The notion of a BI competency center is growing as companies seek a formalized mechanism to shepherd the expansion of BI and ensure that investment matches business needs, according to IT managers at Computerworld's BI Perspectives conference

Computerworld has an article on the growing norm of BI Competency Centers in the industry, Below are some excerpts :

M.C. Sankar, vice president of enterprise applications development at TD Ameritrade Holding Corp said his company is building the competency center as it works to embed BI analysis about clients into front-line workers' processes. The center, which TD Ameritrade operates virtually, is key to supporting the company's efforts to make decisions based on BI analysis, he added.
"Business users have to become part and parcel of this process," he said. " is the basic framework that will make our BI investment work."

Bonnie Smith, division vice president of IT and business consulting at Abbott Laboratories, said the company is now finalizing efforts to launch a competency center to examine BI investment and develop standards and best practices.

The need for the center arose from a realization late last year that IT investments in BI and data warehousing made by the Abbott Park, Ill.-based company were not being co­ordinated, she said.

Source: 1

Prashanth Rai