Power Platform Center of Excellence (CoE)

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, everyone is continually seeking innovative ways to streamline operations, boost productivity, and gain a competitive edge. Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of tools that offers powerful solutions to meet these demands. To harness the full potential of the Power Platform, Microsoft has come up with a Center of Excellence (CoE). By establishing a Microsoft Power Platform CoE, organizations invest in organic growth while maintaining control and breaking down geographical and organizational barriers.

What is the Power Platform Center of Excellence?

Power Platform Center of Excellence can be a team or group(s) that are responsible for governance, best practices, and strategy for implementing & maintaining Power Platform. It ensures that the Power Platform is used effectively, efficiently, and securely across the organization/tenant.

Core Responsibilities

• Governance
• Training and Support
• Strategic Planning
• Best Practices
• Monitoring and Optimization

Why is it essential?

• Governance and Compliance
• Efficiency and consistency
• User empowerment
• Strategic Alignment
• Cost Control

How to Implement Power Platform CoE?

Refer to Microsoft's guidelines and a step-by-step process for implementing the Center of Excellence.

My Journey with a Power Platform Center of Excellence

Digital Transformation is not just a buzzword; it's the new reality for many businesses in today's modern work environments.

My journey to learn about it began when I realized the need for a more agile and efficient way to handle in-house processes, from reporting to app development. Power Platform is a powerful tool, but great power comes with great responsibility, and that's where I tried to put my hands into the Power Platform Center of Excellence (CoE).

Set up Power Platform CoE

Once you set up Power Platform CoE, we will have a dashboard for many things.

Power Platform Connectors

As we know, connectors perform a vital role in the ecosystem, including Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agent. It will be great if we can access all the connectors from a centralized place.

App Catalog

As per recent release, now we have App Catalog categorization into Managed and Unmanaged apps, but with CoE, we can have more categorizations.

Release Notes

A centralized place to get all release notes.

Learning Paths

To empower best practices, we can get access to up-to-date Learning paths provided by Microsoft.

Power Platform Blogs

For knowledge sharing, and collaboration with experts, we can get access to the Power Platform Blog center.

DLP

For security, compliance, prevention of data loss, risk mitigation, audit, alerts, and reporting, we get centralized access to Data Policies which can be accessed centrally across all environments.

Conclusion

A Center of Excellence (CoE) within an organization serves as a catalyst for innovation and improvement. It brings together like-minded individuals who share common business goals, fostering knowledge sharing and celebrating successes. The CoE aligns teams around business objectives, transcending individual department metrics. It’s a strategic move that empowers business units to digitize and automate processes while ensuring central oversight and governance. The key point is that the CoE isn’t just about tools; it’s about people, communication, and well-defined processes. The Microsoft Power Platform CoE Starter Kit provides a foundation for developing a strategy to adopt and support the Power Platform.

A well-established Center of Excellence has the potential to transform and unlock the full potential of the Power Platform. It ensures that you are using the technology efficiently and securely and fosters a culture of innovation and self-sufficiency. It's not just about technology; it's about people, processes, and a commitment to continuous improvement. With the right team and a well-defined strategy, we can harness the transformative power of the Power Platform and drive any organization toward a more agile and competitive future.