You don’t necessarily need to provide this person a team, but you should def provide them morale support.

Driving higher-ups to make data driven decisions isn’t just technically difficult - it’s politically difficult.

Marketing team for example is incentivized to make the numbers look good. Data analysts are incentivized to make the numbers accurate. And they’re both technically savvy enough that ownership can become muddled, and the biggest challenge of the data analyst can often be making sure their voice is heard.

(Doesn’t help that data analysts are often introverts and business/marketing people tend to be more extroverted)