Why investing in Data & AI Literacy pays for itself

As a data leader, you have never had more powerful tools at your fingertips than today. AI is on every exec’s lips and being embedded into every tool. And yet, in far too many enterprise organisations, the same scene keeps playing out.

Vast investments in platforms. Expensive analytics tools being severely underutilised. And a handful of overworked specialists banging the same drum. A sense that maybe, just maybe, the ROI isn’t where it should be. And you’ve got more and more execs wondering if the data team is delivering what they hoped for, even if you're delivering what you set out to build.

And you know it’s not that the data isn’t there, you’re most likely drowning in it. And it’s not even that the tools are wrong.

It’s that the people don’t feel part of the story.

That’s the data literacy gap. It’s the quiet, systemic break between data and business teams that’s costing organisations millions.

ROI isn’t the problem. Understanding ROI is.

As a data leader, you didn’t sign up to run a school. And yet here we are. Because when your people don’t understand data, don’t trust it, or don’t know how to act on it, all those fancy analytics tools might as well be made of cardboard.

But let’s take a look at what the data tells us.

• Companies in the top-third for workforce data literacy outperform peers by up to 5% in market value. That’s hundreds of millions in added value for mid- to large-sized firms.
• Gartner pegs the cost of poor data use, driven largely by low literacy, at around $12.9 million per year per organisation.
• McKinsey found that companies that invest in data upskilling see 6–12% productivity gains across the board.
• McKinsey also found that 75% of UK companies could profit more from reskilling their current teams in data/AI skills than hiring new ones. And yet, most still default to the latter.

The problem isn’t that data doesn’t drive ROI.

The problem is that most people don’t know how to drive it.

How low organisational data literacy translates to high business risk

These next companies suffered major repercussions for issues rooted in low data literacy.

In 2018, almost 400,000 customers of British Airways were affected by a data breach. What happened? A hacker got into its systems, and found that card data was being stored in plaintext (as opposed to in encrypted form) as a result of human error. This error meant that the system had been unnecessarily logging payment card details since 2015.

The consequences? The UK Information Commissioner's Office fined British Airways £20 million for the ordeal.

Next on the list is former German payment processor Wirecard. Their fraudulent accounting practices and a lack of transparency in financial data reporting resulted in €1.9 billion missing from its accounts, and eventually its collapse. This highlights the critical need for data literacy in financial reporting and auditing processes to detect and prevent fraud.

And finally, SAP’s compliance team lacked a data-driven strategy to detect and prevent illegal activities. In January 2024, they got fined $222 million by the U.S. Department of Justice for compliance failures, due to their siloed approach which missed bribes to foreign officials.

The financial consequences and risk of human error only decline when more people are capable of asking critical data questions, challenging the data they see and are aware of potential data risks within their role.

And when it comes to AI, the EU’s AI Act is already moving toward mandating AI literacy in enterprises. Smart companies won’t wait for compliance, they’ll lead with confidence. Not because they want to stay out of trouble, but because they want to stay ahead.

What the smartest organisations are getting right

Let’s talk about those who are actually making it work.

In 2023, PwC announced that they’re investing $1 billion in their AI offerings, which also includes upskilling every single one of their 75,000 employees in the US. They know that giving people the language, confidence, and hands-on ability to work with AI tools for real client problems is where the industry is heading. In their own words, they want people to be “savvy, responsible users of gen AI.” One year in? 95% of people have engaged with Gen AI, and an internal report shows 20%–30% boosts in productivity, speed and revenue, contributing significantly to operational efficiency.

One of our customers, Bentley, has been running their Data Dojo successfully for over 2 years. They’ve given hundreds of learners the opportunity to upskill with live education, breaking down barriers of lack of confidence, common understanding and increasing curiosity. As people gain baseline knowledge, and move toward more expert knowledge, they’re able to adopt business intelligence tools like Tableau. This means they are now solving challenges that have existed for many years within the business, without the complete understanding of how it always was a data problem. Just one use case resulted in millions in savings, with new use cases being uncovered every month.

In both cases, the magic wasn’t in the tech. It was in the alignment. Not only are they reducing risk, they are driving innovation by opening the art of the possible to hundred and thousands of people. When you build a bridge between what the data team knows and what the business actually needs, the possibilities are endless.

That’s data literacy and culture done right.

Is your talent stack getting the same effort as your tech stack?

According to Accenture, 94% of people say they are ready to learn new skills to work with Gen AI, while only 5% of organisations are actively reskilling their workforce at scale.

