Center of Excellence · Data & AI

Most AI programmes stall in the data.

The Data & AI Center of Excellence is a joint WorldITCOE and Tekskills practice that fixes the part everyone skips. We extract, stage, govern and unify your enterprise data first — then put generative, agentic and applied AI on top of it, where it can actually hold.

Book a discovery call →See the journey

Extract → Activate: One governed pipeline, end to end
Phased, ROI-modelled: Start small, prove value, scale
SAP · Oracle · Dynamics: Built for real ERP landscapes

Source data → production AI

1ExtractGet it out of the source systems
2StageLand it before you touch it
3GovernMake it trustworthy
4UnifyOne lakehouse, organised by domain
5ObserveKnow when it breaks, before they do
6AnalyseOpen analytics the business reads

7Activate AINow the AI holds

Skip stages one to six and the AI is a demo. Most programmes find this out after the budget is spent.

Why programmes stall

The model was never the hard part.

Enterprises rarely fail at AI because the algorithms are weak. They fail because the data underneath was never made fit to carry a decision — and nobody owned fixing it.

Data nobody trusts

Figures that disagree between systems, no lineage back to source, and no owner for quality. Every AI output inherits that doubt, so no one acts on it.

Pilots that never land

An impressive proof of concept on an extracted spreadsheet, with no governed pipeline, no monitoring and no path to production behind it.

No ROI anyone can show

Spend with no baseline, no measured business outcome and no executive-readable reporting — so the programme loses its funding before it compounds.

The journey

Seven stages. Six of them are data.

This is the sequence the Center of Excellence runs, and the order matters more than any single tool in it. Pick a stage to see what gets built there, and what it gets built on.

Stages 1–6 · the data workStage 7 · where AI finally pays

Stage 1 of 7

Extract

Get it out of the source systems

Your data is locked inside ERP, line-of-business applications, files, machines and sensors — each with its own shape, release cycle and owner. We build the connectors and ingestion that pull it out reliably and repeatably, including the awkward ones everyone leaves for later.

SAP ECC / S/4HANADynamics 365Oracle NetSuiteJD Edwards E1IIoT / OT

What you get out of this stage

Source inventory and system-of-record map
Batch and streaming ingestion pipelines
ERP extraction from SAP, Dynamics 365, NetSuite and JD Edwards
IIoT and shop-floor telemetry capture

Built on the platforms you already run

Microsoft Fabric
Databricks
Snowflake
Azure AI Foundry
OpenAI
Azure Arc
AWS
Google Cloud
Oracle Cloud
SAP S/4HANA
Dynamics 365
Power BI
SAP Analytics Cloud
Kubernetes
Microsoft 365

What the CoE does

A fusion team, not a tooling contract.

The CoE is staffed as a fusion team: domain experts who know the business process sitting alongside data engineers, AI specialists and cloud architects. One accountable unit from extraction through to a model in production.

CoreFoundation

Data Engineering & Integration

Ingestion, staging, transformation and integration across ERP, applications, files and machine data — the pipelines everything else stands on.

Batch, streaming and change-data-capture ingestion
On-premise to multi-cloud and hybrid migration
Data preparation, augmentation and enrichment

Trust

Governance, Security & Observability

Merged data and AI governance: quality, lineage, master data, classification, access control and continuous monitoring, under one framework.

Data quality, lineage and master data governance
Privacy, classification and access control
Observability with owned SLAs and escalation

Architecture

Lakehouse, Mesh & Fabric

A unified lake organised by domain, with data published as a product. Mesh and fabric patterns applied where they reduce real coupling.

Microsoft Fabric, Databricks and Snowflake
Domain boundaries and data-product contracts
Conformed enterprise dimensions

Insight

Open Analytics & BI

Executive and operational analytics on open standards, including SAP open analytics, so insight travels beyond a single vendor's tooling.

Executive dashboards and self-service models
SAP Analytics Cloud, BW/4HANA, Business Objects
Predictive analytics and data intelligence

OutcomeApplied AI

Generative, Agentic & Custom AI

Retrieval-augmented generation on your own governed content, agentic workflows that act through MCP, and custom models trained on your history.

