Modern D&A leaders drive outcomes they don’t own.
Whether building data platforms for other teams or delivering insights with your own resources, you manage significant investments at the core. But business executives who control budgets don't understand these foundational efforts — or worse, fail to recognize the value they create.
Either way, you’re put in an impossible situation.
Do any of these ring a bell for your D&A function?
You Create
Value
But are seen as cost.
You Enable
Wins
But don’t get credit.
You’re
Strategic
But pegged as tech.
You Deliver
Outcomes
But sit backstage.
The economics work against you in two ways.
First, when you build enterprise data platforms, you own the expense line but not the value line. Meaning, business teams use your infrastructure to drive outcomes and claim the wins, while your budget absorbs the cost.
Second, even when your team delivers the analytics work centrally — predictive models that increase revenue, insights that reduce costs, governance that mitigates risk — those contributions often go unnoticed or get attributed to the business functions that implemented them. Either way, you're left defending costs while your value goes unrecognized.