The ROI of Data Literacy: What L&D gets wrong about driving impact

Why ROI matters more than ever

In 2025, proving return on investment (ROI) is no longer optional. Chief Data Officers are receiving mounting requirements to demonstrate how the thousands, or even millions, invested in technological transformations have delivered value. As economic pressure is creating tension on multiple levels and tech stacks grow more complex, scrutiny continues to grow, and every initiative, including data literacy, needs to deliver tangible value.

But here’s the problem: skills education is often seen as a “nice to have,” not a business driver. With a focus on attendance, acquisition of technical skills or it being perceived as a tick-box exercise, this approach will never move the needle in a strategic way.

And that’s costing organisations dearly. Poor data literacy contributes to errors with a wide range of impact, low tool adoption, and slow decision-making. These are issues that erode both performance and trust.

At Data Literacy Academy, we believe the ROI of data literacy isn’t theoretical, it’s measurable. With our model, organisations experience faster upskilling, scalable delivery, and meaningful risk reduction. Let’s get straight into what most L&D gets wrong, and what impact they need to drive.

Measuring what’s easy, not what matters

Most L&D teams still purely rely on surface-level metrics to assess the success of training:

• Attendance and completion rates
• Learner satisfaction (CSAT/NPS)
• Quiz results or certification numbers

While these metrics are useful for operational reporting, they say little about whether the training is actually changing behaviour or driving business value. A 90% satisfaction score doesn’t prove your staff are making better decisions with data.

In other words, high engagement doesn't equal high impact.

The business cares about outcomes, not outputs.

That’s why it’s important to ask if your initiative led to:

• Fewer reporting errors?
• More confident data-led decisions?
• Higher adoption of data tools you’ve already invested in?
• Faster turnaround on insights and analysis?

These are the metrics that tell an ROI story the board will listen to.

No alignment to strategic goals

Another common pitfall? Delivering generic training that isn’t tied to the real challenges your business is trying to solve.

We’ve seen this time and again: companies run “introduction to data” workshops or “Power BI basics” sessions without anchoring them to actual business priorities. Do you care about increasing customer retention, improving operational efficiency, or reducing compliance risk? Then your programme needs to speak directly to those outcomes.

Without that connection, it’s hard for learners to see the value and even harder for executives to justify the cost.

At Data Literacy Academy, we start every programme by understanding the organisation’s strategic objectives and identifying where data capabilities will unlock the most value. Only then do we design the learning pathways.

That’s how you make data literacy feel like a business driver, not just another tick-box initiative.

No clear success criteria, or no one tracking them

Even when a programme is well-intentioned, many L&D teams don’t set up measurable success criteria before they launch.

They don’t ask:

• What behaviour change do we want to see in 3, 6, 12 months?
• What data tools or processes should we see greater adoption of?
• What performance indicators (efficiency, speed, accuracy) should improve?

And crucially, they don’t plan how to measure these things. And without that baseline, 12 months can go by without a tangible insight into what changed. That means leadership never sees the connection between learning and impact, and data literacy remains a “soft” initiative.

A better approach is to work backwards from business goals, define the outcomes you want to influence, and agree on how you’ll measure progress along the way. This requires L&D teams, data leaders and business leaders to come together to ensure their priorities are fully aligned.

Education is not separate from cultural change

Data literacy isn’t a one-off course or a box to tick, it’s a cultural transformation. But many L&D strategies treat it as a standalone intervention, rather than embedding it into how people work, learn, and make decisions.

This siloed approach creates friction.

Learners can’t apply what they’ve learned in their real roles. Managers aren’t equipped to reinforce the behaviours you want to drive. Leadership doesn’t model or reward data-informed decision-making.

For data literacy to stick and deliver ROI, it needs to be connected to culture. That means enabling managers, rewarding curiosity, creating psychological safety for asking questions, and embedding data thinking into workflows and routines.

When education is aligned to how people already work, and supported by leadership, it doesn’t just upskill, it transforms.

Time is money, data literacy saves both

Now let’s dive into how ROI can be measured in various ways.

We know that wasted time is the silent killer of productivity. Redundant tasks, long-winded data requests making their way through a siloed org or problems that could be solved in a self-serve way clog up data team’s vital time not.

According to research by Accenture, 60% of employees say they're not confident in their skills to work with data effectively. This shows how critical it is to bridge this gap, if data is to be leveraged as the asset it’s touted to be.

With Data Literacy Academy’s customised, live learning or on-demand training, teams are given the

Our clients consistently report:

• Increased confidence to work with data and their data team
• Significant reduction in time spent explaining reports or chasing clarifications
• More efficient decision-making at all levels

These time savings translate directly into cost savings, especially when multiplied across departments or scaled across public sector initiatives. But the challenge is how to measure this.

Fewer errors, lower risk

The financial risk of misinterpreting data is real. Gartner has estimated that poor data quality costs organisations an average of $12.9 million per year.

Data Literacy Academy helps reduce that risk by:

• Teaching teams to spot red flags in data reporting
• Instilling confidence in questioning assumptions
• Ensuring that everyone from analysts to executives speaks the same “data language”

We’ve seen error rates in reporting drop by up to 40% post-training. That’s not just a win for the data team, it’s a reputational safeguard for the entire organisation. The hardest ROI to measure, is that where something does not happen. The risks of legal consequences, reputational damage and share prices taking a nosedive from a critical error, are all hedged by a data-literate workforce.

By giving more people the right mindset and approach to data-informed decisions, ultimately this benefits every single outcome. And with the age of AI requiring a high degree of data quality, this won’t be achieved without people understanding their role in the data value chain.

Higher adoption of data tools = Better ROI on tech spend

Enterprise tools like Power BI, Tableau, and Snowflake promise transformational insights. But without data literacy, they become expensive shelfware.

Our model supports better ROI from these investments by:

• Embedding tool training within data literacy pathways
• Supporting change management with a strong data culture
• Helping leaders measure engagement and adoption metrics

Don’t invest in your data without investing in your people

The data ROI conversation is no longer just about tools and tech. It's about people, and it always has been. When leaders keep getting distracted by the latest tool, they keep pouring money into a dream that will never materialise if people aren’t brought on the journey. This journey starts by learning the value of data, how to trust it, use it and act on it in an informed way. None of that gets unlocked at scale without data literacy being at the base.

But training alone isn’t the answer. Targeted, scalable, business-aligned data literacy education is, with change management at its core. That’s what Data Literacy Academy delivers.

Ready to unlock data ROI?

Let’s talk. Whether you're building a business case or looking for a partner to scale data skills across your workforce, we’ll help you drive real, measurable results.