What makes a BI Centre of Excellence Work?

What makes a successful BI Centre of Excellence or BI Competency Centres as they are commonly known?  We were recently asked this and came up with the following.

1. Involvement by a cross section of business users who are passionate about extending the use of BI throughout the organisation.  This cross section should be both cross business and cross-functional.
2. Inclusion of IT people who understand business and can contribute to the discussion.
3. Executive sponsorship of the BI CoE to make change happen within the BI environment.
4. Possible engagement with a consultant who understands not only your business, but also what can be achieved with BI tools (thus they can broaden the discussion from a possible narrow perspective).
5. Utilise economies of scale to ensure the BI solution is enterprise wide, rather than departmentally focussed.  This will not only save money, but also will increase value of BI through better, consistent information throughout the business.
6. Ensure that the BI CoE is agile and responsive to users needs (otherwise users will just do it themselves in a spreadsheet).
7. Include a mandate for internal BI marketing, user engagement and user training.

We have a white paper regarding BI Centres of Excellence. If anyone would like a copy, please let us know.

Also, if anyone has any thoughts about the list (other inclusions or disagreements, please also let be in touch.