Center of Excellence (CoE) - A Study
Definition: Center of Excellence (CoE) should, at a most basic level
consist of: A team of people
that promote collaboration and using best practices around a specific focus
area to drive business results. This team could be staffed with
full- or part-time members.
Responsibilities: CoEs should serve five basic needs:
- Support: For their area of focus, CoE’s should offer support to the business lines. This may be through services(Support Services) needed, or providing subject matter experts(or expertise).
- Guidance: Innovations(Product Development/Solutions), Standards, methodologies, tools and knowledge repositories are typical approaches to filling this need. (In Crisp, CoE’s Reduce Complexities & Increase Simplicity for their focus in the any Business Lines.)
- Shared Learning: Training and certifications, skill assessments, team building and formalized roles are all ways to encourage shared learning.
- Measurements: CoEs should be able to demonstrate they are delivering the valued results that justified their creation through the use of output metrics.
- Governance: Allocating limited resources (money, people, etc.)
across all their possible use is an important function of CoEs. They
should ensure organizations invest in the most valuable projects and
create economies of scale for their service offering. In addition,
coordination across other corporate interests is needed to enable the CoE
to deliver value.
Wikipedia’s Definition:
A
center of excellence refers to a team, a shared facility or an entity
that provides leadership, evangelization, best practices, research, support
and/or training for a focus area. The focus area in this case might be a
technology (e.g. Java), a business concept (e.g. BPM), a skill (e.g. negotiation)
or a broad area of study (e.g. women's health). A center of excellence may also
be aimed at revitalizing stalled initiatives.
Within an organization, a center of excellence
may refer to a group of people, a department or a shared facility. It may also
be known as a competency center or a capability center. The term
may also refer to a network of institutions collaborating with each other to
pursue excellence in a particular area. (e.g. the Rochester Area Colleges
Center for Excellence in Math and Science).
In technology companies, the center of excellence
concept is often associated with new software tools, technologies or associated
business concepts such as Service-oriented architecture or business
intelligence. In academic institutions, a center of excellence often refers to
a team with a clear focus on a particular area of research; such a center may
bring together faculty members from different disciplines and provide shared
facilities.
In the healthcare sector, the term often refers
to a center that provides sufficient and easily accessible medical services to
patients.
Types: I Came across many Service & Product Based
Companies defined centers within just their IT departments. While all of these
are important competencies they need to develop within that department. Some
common examples of CoE’s I’ve seen are:
- Six Sigma – Perhaps six sigma is the most mature of the CoEs that some organizations have embraced. This type CoE was invented by Motorola and popularized by GE. Many companies have grown this into a strategic asset they use to differentiate themselves and drive competitiveness. It has formal roles (Champions, Sponsors, Black Belts), a well understood methodology (DMAIC), standard set of tools (Statistical control, etc.), a formal certification process (Green Belt, Black Belt, Master Black Belt) and an active community.
- Process – This is the most strategic of all CoEs since all businesses are made up of processes. Few companies establish this as a CoE. Some currently creating a role for a ‘Global Business Improvement Executive.’ It allows for all the traditional focus of lean and six sigma as well as for creating new strategies and business capabilities. Project Management Office (PMO) – Many fail to think of themselves as a CoE and act as little more than a governance body, but the most successful PMOs grow beyond that single focus and take on a full CoE role around project management.
The
Process Center of Excellence:
Every organization knows they
have a responsibility to optimize financial resources. I don’t know of a
business that does not have a CFO or the equivalent and appropriate staff. Most
also have acknowledged the importance of their information resources and have a
CIO or CTO organization. Most also realize that they need to effectively manage
their human resources and have established a Human Resources department.
With processes being perhaps the most critical resource an
organization develops, I wonder why most are less enthusiastic about optimizing
processes and appointing a chief process officer. This officer would lead a
Process CoE that focuses on two critical activities within the business:
1.
