Does your organization have data in multiple systems that aren’t connected, lack centralization, or don’t have clear roles and responsibilities for reporting and insights? 

Do marketing metrics and KPIs feel disconnected from business goals and objectives? 

When it comes time for centralized reporting, is it hard to really know how individual marketing programs perform because they are all measured differently and in silos? 

Are budgets for new program initiatives difficult to justify because measurement and efficacy are a challenge?

If any of the above are questions your organization has struggled with, it may be time to consider a data analytics and insights COE. 

But what is a COE you ask?  A Center Of Excellence (COE) is a team of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs):

• Project Managers
• Data Analysts
• Data Strategists
• Data Scientists
• Data Engineers

that serves as a centralized insights, analytics, and reporting function. 

Here are the top 10 responsibilities of a Data Analytics COE that will streamline your organization’s use of data to drive insights, better decision making, and improved business performance and outcomes:

1. Aligns marketing goals with business objectives
2. Builds measurement plans and benchmarks
3. Provides insights and recommendations on what happened, why it happened, and what to do next
4. Automates and integrates multiple data systems and develops business intelligence solutions for easy, reoccurring reporting to serve multiple stakeholders
5. Serves as the centralized function for reporting requests and strategic analyses to inform leadership
   1. TAM (Total Addressable Market)
   2. Market & Competitive Analysis
   3. Pricing Mix Analysis
   4. Cost Benefit Analysis
   5. ROI Analysis
6. Serves as the single source of truth across the organization for data integrity 
7. Develops, maintains, and publishes data dictionaries and commonly used terminology across the organization
8. Provides Forecast & Predictive Models based on what may happen based on historical inputs
9. Develops Data Strategy Roadmaps for the organization to make the most of data
10. Develops customer segmentation, audience personas and journey maps to help the business define who is the target customer is

Many organizations have data here, there, and everywhere, and often have a hard time operationalizing it to drive insight and value. Creating a COE can drive cost savings and efficiency from a human capital perspective, freeing up teams that are playing the role of analyst when it may not be their core competency. It will also allow leadership to get business questions answered faster and improve decisioning.

Being a data driven organization starts with these questions:

• What do we hope to learn from our data?
  • Do we have the right people, process, and technology to interpret and provide insight back to the business? A COE here is a critical step in that process.
• Once we have the insights, what will the organization do with this information? 

In summary, a COE team can provide enormous value back to the business, but can also take time to implement. From making sure your organization has the right tech stack in place to find the right talent to build the team, to building key swim lanes and rules of engagement on how that team will be engaged – both are critical steps to ensuring this function is set up for success and the organization realizing long term value.