When you stand before the board, there are things they need to know and things they don’t need to know about your data and IT initiatives.
Things they don’t need to know: the intricacies of how many data dashboards you have or how modern your tech stack looks.
Things they do need to know: how these initiatives change outcomes for customers, colleagues and shareholders making them worth the investment.
Imagine if one day, you found a unicorn in your back garden. Describing it to your friends and family would be easy, but almost all of them would be sceptical. That’s how proving the value of IT and data initiatives to the board can often feel.
Now imagine if when you saw this unicorn you took photos and live streamed a video. Your friends and family would be likelier to believe you and visit your house to see the unicorn in person.
Data engenders trust and separates fact from fiction. This adage also applies to your data and IT initiatives.
Today’s boards are asking tougher questions, and you can answer those questions and secure buy-in by proving the value of your initiatives in concrete terms.
Why the board is asking tougher questions
Across the UK, data use is now the norm, not the exception.
The UK Business Data Survey 2024 reports that 77% of UK businesses work with digitised data. Yet only around 21% use that data to generate new insights, which is where competitive advantage starts to appear.
With statistics like these, it’s unsurprising that boards often react sceptically to new data and IT initiatives.
At the same time, investment expectations are rising. A 2024 Deloitte study found organisations are investing an average of 7.5% of revenue in digital transformation, with a significant share going into data architecture, management and insights.
Boards are right to ask: if we are spending this much, where is the value?
Here are two tips on how to answer this question.
Tip 1: Move from activity metrics to value metrics
Start with outcomes instead of activities. Instead of explaining precisely how you implemented a new data platform, focus on the end results:
- Which revenue lines grew because you used data differently?
- Which risks were reduced, avoided or insured at a lower cost?
- Which operational bottlenecks were removed and how has that enabled you to better make margins?
Global data leaders are already framing things this way.
In Wavestone’s 2024 Data and AI Executive Survey, 87% of executives said their organisations are delivering measurable business value from data and analytics, and 82.2% are increasing investment.
The organisations that secure board buy-in do not talk about tools, they discuss value streams. At Rio IT we call this The Data Dividend: every data or IT initiative must show a clear contribution to revenue, margin, risk or reputation. If it cannot, it shouldn’t be funded.
Tip 2. Make compliance and resilience part of the value story
Data regulation is often treated as a cost centre, but the numbers tell a different story.
CMS’s GDPR Enforcement Tracker Report shows that by March 2025 regulators had issued 2,245 fines, totalling about £4.97 billion (€5.65bn) across Europe.
In the UK alone, analysis of ICO activity shows 62 enforcement actions in 2024, including 18 monetary penalties worth £2.7 million.
For boards, this reframes anything but robust compliance as a financial gamble. When you present the value of data and IT, don’t be itching to separate innovation for governance.
Show how stronger data controls cut the probability and impact of regulatory events, reduce audit friction and protect deal value in M&A leading to superior budget outcomes.
This is where the value of a data-first approach becomes clear. Translate regulatory change into business terms and then explore what’s needed in terms of data insights and technology.
By taking this approach, you’ll trace every control improvement back to an outcome such as faster onboarding, reduced time to approve new products or lower cost of assurance.
But shifting the conversation isn’t enough. You need to also approach the board with quantifiable evidence of the value your data and IT initiatives will bring.
Here’s five ways to provide that evidence.
How to prove strategic impact
- A data first roadmap for measurable impact
To prove strategic impact, you need a repeatable pattern, not one-off case studies.
A data-first roadmap provides the foundation through which you articulate and explain the value of your data and IT initiatives, putting them in the context of your business goals and development.
- Start with business outcomes, not a system
Before you start mapping out data systems, define what improvement metrics matter the most to the board.
These could range from the reduction in time to acquire revenue from new customers to percentage improvements in claims leakage.
Then anchor every technical decision to that number.
- Expose waste and bottlenecks in the data journey
When you map how key data flows across departments, you will almost always find duplicate entry, manual reconciliations and opaque spreadsheets.
Deloitte’s 2024 research shows that organisations which use a broad set of KPIs to measure digital transformation are 22% more likely to report value from their investments.
Removing these is not housekeeping, it’s margin improvement. When you demonstrate this to the board, the value of data initiatives becomes far clearer.
- Quantify both upside and downside
Combine classic ROI (new revenue, cost savings) with risk avoided (likelihood and impact of breaches, outages or misreporting).
The GOV UK Business Data Survey highlights that 10% of firms storing data off site experienced server downtime, rising to 27% for large businesses.
Explaining how your data & IT initiatives both expand ROI and reduce risk exposure demonstrates their multi-faceted value to the board – you are doing more than enhancing profitability, you are also safeguarding your businesses future.
- Make value measurement a priority
Build value measurement into your delivery plan from day one.
That means establishing baselines, agreed KPIs, and an owner for benefits realisation.
At Rio IT, we treat this as part of our client’s architecture, not an afterthought. If you cannot instrument it, you probably shouldn’t build it.
Turning data and IT into board level assets
Ultimately, proving the strategic impact of your data and IT initiatives is about changing the conversation.
Instead of just presenting your data strategy, prove how its improving metrics that matter to the business and therefore matter to the board.
A data-first approach gives you the language and the evidence to do that.
It ties every technology decision to a business lever and uncovers hidden waste in your processes, demonstrating that strong governance is not just compliance but insurance for the strategy itself.