Governed Self-Service
Letting anyone analyse anything while constraining what may be treated as authoritative, which resolves the apparent conflict between speed and consistency.
The debate is usually framed as a trade-off: govern tightly and analysts wait weeks, or open access and end up with four incompatible revenue figures. Both outcomes are real and the framing is wrong, because the two concerns operate at different points.
Access should be broad. Analysts querying data they are entitled to see, in whatever way helps, is the value of the platform. Constraining exploration produces shadow analysis in spreadsheets, which is less governed and less visible.
Authority should be narrow. Which numbers may be quoted externally, put in a board pack or used in a regulatory return is a small set, certified, built on agreed definitions.
The mechanism connecting them is the semantic layer: shared metric definitions are available to everyone, so the easiest way to compute revenue is the agreed way, and an analyst who needs something different can build it while it remains distinguishable from the certified figure.
The organisational tell that this is working is that a disagreement between two numbers is resolved by looking at which definitions each used, rather than by a meeting about whose analysis is right.