The Power Platform is like Santa’s workshop for innovation - anyone can automate, build and create. That’s its superpower…and often its challenge. Without structure, you’ll soon find duplicate apps under the tree, broken flows like tangled fairy lights, unmanaged connectors and brilliant ideas that never make it past one team.
A Centre of Excellence (CoE) isn’t about playing Scrooge. It’s about creating the perfect balance of freedom and governance so innovation can flow and shine safely.
The Four Pillars of a CoE - Your Festive Framework
1. Governance: The Sleigh’s Steering
Governance sets the guardrails so makers can dash through the snow without putting data at risk. It doesn’t mean saying “no”, it means saying “yes, safely.”
Start with an environment strategy aligned to risk and data sensitivity, separating playful experimentation from production and high-sensitivity workloads.
Define Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies and connector governance to control where data can flow and which services are permitted.
Establish application lifecycle management (ALM) and solution standards so builds are versioned, tested, and promoted consistently.
Clarify roles, approvals and lifecycle processes (like Santa’s naughty-or-nice list!) so accountability is clear at every step.
Finally, implement risk monitoring with clear escalation paths to detect issues early and resolve them quickly.
2. Enablement: Elves in Action
A strong CoE teaches your people how to build; it doesn’t build every app. It offers structured training pathways for both new and advanced makers, supported by office hours, coaching and a mentored first build to boost confidence quickly. To accelerate quality delivery, the CoE curates reusable components, accelerators and reference patterns - think of them as ready-made gifts - alongside templates, documentation and clear “how we build here” guidance.
All of this is underpinned by a straightforward support model with defined routes to expert help when makers hit blockers.
3. Community: The Festive Gathering
Innovation is a team sport, and a CoE is the cozy fireplace where makers connect, learn and get inspired. In practice, it runs a steady cadence of internal hackathons, town halls and show-and-tells to spark ideas and share techniques. It nurtures a champions network with recognition programs that spotlight great builds and the people behind them. It leans into storytelling, capturing and sharing wins, lessons learned, and reusable solutions so knowledge spreads and standards rise. And it keeps simple, always-on channels for Q&A and peer support, giving makers a place to ask, answer and collaborate in the flow of work.
4. Insights and Improvement: Checking the List Twice
A CoE turns raw usage into intelligence about innovation itself. It maintains a live inventory and analytics across apps, flows and copilots, and publishes adoption dashboards that surface risk signals while tracking value, such as hours saved.
Automated health checks and lifecycle alerts cover ownership, activity and connector usage, and the insights they generate feed a structured continuous improvement backlog with recurring reviews - keeping quality and impact rising like holiday cheer.
CoE in Practice: The Bow on Top
Create a catalogue of approved components, backed by templates and best practices and wrap it with clear onboarding and lifecycle processes. Keep a tight feedback loop between IT and business teams so the library evolves with real needs.
The result? Faster innovation, fewer headaches and a platform that scales responsibly.
How Robiquity Helps
A great CoE doesn’t slow people down - it amplifies them and makes them shine. It turns a handful of enthusiastic makers (or should we say Elves!) into a movement of empowered problem solvers who build smarter, safer and more sustainably.
At Robiquity, we help organisations establish and scale Power Platform Centres of Excellence - blending governance, enablement and AI-powered automation to unlock innovation safely. From environment and DLP strategy to ALM pipelines, reusable accelerators, training and analytics dashboards, we focus on measurable outcomes and adoption that lasts.
Ready to build your CoE? Let’s talk and make this season the start of something magical!
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