Power Platform COE, which stands for Center of Excellence, is a strategic initiative that aims to enable organizations to leverage the full potential of Microsoft’s Power Platform. This integrated suite of tools includes SharePoint, Teams, Power Apps, and Power Automate, which collectively empower organizations to build custom solutions and automate business processes.

Essentially, a Power Platform COE serves as a centralized hub of expertise, guidance, and resources for organizations seeking to drive digital transformation, improve productivity, and accelerate innovation. It brings together a team of specialists who are well-versed in the Power Platform suite and can provide the necessary support to maximize its benefits.

The primary goal of a Power Platform COE is to establish best practices, governance, and standards to ensure a consistent approach to the development and deployment of applications and automation workflows. As a starter kit, it eliminates redundant efforts, reduces costs, and streamlines the development process, ultimately leading to faster time-to-market for custom solutions.

Furthermore, a Power Platform COE provides training and education programs to empower employees across the organization who are looking at adopting a Power Platform strategy. Through workshops, webinars, and documentation, it equips them with the knowledge and skills required to leverage the Power Platform tools effectively. This democratization of technology enables non-technical users to participate in app development and process automation, fostering a culture of innovation and self-sufficiency.

Why do you need a COE overview?

One common issue we come across is the Lone Ranger. Someone in the organisation has created some functions, shared it out with their team and the utilisation has grown. What once was a user led setup has grown to become a critical business process and therefore you need to have a process to ensure it is developed to best practice, can scale and doesn’t present challenges maintaining and supporting the business process going forward. Too often a business doesn’t know how critical the solution was before it was too late, the original maker has left the organisation, no instructions and most commonly all services are tied to the user profile which shuts down.