What is developing a centre of excellence?

Definition of developing a centre of excellence

From Wikipedia

A centre of excellence (COE) is a team, a shared facility or an entity that provides leadership, best practices, research, support and/or training for a focus area.

The focus area could be data analytics, data science, AI or business intelligence.

Executive view

Developing a centre of excellence promotes collaboration in your business and defines best practice for your specific focus area - whether it be AI, data science, analytics or business intelligence - to drive progress towards your strategic goals. A centre of excellence provides a central department of expertise that can be leveraged to build capability and enthusiasm across different departments.

Developing a centre of excellence helps businesses:

• foster a positive data culture

• define best practices

• promote collaboration

• provide a way to build skills and solutions that support your data science strategy

Business function leader view

Developing a centre of excellence helps teams to build skills, knowledge and progress in the area of focus. If your organisation has a data strategy, a data science strategy or an AI strategy, developing a centre of excellence is a tried and tested method for ensuring that all teams are aligned towards the strategic goals and are progressing towards them.

You may need this service if:

• you have a data science strategy but are not seeing enough progress towards the strategic goals.

• you are having trouble fostering enthusiasm and positive culture for data science and AI.

• your team lacks the skill and knowledge required to implement data initiatives.

KPIs you should consider measuring for this are:

• improved progress towards strategic goals

• increased enthusiasm for the focus area

• increased up-skilling of staff in the focus area

Technical view

Developing a centre of excellence sets and maintains best practices for the focus area, creating a central function that can make software and technology decisions, avoiding the risk of shadow IT and improving IT efficiency across the organisation. Developing a centre of excellence can also create leadership opportunities for technologists in the organisation, improving staff retention by allowing career progression.

Developing a centre of excellence helps deliver:

• a central function for software and technology decision making.

• increased awareness of IT issues across the organisation.

• improved skills across the organisation.

Get this service if you encounter:

• shadow IT - software and technology decisions being made by different departments without IT being involved.

• a lack of appreciation for the focus area by other departments.

• poor staff retention due to a lack of career progression opportunities.

Key criteria to consider are:

• Does enough talent exist within the organisation to develop a centre of excellence or will you need to recruit experts?

• How will you up-skill staff from relevant departments?

• How will the decisions of the centre of excellence be communicated and upheld across the organisation?