Executive Summary
IT looks after the BI platform and Finance is accountable for the numbers. This often creates a difficult gap in ownership for data governance.
This gap can lead to conflicting reports, tricky audits, and poor decisions because nobody trusts the data. The BI tool you've paid for isn't used.
The answer isn't for one team to win over the other. A better approach is a shared model where IT owns the platform's health and Finance owns the metric logic, all managed in a central Semantic Layer.
The common conflict between IT and Finance over data
It’s a familiar scene in a board meeting. The CEO asks for last quarter's customer acquisition cost. The Head of Sales shows a dashboard saying it’s £150. As the CFO, you know your team’s detailed analysis puts the fully-loaded number closer to £195. The dashboard is quick, but it’s not quite right. Your spreadsheet is correct, but it’s slow.
This is a common situation. IT has bought and now manages the BI tool, whether it's Looker or Power BI makes little difference. Their job is to keep the platform stable, secure, and available. They tend to measure their success on uptime and how quickly they close support tickets. They look after the infrastructure.
Finance, on the other hand, is accountable for the accuracy of the numbers and making sure they can be audited. Your team's success is measured by the board's confidence and how well the figures stand up to scrutiny. You look after the financial truth.
When these two teams work separately, a gap often opens up right where it matters most: the business logic. The result is that people lose trust in the data, which is a real problem for building Data Trust, and it can slow the business down.
What happens when this ownership isn't clear
This sort of problem isn't just a small frustration. It can cost a lot of time and money. You may have moved to the cloud and hired good engineers, but often this just means you're automating an existing messy process, and getting the wrong answers more quickly.
I've seen this happen quite a bit with companies from Series B to D. The weekly leadership meeting starts with a half-hour debate about whose numbers are correct. It's a poor use of senior people's time. The internal friction can be significant. Finance teams, not trusting the official dashboards, often go back to using spreadsheets, which feel more reliable. This 'shadow data' ecosystem is a serious risk for any proper CFO Data Strategy.
The BI platform you're paying for ends up not being used much, a typical sign of poor BI Adoption. You have a tool that nobody, especially your finance team, relies on for important decisions. The issue usually isn't the tool itself, but the lack of a clear, agreed-upon way of defining and managing data.
A practical way to divide responsibility
In my experience, a good way forward is to stop thinking of data governance as one single job. It's usually better to split the ownership between the technical and the commercial sides of the business. It’s about getting people to agree on how to work together before any technical work begins.
1. IT is responsible for the platform IT's role is to manage the health and security of the data systems. Is the data warehouse running well? Are user permissions set up correctly? Is the BI tool online? Their job is to make sure the technical infrastructure works reliably and securely.
2. Finance is responsible for the business logic Finance, working with other commercial departments, needs to own the business definitions. What is the exact, agreed-upon formula for 'Net Revenue'? How do we define a 'churned' customer? These definitions need to be written down and agreed, not just kept in someone's head or a spreadsheet. They should be implemented in a central, governed Semantic Layer. This is where the core logic for your analysis is kept.
This way, you get a clear separation of responsibilities. IT manages the system's integrity, while Finance ensures the integrity of the numbers that system produces. This is the sort of patient work needed to build a reliable Single Source of Truth.
Making the new model work in practice
To be clear, putting this in place isn't really a technical project. It's more about getting people to agree. It means getting IT and Finance together in a room to work out this new arrangement. It often helps to set up a small, practical group to decide on, and sign off on, every important Metric Definition.
I'll be honest, this can feel slow at first. Your team might be used to the freedom of working things out for themselves in Excel. Asking them to define and document their logic might feel a bit bureaucratic to begin with. But in my experience, a few weeks of careful work now can save years of confusion later. It's not glamorous, but it's the necessary work for building a data setup that can grow with the business.
By creating this clarity, you're not just fixing one report. You're improving how the whole business makes decisions. The arguments about whose numbers are right tend to fade. The board can trust the dashboards. And as CFO, you can focus more on strategy, confident that the numbers are built on a solid, secure, and agreed-upon foundation.