Most teams ship features without designing the data behind them. It's rarely carelessness, but by the time anyone needs the data, the cheap moment to capture it has passed.
Data isn't a competing function. It's the missing half of product.
The curve below names where a team, a product or a whole function sits today. There are five levels, and each one is a real step up from the one before, not more tooling. Click through them.
Thinking about data on day one, at level 1, is a small cost. Going back for it six months after launch is a large one. Plan levels 1 and 2 as part of the build itself, and levels 3 and 4 become realistic.
You don't need a platform rebuild to start climbing. Most of the move between levels is a decision made before the build starts rather than after it ships.
It's a change in culture more than tooling. No platform moves a team up the curve on its own. What moves it is changing what "done" means, and keeping to that when it's inconvenient.
Whatever you build on has to keep working when the source systems change, because they will. A data layer that breaks every time the source changes doesn't count as a level up.
Most organisations can't yet see where their own domains sit on this curve. That's a normal place to start, and the assessment is a quick way to find out.