The Recipe for Data Transformation at Scale: How GM Financial Built a Governed, AI-Ready Enterprise

Most enterprise data transformations stall because they solve the technology problem without solving the people and governance problem. GM Financial, General Motors' finance arm, chose a different path. Guided by a clear enterprise data vision and a multi-year transformation on Databricks, they moved from fragmented reporting to a governed, AI-enabled analytics ecosystem without sacrificing SOX compliance or data trust. In this session, CDAO Latha Subramanian shares the institutional 'recipe' that made it work: a data strategy board, formal stewardship councils, communities of practice that drove enterprise-wide literacy, and a Databricks Center of Excellence that turned adoption from aspiration into culture. She'll show how Genie, their Databricks-powered natural language interface, democratized self-service analytics for non-technical users, and how their FinOps framework gave leaders pipeline-to-query cost visibility for the first time. If you're responsible for an enterprise data program that needs to deliver both innovation and auditability, this session is your playbook.