Establish the Charter and Responsibilities

At this stage, it is a best practice to establish the charter and responsibilities for your EPM CoE.

When defining your charter, a best practice is to consider:

• Collaborating with other regions, entities, and teams
• Building the value cases for continuous improvement

In terms of responsibilities, the CoE lead is responsible for:

• Defining the strategic direction of the CoE through continuous communication with executives and the different lines of business
• Measuring the performance of the CoE
• Delivering on the CoE’s objectives and business benefits
• Communicating milestones, go-lives and lessons learned to management and executives as well as other teams. Gartner points out that one of the potential downsides of a Cloud CoE is not having proper communication, and suggests focusing on business-related benefits.
• Driving innovation by continuously reviewing and mapping Cloud EPM enhancements to the list of internal enhancement requests
• Helping your organization align business, Finance, and IT
• Serving as a steering committee for best practices
• Leading EPM-related change management initiatives

Besides establishing the role of a CoE lead, it is important to determine the representatives from Finance, IT, and business.

• The Finance lead aligns with Finance users and promotes their enhancement requests. Typically, you will include representatives from the Financial Planning and Analysis group, controllers, the chief revenue officer, and chief financial officer.
• The IT lead is responsible for the architecture of the solution. The solution should be standardized so it can be leveraged in other departments, business units, or entities across your organization. You can also include a Cloud CoE manager or transformation manager. Some companies also include a cloud architect, security administrator, cloud services developer, systems analyst, and data administrator.
• The business representative ensures that the implemented solution matches the needs of business users, and that users are trained on the implemented solution. Determine who is the single point of content (SPOC) for a business unit or business process.

At times, depending on the available skills, some of the roles can be assigned to the same person.

To help improve CoE project management and boost productivity, you can use a RACI model.

A RACI model is a best practice for project management that defines roles and responsibilities for tasks by showing who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. This ensures that everyone on the project understands their tasks and who to consult or inform. It improves communication, accountability, and efficiency.