As AI spreads across an organization, a question emerges: how do you keep it consistent, governed, and shared — instead of every team reinventing the wheel? An internal AI center of excellence (CoE) is the answer. Here’s how to build one, and how dgm supports it. (dgm implements osFoundry, a separate company’s platform — we are not osFoundry.)

What an AI CoE does

An AI center of excellence is a small internal group with a focused mandate:

  • Set standards and best practices for how AI is built and used.
  • Share knowledge across teams, so wins and lessons spread.
  • Govern AI — security, ethics, data, and vendor choices (see AI governance for SMBs).
  • Help teams adopt AI — enablement and support.

It’s how an organization scales AI consistently rather than letting every team start from scratch.

Start small

Don’t over-build it. Start with even a part-time, cross-functional group — a few people from across the business with a clear mandate — and grow it as AI matures (see AI maturity model). A heavyweight CoE built before there’s real AI activity is overhead; a lean one that scales with need is an asset.

Enable, don’t gatekeep

The biggest CoE failure mode is becoming a bottleneck — every project waiting on a central group for approval. A good CoE enables and governs, accelerating adoption with good standards and shared knowledge, not blocking it. Enablement over control is what makes it valued rather than resented.

Who needs one

Larger and mid-sized organizations scaling AI across multiple teams benefit most. A small business may not need a formal CoE, but the same functions — standards, governance, knowledge-sharing — still matter in a lighter-weight form.

How dgm helps

dgm helps stand up and enable a CoE — establishing standards and governance, and training the internal team — so your organization can increasingly own AI over time. It’s part of the broader engagement (a $399 assessment, then $3,999/month implementation) with knowledge transfer built in. If you’d rather explore the platform yourself first, go straight to osFoundry; if you want help building internal AI capability, that’s where dgm comes in.