How Newell Brands Aligned Data Governance with Business Strategy to Enable Change

In 2021, Newell Brands, a manufacturer, marketer, and distributor of consumer and commercial products, began a major project to change how they went to market with their customers. Trust in data was low, and business processes were complex. This presentation will discuss how the data governance team helped enable change and ensure project success by:

• Leveraging executive sponsorship,
• Simplifying processes, and
• Improving data quality.

We will present how we aligned data quality efforts with new policies and procedures to simplify the data landscape, which enabled trust in the data and drove ownership of data down to the business level. We will also discuss the benefit of executive sponsorship to drive acceptance and adherence to new policies and rules.

Speakers: Lisa Horne and James Tuenge 

Lisa Horne

Lisa Henry Horne, Sr IT Manager – Global Master Data, at Newell Brands since April 2008, focuses on delivering quality customer and vendor master data to support the company's operations and analytics. Her responsibilities include master data maintenance, SAP implementations, and master data governance, which encompasses aligning on business rules, definitions, and approval processes, as well as resolving data quality issues. Her educational background includes a BA in Economics from Loyola University in New Orleans and postgraduate accounting courses from Georgia State University in Atlanta. Prior to joining Newell, Lisa spent 21 years at Georgia-Pacific in various management roles in Enterprise Business Intelligence, Corporate Information Systems, Shared Accounting, and Internal Audit. She is an active member of DAMA Georgia. She is married to Bob and has one daughter, Meyer.

James Tuenge

Jim Tuenge has been responsible for master data governance at Newell Brands since they began their journey to SAP in 2007. He oversees the people, processes, and technology necessary to maintain master data and ensure data quality. He has an MBA from the University of Wisconsin, a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, and spent over 6 1/2 years in the US Air Force in Civil Engineering.