Microsoft Power Platform features a collection of business tools that offer organizations the ability to make changes in their daily processes through easy applications and process automation that anyone can develop without having any coding knowledge. Companies can develop low-code/no-code business solutions such as building virtual agents, managing data visualization, and automating business processes. All this can be done with a platform that does not require expert coding knowledge to build the applications.  

The agility and freedom that Microsoft Power Platform brings to citizen developers can present challenges in terms of governance and control. The low code/no-code technology for building applications, which requires minimal knowledge of coding, encourages rapid adoption which means that it is difficult for companies to monitor data, ensure compliance, and tackle security risks.  

The Power Platform Center of Excellence serves as a powerful guide for businesses who wish to empower their citizen developers while making sure that the right governance models are being adhered to.  

What is a Power Platform Center of Excellence?

Power Platform Center of Excellence (CoE) brings a centralized function that drives improvement and innovation across an organization. It is a platform where professionals from different departments aiming collective progression can break down silos and align organizational goals.  

In a business organization, CoE becomes a platform where like-minded people finding solutions to similar issues can share knowledge and success stories. As all the data is gathered at a single place and reports on their usage can be generated along with the control of granting of access permissions, businesses leaders can maintain standards, ensure consistency, and execute governance throughout the organization.  

To put it simply, when business teams develop applications in silos, a lot of knowledge related to unforeseen issues and their solutions surfaces. If this information is shared with other teams, it can help others in avoiding those issues and roadblocks.  

Power Center of Excellence allows businesses to develop communities where people can all come together and share their experiences to help other citizen developers create no-code apps. It also helps organizations create a library of best practices and compliance standards. Users can further enhance their knowledge by training together in collaborative learning lessons.  

With a success framework, businesses can track progress, direct and indirect impacts, performance, efficiency, utilization of apps, and more. Power Center of Excellence also allows businesses to develop solutions and select connectors using its optimized licensing functionality. The platform further offers governance centers that monitor costs, risks, and real-time solution utilization.

Microsoft Power Platform CoE comes with a starter kit. A starter kit is an application pattern that is integrated with services with the aim of helping people in generating a production-ready asset. It has production-ready templates and assists people in getting started. Microsoft Power Platform CoE starter kit features a collection of tools and components designed to help businesses develop a strategy to adopt low-code/no-code development through Microsoft Power Platform. The primary focus here remains on Power Automate, Power Apps, and Power BI.

Learn more about the Power Center of Excellence through a powerful use case.

What are the benefits of Power Platform Center of Excellence?

Here are some of the highlighting benefits of Power Platform CoE:

• Unified view of all Power Platform components (Power Automate, Power BI, Power Apps, Virtual Agents, etc.) across the organization.   
• Freedom to fully use the available tools in the Power Platform suite.   
• Manageable consistency of app development throughout departments.  

• Comprehensive monitoring of usage across the organization.
• Efficient sharing of knowledge to diminish skill-set silos.   
• Quick, simple, and easy adoption of Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Automate. 

Power Platform CoE role in different business functions

Center of excellence further helps businesses use Power Platform to create meaningful process automations that save time and increase productivity. These automated processes can also improve business efficiency by reducing costs, boosting staff morale, and leaving ample time for growth-oriented tasks. Business functions such as finance, human resources, and supply chain can benefit from CoE as they can use it to streamline workflows through numerous automation opportunities available within the Power Platform.  

Finance

Businesses can Power Platform CoE to accelerate digital transformation across the finance department. Microsoft Power Platform Finance enables business teams to drop the redundancy from daily repetitive tasks. It further allows them to move to value-adding, strategic, and highly streamlined workflows through automated workflows and powerful applications.

HR

Organizations can leverage the compliance and compliance made available by CoE for the ultimate modern employee experience. Microsoft Power Platform HR offers powerful workflows and automations for the human resources department which allows minimization of employee turnover and empowerment of the workforce through a strong and consistent business process.  

Supply Chain

Power Platform CoE can also be used by businesses to build a resilient supply chain and create valuable customer experiences. Businesses can use Power Platform Supply Chain to adopt a workflow-driven approach and automate supply chain functions to reduce error-prone repetitive tasks and ensure streamlined sourcing, planning, manufacturing, warehousing, and delivering processes.  

Power Platform CoE with an official Microsoft partner

Businesses looking to get started with strategizing and developing a Power Platform CoE can get help from an official Microsoft Power Platform partner. Such service providers have the expertise to quickly develop a well-functioning CoE, to manage and monitor all digital activities across their Power Platform estate. Explore more at Microsoft Power Platform | Confiz