The Added Value Is Supporting a Decision

Perhaps it’s just me, but there are so many talks, posts and meetings surrounding BI where the “value” conversation is loud but the “for whom” answer is vague. I’ve stopped believing those are two separate problems. The data team is presenting dashboards, leadership is asking about ROI, and everyone in the room is speaking fluently about value while nobody is naming the actual consumer: the specific person whose next decision this work is supposed to improve.

Added value = a decision

Don’t get me wrong: these decisions are going to be made anyway, whether there is data or not. The goal of data here is merely to support that decision being made quicker, more secure, or just plainly better. That is the value data professionals should look to add, with a dashboard being one potential vessel to reach it.

I’ll say it plainly, because the industry keeps saying it backwards: the added value lives in the decision being supported. Take the decision away, and the most polished dashboard in the portfolio has nothing left to add value to.

Why the value conversation keeps going in circles

When a data team is asked to prove its value in the abstract (ROI slides, KPIs for the data team, adoption metrics), it is usually being asked to answer the wrong question. Anna Geller has observed that when leadership pushes a data team on ROI, the underlying problem is a lack of trust and a missing relationship with stakeholders. The conversation becomes productive once the relationship is in place; the measurement follows from there.

The value conversation also keeps stalling because nobody agreed on which decision the work was supposed to support, and whose. Until someone can name both, you are defending something that has not yet produced value, to people who are not sure they needed it.

The kitchen proves it

Twenty years in hospitality taught me a small rule I keep quoting back to data teams. In a kitchen, a plate becomes a plate the moment a specific guest at a specific table is about to eat it, and not a second sooner. A plate sent to the pass without a table number is a mistake looking for a table, no matter how good the sauce is.

A dashboard behaves the same way. It becomes a data product the moment a named person uses it to make a decision they were going to make anyway. Until then, it is a well-executed object sitting on the pass. “Value” has always been relational, even in the most operationally immediate context imaginable; the hospitality industry never confused the plate with the guest.

Data as a product forces the thinking

The data-as-a-product principle (Zhamak Dehghani) names this at the level of definition. A data product, in her words, is “designed from the consumer’s point of view so they get the best user experience.” That definition is load-bearing: the consumer orientation is baked in, which is why I keep coming back to it. The framework everyone cites already puts “for whom” at the centre of the definition itself.

Take that seriously as a design constraint and it forces the question at the moment you set the product’s boundaries: for whom, and to decide what. The framework itself will not let you skip that question, which makes it a useful diagnostic for any team stuck in the ROI loop. If the answer to “for whom” is still vague, go back to the product boundary and ask whether a consumer was ever named there.

The one question worth asking

If you ask me, the question I want in the room is a short one: who is the person, and which decision of theirs is about to get made better because of this dashboard?

Before the next value slide, finish two sentences out loud: This exists for [a named person or role]. They are about to decide [a specific decision]. If either sentence won’t complete, the value conversation is genuinely premature. If both do, the value conversation becomes short. The person, the decision, the improvement: quicker, more secure, or just plainly better. That is the whole brief, and it fits in a sentence.

A dashboard that cannot finish those two sentences is still on the pass without a ticket, however clean the visuals are.

Happy to think this through with you.