Why Your Organization Needs a Center of Excellence for Power Platform
Juan Carlos Santiago
What Happens When There's No Governance
We've worked with companies where Power Platform started as a small initiative. Someone in finance built a Power App, another team automated a process with Power Automate, and before anyone realized it, there were dozens of apps and flows running across the organization with no documentation, no standards, and no one responsible for them.
The result? Duplicated solutions, security gaps, apps that break and no one knows how to fix, and IT teams putting out fires instead of building strategy.
This is exactly the problem a Center of Excellence solves.
What Is a COE and Why Does It Matter
A Center of Excellence for Power Platform is not about creating bureaucracy. It's about having a clear framework so the organization can scale its use of low-code tools without losing control.
A well-implemented COE defines:
- Who can build what and where
- Standards for naming, environments, and connectors
- How apps and flows get reviewed before going to production
- Monitoring of what's running and who's using it
- Training paths so citizen developers actually build things right
Without this, every team does whatever they want. With it, you get consistency, security, and the ability to measure impact.
The Real Cost of Not Having One
Most companies don't realize they need a COE until something goes wrong. A flow that sends client data to the wrong place. An app that stops working and no one knows who built it. A connector that exposes sensitive information.
These are not hypothetical scenarios. We've seen them happen.
The cost of fixing these problems after the fact is always higher than setting up proper governance from the start.
How We Help
We've helped organizations implement their COE from scratch. From defining policies and environments to setting up the CoE Starter Kit from Microsoft and training internal teams to maintain it.
Every company is different, so the approach needs to be tailored. But the core principle is the same: give your organization the structure it needs to innovate safely.
If your company uses Power Platform and doesn't have a COE yet, let's talk