The fundamental purpose of the COE team is to build analytics for the organization. The team may be brought in at the direction of the CEO to tackle a problem that has vexed others in the company, or the project may be one that is new and of strategic importance. The quality of products coming from a factory might be declining, for example, or perhaps customer satisfaction is plummeting, causing increased customer churn. No matter what the project, if it’s based on or leverages analytics, the CAO and COE should own the creation of a solution.

After the COE has had some initial successes in a number of strategic projects, then the peers of the CAO will typically begin requesting that the COE help solve business-unit specific problems. Examples of such projects might include uncovering inefficiencies in the supply chain, predicting the most effective marketing approaches, or recommending the best approaches for reducing theft or loss. The range of problems...