digg reddit del.icio.us technorati
Purpose and Benefits Print

Below is one of the examples on how CRM Center of Excellence is built. The scope and definition of a Center of Excellence is quite broad and covers not only the ability to deliver and execute projects from an IT perspective but should also provide for strategic business vision while maintaining alignment with enterprise-wide initiatives.

 

 

 

Value of the Center of Excellence

A Center of Excellence should enable your organization to move beyond a project-by-project approach when implementing CRM initiatives and to leverage existing skills and reusable components. In general, the value of a Center of Excellence and its’ associated processes include:

  • Early identification of issues
  • Reduced release cycle times and delivery costs
  • Knowledge leverage and reuse - defined methods, templates and processes that reduce time to define and execute projects
  • Improved quality of releases due to the re-use of common methodologies to develop and maintain infrastructure and processes
  • Improved accuracy of estimates for future releases using standardized methods, best-practices repositories and common tools
  • Improved perceptions of by clients
  • Improved people and resource management where consistent infrastructure reduces time to analyze and design new solutions

Developing a Center of Excellence should be approached like any other IT project using similar methodology. Initially, you will need to define the vision, goals, objectives and scope of the Center of Excellence.

Once the scope and objectives have been set, analysis and requirement definition can begin to develop the roadmap that will enable the Center of Excellence to fulfill these objectives. Particular attention should be paid to resource needs and defining whether Center of Excellence resources will be dedicated or ad hoc resources.