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Data Quality & Governance Case Study
Building Confidence Through Reliable Analytics Data
Establishing ongoing validation, anomaly monitoring, and documented governance standards to keep analytics data trustworthy as the partnership scaled.
Project Overview
| Project | Data Quality & Governance |
| Organization | Hawkeye Fan Shop, The Official Retailer of the University of Iowa Athletics Department |
| Focus | Data Validation, Anomaly Monitoring, Governance Documentation |
| Outcome | Documented standards and ongoing checks that keep reporting trustworthy through every sales spike |
The Challenge
With tracking, infrastructure, and dashboards in place, the longer-term risk shifted to quiet decay - a broken tag, a duplicate event, or a shifted definition that goes unnoticed until a report looks wrong. Left unmanaged, small data quality issues compound quietly until nobody fully trusts the numbers anymore.
Key challenges included:
- No standing process for catching broken or duplicate tracking before it reached a report
- Sharp, unpredictable traffic spikes that make anomalies easy to miss without automated checks
- Multiple stakeholder groups who needed to trust the same underlying numbers for different purposes
- No documented standards for what "good data" meant across the growing partnership
- A need for governance that could scale across more sports, stores, and seasons without adding manual overhead
The Approach
The focus was building ongoing confidence in the data, not a one-time cleanup - catching problems automatically and documenting standards so quality didn't depend on any one person noticing something was off.
- Automated Validation
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Put automated checks in place to catch tracking gaps, duplicate events, and inconsistent data before they reached a report.
- Anomaly Monitoring
-
Established monitoring that flags unexpected shifts in key metrics - a sudden 40% swing gets a second look before it reaches a stakeholder.
- Governance Documentation
-
Documented event definitions and data standards so quality expectations were consistent and repeatable across the business.
- Reconciliation Practices
-
Checked transaction and reporting totals against each other regularly to confirm store, gameday, and online data stayed aligned.
The Solution
Documented standards and automated checks now work together to keep analytics data reliable, giving stakeholders confidence in the numbers even during the highest-traffic periods of the year.
| Capability | Impact |
|---|---|
| Automated Validation | Tracking issues caught before they reach a stakeholder report. |
| Anomaly Detection | Unexpected shifts flagged early, protecting confidence in the numbers. |
| Governance Standards | Documented definitions that keep data consistent as the partnership grows. |
The Results
With validation and governance practices in place, store and web performance have improved, gameday traffic has been handled without the site buckling under peak demand, and conversion has trended upward across departments over the course of the partnership.
- Tracking issues caught and resolved before reaching reports
- Gameday traffic handled reliably at peak demand
- Upward conversion trends across departments
- Documented governance standards supporting ongoing email campaigns for gameday information, product drops, and student-athlete appearances
Approach & Capabilities
- Data Validation
-
Automated checks that catch tracking gaps and inconsistent data before they reach a report.
- Anomaly Monitoring
-
Ongoing monitoring built to flag unexpected shifts across gameday and everyday activity.
- Governance Documentation
-
Event definitions and data standards documented for consistency across sports, stores, and seasons.
- Reconciliation & Auditing
-
Regular checks against transaction and reporting totals to confirm store, gameday, and online data stayed aligned.
Business Impact
Trust in data doesn't come from a single audit - it comes from knowing the checks are still running months later. Documented standards and automated validation meant stakeholders could rely on the numbers without re-verifying them every time a report looked unusual.
Through automated validation, anomaly monitoring, and documented governance standards, this initiative created a lasting foundation of data confidence that has supported the partnership with Hawkeye Fan Shop and the University of Iowa Athletics Department since 2016.
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Confidence in your data isn't a one-time project. It's built and maintained deliberately, so the numbers you're looking at are numbers you can actually trust.