What is a Centre of Excellence (CoE)?

'Centre of Excellence is a place where the highest 'Excellence' or 'Standards' are maintained.'?

The Pre and Post Pandemic era has dramatically accelerated the digitization of many industries as the brick-and-mortar, in-person processes relied on for so long became suddenly unavailable. In particular, it increased the adoption of digital channels by older generations to complete transactions and agreements. This transformation is changing digital customer demographics and expectations. To maintain a competitive edge, organizations must not only embrace digital transformation; they must also find ways to leverage and develop an ecosystem more effectively along with their peers.??

The current disruptions in the world:?

1. The coronavirus pandemic has turned the working world upside down, with millions of employees re-evaluating the place of work in their lives. Many people have discovered the benefits of working from home and are reluctant to return to the nine-to-five office days lengthened by the dreaded commute. Morale and commitment are at an all-time low. Add to this constant change on multiple levels. Organizations are finding it hard to pursue employees to return to work. Remote working or work from home has cost a big deal for companies. Productivity and efficiency have gone to an all-time low and a steep decline in revenue.?
2. Since changing its name to Meta and investing heavily to create the "metaverse," a virtual reality world, Facebook's parent company has been plagued with woes. From the start of 2022 to now, the company has shed 70 per cent of its value. The reason being the world is not ready yet for the virtual culture.?
3. Similarly, as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes for the Airline Industry, the expectation for the heavily impacted airline industry is that recovery is imminent. However, there are several factors that may impede this recovery. The Russia-Ukraine war, rising inflation and ongoing COVID-19 lockdowns in China have pushed projections for a return to 2019 air traffic levels back by a full year. These economic conditions have led to airline facing significant challenges of labour shortage, lesser available airlines, low international air travel, change in airport traffic, issues in processing times and impact on airport revenues.?All these are adding to a negative impact on the Global recovery of the Economy. Rolls-Royce's chief executive, Warren East, has warned of supply chain problems of delay in the supply of semiconductors (computer chips) used to control its engines. And inflation in his final results announcement at the helm of the jet-engine maker, saying the company is suffering "post-Covid indigestion for GBP 111m loss". Rolls-Royce has been particularly hard hit during the pandemic because its revenues are closely tied to the number of hours its engines are airborne. It provides engines for aircraft such as Airbus's A350 that are used primarily for long-haul travel, which has not recovered as quickly as shorter journeys.
4. Tesla's "Full-Self Driving" (FSD) driver-assist feature does not offer what its name promises as the Algorithms are not ready yet, nor the infrastructure and regulations. Tesla cannot deploy FSD anywhere in the European Union unless it first obtains a green light from regulators. To obtain that approval, Tesla must convincingly demonstrate that cars with FSD are at least as safe as those without it. At least so far, it hasn't.

A Centre of Excellence (CoE) refers to a team, a central shared facility or entity that provides Industry thought leadership, evangelization, best practices, vertical or domain expertise, research, support and/or training and skill development for a focus area. In addition, it nurtures and develops common interest groups or communities that solve problems beyond one's organization's functions, benefiting society at large.?

Besides, I define the CoE of today as separate from the functional areas it supports within a practice or organization. Sometimes referred to as a competency or capability centre, the CoE is often the team leading the way in exploring and adopting emerging technologies, tools, techniques, or practices. And it is based on the 'Open Innovation model.'

In an interview, Steve Jobs was asked a question - "Everybody now certainly uses quality, whether it's in the advertising or in internal literature. It's almost the price of admission in lots of industries. And yet so many corporations, large businesses, in particular, have such a hard time getting things moving, seeing results, and getting people somehow facing the right direction. So what holds them back, do you think?"?

Steve Jobs responds, "The group of people that do not use quality in their marketing are the Japanese. You never see them using quality in their marketing. It's only the American companies that do. And yet, if you ask people on the street which products have the best reputation for quality, they will tell you the Japanese products. Now, why is that, and how could that be? The answer is that customers don't form their opinions on quality from marketing. They don't form their opinions on quality from who won the Deming award or who won the Baldrige award.?

One can spend enormous amounts of money on quality. One can win every quality award there is. And yet, if your products don't live up to it, customers will not keep that opinion for long in their minds. So, where we have to start is with our products and our services, not with our marketing department. We need to get back to the basics and improve our products and services. Now, again, quality isn't just the product or the service. It's having the right product. Knowing where the market's going and having the most innovative products is just as much a part of quality as the quality of the construction of the product when you have it.

What we're seeing is the quality leaders of today have integrated that quality technology well beyond their manufacturing, now going well into their sales and marketing and out as far as they can to touch the customer and trying to create super-efficient processes back from the customer all the way through to the delivery of the end product so that they can have the most innovative products, understand the customer needs fastest, et cetera, et cetera."

To summarize, every organization across Industry verticals needs a Centre Excellence based on 'Open Innovation' and a Hybrid model if they want to deliver 'Quality' products or services and excel in bringing 'Excellence' in everything they do. CoE is the go-to place for addressing all or any problems, however complex they might be, simply because CoE has access to the best-in-class resources and experts globally. It enables an organization to address not only its internal business challenges but also opens opportunities to venture into new markets or businesses. The concept of CoE is to enable an individual, organization, city, or nation to retrofit their existing system/business model/solutions/infrastructure, which will empower and transform the way people live and work in the digital transformation era—besides CoE also empowers businesses to develop a strategy for restructuring and reconstructing their existing business models.?