RAG, agentic AI and MCP tool integration
Azure AI Foundry and OpenAI model operations
Custom AI/ML for forecasting and prediction

Enterprise

ERP Intelligence

AI-driven insight across the systems that actually run the business — SAP, Dynamics 365, Oracle and JD Edwards — rather than beside them.

SAP ECC and S/4HANA data products
Dynamics 365, NetSuite and JD Edwards E1
Finance, supply chain and procurement analytics

Proven solutions

Accelerators already running in production.

Alongside bespoke work, the CoE brings solutions that have already been built, deployed and hardened in live industrial environments — so a programme can show value in weeks rather than quarters.

Computer vision · existing cameras

Vision Intelligence Hub

Turns the camera infrastructure you already own into a real-time monitoring system. Detects safety violations, process deviations, anomalies and operational events across manufacturing and facility environments, and brings them together in centralised dashboards and alerts.

Safety-violation and PPE detection
Process-deviation and anomaly alerting
Centralised dashboards across sites
Deployed in manufacturing, pharma and aerospace

Moves teams from passive surveillance to proactive, data-driven decisions.

Plant gate · material flow

Smart Gate Logistics

Digitises plant gate operations end to end: vehicle and visitor entry and exit, plate and driver OCR, and QR-based gate passes. It carries the full material flow — purchase and delivery order validation, goods-receipt creation and inventory posting — plus bay assignment and returnable-material tracking.

Plate and driver OCR with QR gate passes
PO/DO validation, GRN creation, inventory posting
Bay assignment and returnable-material tracking
Live dashboards, turnaround-time analytics, SLA alerts

Replaces gate registers and phone calls with measured turnaround time.

Plus a library of AI/ML and IIoT solutions across market segments, built on generative AI, agentic AI, RAG and MCP.

How we stand it up

A Center of Excellence is an operating model, not a team name.

Eight steps, run in order, each with an owner and a measurable outcome. This is the framework the joint practice uses to make a CoE survive its first budget review.

Define vision & objectives

Articulate purpose and set measurable goals, with ROI modelled up front.

Secure executive sponsorship

Get leadership engaged and the right stakeholders committed and named.

Build a skilled team

Define roles, then hire and train against them — fusion teams, not silos.

Develop governance framework

Establish data policies, AI ethics and the decision rights that go with them.

Implement technology stack

Select and invest in the platform and infrastructure the use cases need.

Identify & prioritise use cases

Align candidates to business goals and sequence them by value and readiness.

Foster a data-driven culture

Raise data literacy and make collaboration across domains the default.

Measure & communicate

Define KPIs, report progress, and keep the programme visibly accountable.

Who delivers this

Two firms, one accountable team.

This is a joint practice. WorldITCOE brings the Center of Excellence model, advisory and client governance. Tekskills brings global delivery scale and its TekDataNova data & AI fusion division. One team, one plan, one point of accountability.

WorldITCOE

Center of Excellence & advisory

CoE design, governance and operating model
Roadmap, ROI and TCO modelling
Executive engagement and programme assurance
Vendor-neutral architecture advisory

Tekskills

Global delivery & TekDataNova

TekDataNova data & AI fusion division
Global delivery across 8 countries, 13 locations
Data engineering, AI/ML and cloud specialists
Enterprise ERP, cloud and managed services

13: Locations worldwide
100+: Customer engagements
206: Projects completed
950+: Skilled resources

Credentials: Tekskills Inc. is an NMSDC-certified WMBE (women/minority-owned business enterprise).

Delivery footprint: USA · Canada · UK · Netherlands · UAE · Singapore · India · Australia

Where we work

Domain expertise, not just data expertise.

Fusion teams pair data and AI engineers with people who already know the process being measured — which is why the first model tends to answer a question the business actually asked.

Manufacturing
Pharma & Life Sciences
Healthcare
Banking & Finance
Insurance
Retail & CPG
Supply Chain & Logistics
Travel & Transportation
Telecom
Aerospace
Energy & Utilities
Public Sector

Start here

Tell us where your data actually is.

A 45-minute discovery call with the joint WorldITCOE and Tekskills team. We will map your source systems, name the first two use cases worth funding, and tell you plainly which stage of the journey you are at.

A view of your current data and AI readiness
Two prioritised use cases with indicative ROI
A phased roadmap sized to your budget
No obligation, and no pitch deck

Prefer email? Write to us at
ai@worlditcoe.com