted in very valuable, practical, actional deliverables which we could then take immediate benefit from.”
- Ralfe Poisson - Enterprise Architect Alpiq “Throughout the engagement Harro demonstrated both strategic perspective and leadership skills, and an impressive depth of knowledge and hands-on skill with regard to data management. Harro successfully delivered a realtime security event feed integration, reliably enabling single pane of glass operations for UBS security teams across cloud and on premise estates, as well as a new security metric data management and reporting framework for the company.”
- Dominik Raub - CTO Cyber Security UBS
Address
Harro Wiersma Smart Consulting
Bleriot-Allee 4
CH-8152 Glattpark Opfikon
Phone
CH: +41 79 878 01 13
PT: +351 924 878 258
UA: +380 94 711 01 13
