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We must understand the central point of analytics. Requirements come from the business, but stability comes from the team (often IT) that ensures Controls are in place. In a world of GDPR and Data Governance, it is easy for your risk and compliance functions to forget that they will often have a function ensuring their requirements. So, what does that mean for our data landscape?

Simply, it means that there must be an understanding that governance and ownership are different. This means that the Data Owners who push the requirements must respect the system Governance they are using. This often goes wrong when one group decides unilaterally for the other; both are equally disastrous. In a world where data is the new gold, can you afford to have your business marred in an extensive internal battle? We have already presented the role of the business within your centre of excellence, but what about the other side, the more traditional “System Management Team” – typically the IT Team?

In the same way, the business teams involved in the Centre of Excellence must be willing to learn. The Microsoft Power Platform is an evolving tool with new functions, functionalities, and capabilities being added monthly. This means continuous learning is necessary, as pre-determined plans may need adjustment. For instance, recent Fabric rollouts would have impacted any organisation as suddenly people could do things that were not “part of the plan”. A willingness to learn should be a priority within the System Governance Team, even over technical expertise. While technical skills are important, the platform’s direction will influence specifics; for example, many Data Scientists use ‘R’, but there is a shift towards Python in Power BI, meaning that the understanding of the overarching processes remains valuable, ensuring that unused technical skills still hold significance. These shifts do not mean that having a plan is a bad idea, the simply mean that your plan must be able to be flexible.

The flip side to this is, of course, that when the Data Owners request something, they must be aware that there may be impacts that they are not fully aware of that would stop something from being able to be completed this very second. Sometimes, the dependency may even be back with them, as being a Data Owner also means ensuring that your processes gather correct and appropriate data.

It is easy to see how these two sides can become locked in a state of conflict that will lead to progress simply stopping. When this happens, your business does not move forward, as you fall back on entrenched ideas and mindsets rather than looking at the growth and opportunities that the data insights show.

In our video series on Jesmond Dene parkrun, we again show how a simple starting position can evolve and grow. Even as this is being written, the original update plans are being rewritten again, reminding us that conversations and observations are rarely invalid. In our case, a training request arrived at the same time as we were starting work on the video series; for your organisation, it could be as simple as a new quarter, which means additional metrics or a new initiative would benefit from a new way of looking at the data. The ability to adapt and improve on our report content is something that we must always be willing to do, no matter how much it “hurts” us to do; updates mean usage, after all. You can guarantee that no one is using something if no one is asking for changes.

Now we see why there should always be requests for updates or changes within our data landscape. Excellence in System Governance is being able to support those continuous changes. Evolving the solution while maintaining its stability seems oxymoronic, but it is the core function of the Centre of Excellence. Combining technical and business users or “requirements” and “controls” creates a challenging environment where fixation is the enemy. All aspects of the solution will change over time. The reality is that this is how ALL solutions must be for longevity, meaning, often, this is the reality that led to the failure of previous solutions. It is now apparent why we must work to maximise the collaboration between our organisations’ “Requirements” and “Controls” sides. This challenge is resolved by establishing a Centre of Excellence, which allows more of a round table way of working rather than a traditional hierarchical way of working, which is transformative. Yes, a Centre of Excellence must deliver constant improvement and benefit. Still, because they establish a stream of benefits and improvement, they can support all business areas quickly and reliably.

The central and standard way of working means that improvements explicitly tailored to a single use case or requirement often have benefits across the whole organisation; that benefit is often only surfaced because of the round-table nature of the Centre of Excellence, as a request from elsewhere is steered to previous improvement. After all if you receive a request for a new report or a change in any way and expect it take time to be delivered, only to be told “Oh that, yeah we have 80% of that already, do you want to use that?”, the answer is invariably “Yes!”. This is because we know that Analysis is emergent meaning that we know that no matter what the response we will receive from our boss will be “That’s great but what about…”, the ability of a Centre of Excellence to turn around the majority of the simple queries quickly means that as stability is established those remaining 20% questions become the focus of the Improvements, but because of the rapid turn arounds the requests will be much more targeted and specific so ultimately more beneficial to the organisational understanding.

Geordie Consulting uses the Microsoft Power Platform to provide businesses with agile, cost-effective data solutions. We specialise in integrating data across business applications into a single, manageable platform. Our services include enabling business users to develop custom reports using Power BI and Excel, leveraging Semantic Models for consistent data analysis, and enhancing user self-sufficiency through Copilot. We aim to ensure your data agility to support a data-driven business. We provide comprehensive documentation and support to maximise the business value provided by your data. Let our insight unlock your insights.