Why All Organisations Should Be Reaching For A Low-Code Power Platform Centre Of Excellence

Adaptability and streamlined processes have always been a key component to success but that’s become more and more true as time has gone on, to the point where any modern organisation can’t scale and thrive if they’re not prioritising adaptability.

That’s why I’m talking about Microsoft’s Power Platform today.

Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Power Pages and Power Virtual Agents.

Between them, they offer organisations a low-code approach to enhancing operational efficiency, boosting productivity and fuelling innovation.

However, to truly maximise the potential of these tools, many organisations are establishing a Power Platform Center of Excellence (CoE).

A Power Platform CoE serves as a centralised framework for governance, optimising platform usage and implementing best practices across the company.

Key Takeaways

• The Power Platform and citizen development will enhance your business agility and drive innovation.
• It’s vital that you clearly define your citizen development approach and goals to maximise ROI and measure success.
• Adaptive governance will be critical for the success of citizen development within your organisation.
• The Power Platform CoE starter kit offers an excellent foundation for governance.

• Ongoing refinement of governance and citizen development strategies is essential for sustainable success and scalability.

What Is The Power Platform And Its Centre of Excellence (CoE)?

Microsoft’s Power Platform is a powerful suite of low-code tools that empowers both IT professionals and business users (citizen developers) to create solutions, automate workflows, generate insights, provision data-driven websites and build virtual agents. These capabilities and tools allow organisations to streamline operations and respond quickly to evolving market demands.

A Power Platform Centre of Excellence should act as a governing body, there to provide guidance and oversee the adoption and optimisation of these tools across an organisation.

Implemented correctly, it will establish consistent standards, ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and enables sustainable innovation at scale. With a CoE in place, organisations can address challenges such as inconsistent app development practices, governance risks and resource inefficiency… all whilst fostering an environment of innovation.

Benefits Of Implementing A Power Platform CoE

Streamlined Governance & Compliance – Establishing a CoE will ensure that all Power Platform solutions adhere to consistent governance and compliance frameworks, reducing the risk of security breaches and regulatory violations. The CoE is there to formalise policies for app development, data management and workflow automation, ensuring that all solutions align with organisational standards.

• Consistent Governance Policies: Standardised rules for app development and data usage are in place to protect the organisation.
• Audit And Compliance: Puts in place systematic monitoring of data access and usage to meet industry standards and protect sensitive information.

Enhanced Innovation & Citizen Development – A CoE supports the growth of citizen development, enabling employees across functions to design their own solutions within a structured, compliant framework. This not only empowers employees but also accelerates innovation by allowing non-technical staff to solve specific business challenges autonomously.

• Empowered Citizen Developers: Business users can develop solutions, reducing reliance on IT.
• Accelerated Innovation: Democratising technology boosts creative problem-solving across departments.
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Centralised Standards & Best Practices – A Power Platform CoE standardises best practices for app design, automation and data governance, ensuring uniformity across solutions. This standardisation minimises redundancy, supports reusability and enhances collaboration between teams.

• Consistency In Development: Standard guidelines ensure scalability and long-term maintainability of solutions.
• Best Practices Repository: Centralised resources and templates drive efficient development and reuse of successful solutions.

Improved Resource Optimisation & Efficiency – The CoE enables organisations to optimise resources by identifying high-impact initiatives and minimising duplicate efforts. A structured process for evaluating and prioritising projects ensures that resources are used efficiently, focusing on initiatives that provide tangible business value.

• Efficient Resource Allocation: Resources can be directed towards initiatives that deliver measurable results, fast.
• Reduced Development Time: Streamlined processes decrease the time to market for new solutions.

Strengthened Security & Data Management – Data governance is a critical aspect of modern business operations. The CoE plays a crucial role in implementing stringent security protocols and ensuring compliance with data protection regulations. It provides a robust framework for managing data access, protecting sensitive information, and ensuring data integrity.

• Enhanced Security: Enforced data access controls and protection measures protect the organisation whilst empowering innovation, agility and adaptability.
• Data Governance: Clear policies for data usage, security, and compliance show everyone how to proceed.

Key Components Of A Power Platform CoE

A successful Power Platform Centre of Excellence (CoE) should be built on several foundational elements.

First, your governance and compliance framework is essential. This will establish policies for secure development and data management. Additionally, having a standardised development environment with pre-built templates, resources, and coding standards ensures consistency across projects.

Training and enablement programmes are equally important, offering workshops and resources to empower citizen developers.

Monitoring and reporting tools, such as dashboards, help track usage, performance, and compliance effectively.

Finally, an innovation hub should be created to act as a central repository for reusable solutions, ideas, inspiration and successful case studies, fostering ongoing creativity and improvement.

Implementation Roadmap For A Power Platform CoE

Interested?

FormusPro are always happy to help you implement a CoE, with the roadmap looking something like this (although all steps would likely be tweaked depending on your organisations needs).

1. 1. Define your citizen development goals from the outset to be able to better measure long term success.
   2. Assessment and Strategy Development – Align your CoE’s goals with your business objectives, ensuring that the strategy is tailored to your organisation’s unique needs.
   3. Create an Impact Matrix to categorise solutions based on their risk, data sensitivity, and business importance. This will guide decision-making about which projects to prioritise and how to govern them.
   4. Develop an adaptive governance framework that aligns with your impact matrix, including how to handle orphaned projects, leavers and unapproved solutions. This is best done alongside a licencing assessment.
   5. For each type of citizen development identified, define a suitable Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) strategy to ensure consistency and quality.
   6. Leverage the Power Platform CoE starter kit and customise it to meet your organisation’s needs.
   7. Utilise the different Power Platform tools to automate governance wherever possible, ensuring streamlined oversight.
   8. Develop comprehensive training programmes to onboard both end-users and citizen developers, ensuring that they have the skills needed to contribute effectively.

Final Thoughts

A Power Platform CoE is an indispensable asset for organisations that want to maximise the potential of Microsoft Power Platform. By fostering citizen development, promoting best practices, and establishing robust governance, a CoE enhances both operational efficiency and innovation.

With a structured approach, organisations can leverage the full capabilities of low-code development to drive business success, ensure compliance, and adapt quickly to market changes.

References

• Microsoft Power Platform CoE Documentation
• “Low-Code Development and the Rise of Citizen Developers,” Forrester, 2022

• Gartner Report: “Maximising the Business Value of a Low-Code Center of Excellence,” 2023