Optimize and Continuously Improve
Existing Processes
2.
Create New Capabilities
Some organizations have addressed the first of these using
six sigma and lean.
- Quality Assurance – Whether for new product or software development the complexity of the roles, tools and techniques needed for quality often get formalized into a CoE. This may be tied to a six sigma CoE or stand alone.
- Business Analysis – Some organizations have embraced the idea that getting business requirements, especially around software development, is a problem best addressed by a CoE. A certification for Business Analysts from the IIBA has further advanced this idea.
- Communications – Corporate communications, employee and customer relations are activities that are often supported by a centralized support process or function. At a basic level, their role is to support the line business around this focus area.
- Risk and Compliance – Many organizations have created this capability without formally calling it a CoE. Insurance and financial institutions without exception will have this function. Other verticals may also embrace it. They almost always have veto power on changes to business processes or external communications. In ideal cases, they will help deploy standards and facilitate understanding throughout the organization.
- Human Resources – Another “function” or support process many businesses have embraced at a strategic level that meets the definition of a CoE.
Some
generic CoE’s from our considered Plaform are..,
·
Testing Center of Excellence
·
Mobile Center of Excellence
·
AMS(Application Management Services) Center of Excellence
·
BI/DW(Business Inteligence/Data Warehouse) Center of
Excellence
·
SOA(Service-Oriented
Architecture) Center of Excellence
Roles/Positions/Titles:
The Titles/Roles one can come across
when looking at a Center of Excellnece(CoE)’s are as follows..
·
Lead/Techinical/Senior Consultant
·
Techical Specialist/Architect
·
Manager/Asst.Manager
·
Solution Architect/Associate Manager
·
Enterprise Architect
·
Solution Architect/Head-Presales
·
SME’s(Subject Matter Experts)-They
are more into Training/Guidence/Consulting/Analysis…(This Title in specific
cannot be granted to anyone but mostly claimed by the individual itself)
etc
As
you can see above, you can say that a CoE personnel will have a minimum of
5-8yrs Experience in the area of focus.
Sales/Presales:
You many wonder what this topic has
to do with CoE’s, most Center of Excellences-CoE’s has about 10% people into
Sales/Presales.
This is because in Service or
Product based companies, apart from the Development/Support/Testing activities,
End of the day it is the Sales/PresalesPeople who are going to sell the
Product/Solution/Service to a Customer.
So often a Solution/Enterprise Architect will parallel play a role in Presales, this is because the person
will be expert in the technical aspects too.
The
responsibilities in Presales differ from organization to organization but in
general include:
- Solution Preparation/Proposal based on Customers Requirements
- Product demonstrations
- Proof of Concept Creation
- Creation of Marketing Documents
- ... and any other activity required to generate business
Activities/Roles of Solution
Architect/Presales are:
- Help marketing departments develop marketing materials and position strategies for product/solution area.
- Help business development life cycle by serving as a product SME to help identify and qualify business development opportunities.
- Manages sales and marketing activities for the service offering.
- With Channel Development team, develop and maintain vendor relationships within the product.
- Presenting the companies capabilities to customers, RFP/RF/RFI preparations and presentations
- Provide end to end solution and design details.
Center of Excellence(CoE) Team:
The Center of Excellence (CoE) team size can be a minimum of
1 person(which is very rare) to 30-40
member team.
The
team size depends on the skill/domain/platform the CoE is setup for.
Indian CoE Establisments(Services Companies):
The below figures are
projected from taking only the top Services Companies in India across Global
Locations.
The are about 100-120 Center of Excellences(CoE) in India
From the above,
·
We can say about ~1000 people
working in CoE’s.
·
We can say about 50-70 percent are
Certified Professionals(In their focus area)
·
We can also estimate, there are about
20-30 Percent are Architects(say about 250+ Architects)
(The
data is not Accurate and not to be taken in consideration for any data
validation/Analysis, this is mere approximation.)
Referrence:
