When we started, the obvious move looked like one big Genie Room โ put everything in, let people ask anything. We went a different way, and it's held up, so I wanted to share the reasoning rather than the conclusion.
This was for a UK enterprise Finance function, and we split it in two:
- Narrow, trusted rooms. Two rooms โ one operational, one financial โ each pointed at a single objective. A Genie Room is at its best around 7 tables; it copes with 30; it struggles at 100. Keeping each room tight is what makes the answers trustworthy.
- One blended, exploratory room. A separate space across finance, operations and HR (SAP, SAP Analytics Cloud, Workday) for the cross-functional questions no single system can answer alone.
The rule we landed on: let the question set the scope โ narrow when you need trust, broad when you're exploring. And put access controls in at the start, not as a retrofit.
Curious how others are drawing that line.
