Business intelligence platforms increasingly will incorporate an array of analytic capabilities and test the ability of companies to leverage them, said Gartner vice president Howard Dresner in a presentation at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo this week. Such platforms will create demand for sophisticated knowledge, skills and talents within companies.

Under the circumstances, Dresner argued IT organizations should establish BI competency centers. "Take those skills in the enterprise that know how to use tools the right way and centralize them," he said. "We consider this to be a best practice."

Few organizations, however, have actually developed one, according to a show of hands. "Trying to pull a competency center together for a large company is a huge undertaking," Ralph Martino, who is data warehouse manager for Chase Credit Card Corp, told TechTarget’s Paul Gillin at the conference. "I'm not sure the benefit is there just yet, but I intend to go back home and advocate for it."

Well, why? There’s reason to believe that centers of BI excellence will only drag companies further away from the real prize, particularly when the prize is a profitable and loyal customer. They need to invest deeply in understanding their markets and their customers. Introspective efforts to build “world-class” BI capabilities don’t necessarily get one any closer to that objective. IT activities of all kinds increasingly are becoming a utility. Maybe the business groups, which are closest to the customer, should be driving the action.