This is where a hard truth comes in.

The gap between action and intention is wide. Leaders recognise that low levels of data and AI literacy are blockers to making the most of their tool investment, yet so many are not following through. Gartner repeatedly cites low data literacy as one of the top five internal barriers to analytics success. A whopping 60% of employees globally don’t feel equipped to work with data. So what’s the point in buying the best without having a plan in place to make it a success beyond implementation?

If your dashboards aren’t being used, it’s not because people are lazy. It’s because they’re lost. And no one’s bothered to show them the way.

And this is where ROI starts being left on the table. As a data leader, you’re most likely feeling the heat when those six or seven figures spent on Snowflake, Power BI, Tableau aren’t delivering the business outcomes that were promised.

We’re not saying it’s not crucial to get the tech right, but the biggest failure will always be not bringing people on the journey with you.

So you’ve ever watched a business case for more analysts get turned down, or seen your team’s impact questioned in the boardroom, it’s because no one else understands the value.

If you love data, you might think that everyone else is also desperate to learn about data.

They’re not.

At least, not in the way so many businesses keep trying to teach them.

Non-customised self-service courses? Check-the-box training? A barrage of eLearning portals? These might work for the already-curious, the already-converted. But what about the other 80%? The ones quietly wondering if all this data stuff is just a veiled threat to their job and asking themselves why they should care?

They don’t need another login. They need relevance and context. They need to see what’s in it for them, and how it makes their day easier, not yours.

But we know how challenging it is to realise a programme that delivers the right behavioural change, especially if your team is already at capacity. Plus, you’re a group of data specialists, not necessarily education experts. That’s why initiatives often don’t get the right traction, have slow impact or are lacking scalability when launched. And that’s also why working with a dedicated partner takes all the stress off your shoulders, while still letting you keep the credit for embedding that data culture change you so deeply need.

CDOs: This is your moment

Don’t let this year slide by without taking the opportunity to show that data literacy isn’t a training line item but is the lever that unlocks the value of every other investment your company’s made. And yes, it can be hard work. Yes, you might have to win over cynical stakeholders and tight-fisted CFOs.

But the case is stronger than ever:

• Time saved (About half of employees are saving at least five hours a week by using GenAI at work)
• Reduced errors
• Faster decisions
• Increased tool adoption
• Employee retention (94% of employees say they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and growth)
• Innovation at scale (GenAI workplace studies show that AI-trained employees report less job anxiety and more creativity, especially when upskilling is paired with support)
• Risk mitigation
• Tangible, bottom-line ROI

In the context of your business, you need to connect the dots between capability and outcome, and attach numbers to benefit future investment. And that’s how you build a business case for investment. Because no other tech investment will live up to its potential if people lack the foundational understanding of what underpins them.

So what now?

Leading organisations should approach data initiatives with a dual lens: every pound or dollar spent on technology should be paired with a dollar (or more) on enabling people to use it. In fact, Boston Consulting Group reported that for successful AI transformations, 70% of effort goes into people/process versus 30% into tech.

When getting started, launching with a data and AI literacy pilot is a proven approach. This helps you test and iterate before expanding to the wider organisation. You need a solid change management approach as well to create that awareness and buy-in from people you’re bringing on the journey.

And whatever you do, stop waiting for the right time. There’s no such thing because there’s always a reason to wait for that one piece of architecture  to be built, or that one data product to be launched. Now is always the time. It will be to the detriment of your data team’s success and their ability to go from reactive to proactive if you don’t focus on kicking off initiatives involving the wider business alongside your transformations, so getting your iniatives going with the resources you have will pay off. And then you can build the business case if you’re struggling to get more support.

And finally, get out of your data bubble. Learn what the marketing team actually cares about. Ask your CFO what they really need to excel their department. Find the blockers. Build the bridges. And pinpoint where you can drive value throughout.

Because data value is people-driven. And if you want to deliver the ROI you promised, you’ve got to meet people where they are, and take them somewhere better. We see every day that’s exactly what the best data leaders are doing.

And the rest? They’re still waiting for their tools to do it for them.

Reflective questions for CDOs:

• How can you shift from working on outputs to driving outcomes?
• What’s your data literacy budget compared to your tooling budget?
• What percentage of your workforce would you honestly call data literate?
• Are you building tools that actually serve a strong business need, or just because you think it does?

If you want to learn about our model of proving ROI of data literacy in more detail, check out our webinar The ROI of Data Literacy: How to turn insights into value.

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