Strategies to Set Up and Scale Analytics CoE

The economic and market dynamics over the past decade has taught us one thing – ‘business efficiency’.

Be it in pushing cost efficiencies, growth strategies, market expansion plans, or improving decision-making, businesses are seeking avenues to increase their efficiencies continuously. Today, one way, or perhaps the ‘only’ way, to increase business efficiency is by making data-driven decisions. This need, along with the growing volume of data, is pushing organizations to set up analytics and business intelligence Centre of Excellence (CoE). It helps enterprises access insights on customers, services, products, markets, etc. and help them proactively adjust their strategies according to the shifts in the market forces. But why do I need an Analytics Center of Excellence? Isn’t having an in-house analytics team enough?

Let’s begin by understanding the purpose of a CoE. The CoE is a cross-organizational body that is responsible for a specific function (primarily information management). Its main purpose is to identify, develop, and establish cross-functional processes and harness the expertise and knowledge of resources to provide tangible business benefits.

A CoE is a channel leveraging which project managers, customers, line managers, etc. can fulfill and improve business initiatives and their outcomes. The CoE, most importantly, is also an updated knowledge repository that continuously generates and refreshes knowledge, skills, practices, and competencies and serves to guide those working in that business domain.

So, when should you set up an Analytics CoE?

Some of the key reasons to establish an Analytics CoE could include:

The right set of people will make all the difference to your CoE. This becomes a Catch-22 situation as in the face of global analytical talent shortage, this is perhaps the hardest piece of the puzzle. You need data experts such as data engineers, data scientists, data architects.

You need to create a data custodian. This custodian can be in-house or a third-party team and has access to all the data sources of the organization. This team will support all needs for data mining, data assimilation, and reporting.

Along with the data experts, your Analytics CoE should also include business experts to align the organizational business strategy and all aspects of the business to improve efficiencies and drive profitability.