Stop Chasing Credit and Start Telling Better Value Stories

If you’ve recently invested in a modern data platform, chances are you’re being asked to prove it was worth it. Where’s the value? How much have we saved? What’s the ROI?

These are fair questions. But when your platform is designed to enable decentralized teams, support self-service, and stay out of the middle of every solution, it’s tough to answer them directly. The further value gets from your line of sight, the harder it is to capture. And without a clear value story, executive support begins to drift.

This is a common bind for enterprise analytics leaders. The platform team delivers on its mandate—building scalable infrastructure that unlocks business innovation—but struggles to claim credit for the benefits that result. Meanwhile, the business units using the platform claim their own wins, and finance is left wondering whether the investment paid off.

The good news? You don’t need to chase credit. You just need to tell better stories.

A Shift in Mindset: From Attribution to Enablement

Too many analytics leaders get stuck in the attribution trap. They try to split the value pie. How much of this $20M savings came from the platform vs. the business process change? How much should we assign to the data quality work vs. the new forecasting model?

These questions are impossible to answer cleanly and not particularly useful.

The better move is to focus on enablement. Rather than trying to isolate the value of the analytics or the system, quantify the return on the work. Then, clearly show how analytics and the platform made that outcome possible. You don’t need to own the full win to demonstrate impact. You just need to make your contribution visible and credible.

Start with simple before-and-after comparisons. Identify where the business made measurable gains and link those gains to projects that relied on your platform. Then let the business sponsor tell the story. When they’re walking around bragging about what they achieved, your enablement speaks for itself.

Coalition Before Credit

Platform teams often operate behind the scenes, powering initiatives without direct ownership. That makes coalition-building a critical part of the value story.

If you’re not already doing so, establish forums that bring together platform stakeholders, technical contributors, and business sponsors. An AI or analytics council, for example, can serve as a central space for alignment, where departments agree on definitions, standards, and success criteria. It also becomes a channel for surfacing wins, codifying best practices, and reinforcing shared accountability.

Coalitions also help tackle one of the trickiest parts of platform ROI: long-term enablement. You can’t ask for business-side commitment after a project is done. That agreement must be baked in from the start.

The best way to get there? Structure your intake process to include three things:

1. A clearly defined business problem.
2. A shared hypothesis about value.
3. A commitment to measure results post-launch.

When the business is involved in framing the opportunity, they’re far more likely to own the result.

Structure the Influence

Platform teams often underestimate the amount of internal influencing required to sustain investment. But influence is part of the job, and you need to structure for it.

Some analytics groups are filled with world-class engineers and data scientists, but light on internal relationship-builders. If your team struggles to navigate stakeholder dynamics, it may be time to rebalance. A few strong communicators who understand the business and can translate technical value into plain language can make a massive difference.

Make it someone’s job to chase down success stories. Codify the methodology. Get agreement from finance on how value will be estimated. Then publish the wins—in newsletters, team all-hands, or executive dashboards.

One team we worked with set up a “value storytelling” squad that worked with project leads to shape and socialize the outcomes. Another embedded an analyst in the finance team to co-own the ROI estimation process. The key is to stop treating this as extra work. If you want to keep your platform funded, storytelling is core work.

Be Honest About Where You Are

Many analytics teams are still early in their value journey, especially for newer platforms. If you're being asked to show ROI too soon, don't get defensive. Educate.

Leaders often expect immediate returns from foundational investments. But the reality is, platform ROI tends to follow a J-curve. The early years are about laying track. Modernizing infrastructure. Aligning governance. Scaling adoption. The compounding benefits come later.

To navigate this, show a roadmap. Point to the first few successful use cases. Emphasize what it took to enable them, and what needs to happen to unlock more. And don’t be afraid to ask for help. If the C-suite is pressing for value, invite them to help prioritize high-impact use cases. Enlist support to accelerate your ROI efforts.

Focus the Frame

One of the smartest moves a platform team can make is to reframe how ROI is defined.

Don’t justify the return on the platform. Justify the return on the work the platform made possible. Highlight how analytics helped the business make better decisions, faster. Show how centralized investments reduced rework, enabled reuse, and created scaffolding for future innovation.

When you do that consistently, you shift from defending your existence to reinforcing your indispensability.

And if you want the business to start tracking and reporting results more reliably, get buy-in from finance leadership. Make value measurement a requirement for use. Not in a punitive way, but in a culture-building way. The outcome of using your big (expensive) system should be stakeholders ready to come to the table ready to demonstrate return.

Final Thought: Tell the Story Together

Ultimately, platform value isn’t a solo story. It’s a team story.

Your platform doesn’t need to be the headline of every success, but it should be present in the subtext. When business leaders achieve results, your role is to make the enabling conditions visible. That means drawing clear connections between their success and the infrastructure, data access, and analytics capabilities your team delivered—without fighting over credit.

If your business partners are standing up and saying, “This wouldn’t have been possible without the platform team,” you’ve already won. They’ll want your help again. And they’ll advocate for your investment, because it’s now part of their success.

That’s the kind of ROI that sustains itself.