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4 min read

Building an Automation Center of Excellence with Microsoft Power Platform

Building an Automation Center of Excellence with Microsoft Power Platform

Earlier this year we launched HEAT (Holistic Enterprise Automation Techniques), sharing our learnings from customers building robust automation solutions on Power Automate.

Today, we are pleased to announce an Automation CoE Blueprint which customers can use to setup an automation program (RPA and other hyperautomation scenarios) in their organization and a limited private preview of Automation CoE Starter Kit, which is an implementation of our best practices (HEAT) that can be customized by organizations for their own needs.

We are also very excited to announce a new guidance section in the Microsoft Power Platform guidance documentation for Automation Adoption best practices (https://aka.ms/autocoeblueprint). Automation CoE members, RPA developers, Cloud architects, IT professionals, and business decision makers use this information to achieve their automation adoption goals.

Releasing all this great content, without recording an episode on our video channel Automate It, would be a miss on our part.  Check out the following episode https://aka.ms/autocoeblueprintvideo where we go into more details on the Automation CoE Blueprint and the Automation CoE Starter Kit.

We are always looking for opportunities to learn from our customers and would love to hear your feedback around the Automation CoE Blueprint and work with you closely as you roll out the automation program in your organization. You can learn more about the Automation Adoption best practices (https://aka.ms/autocoeblueprint ), watch the video (https://aka.ms/autocoeblueprintvideo) and signup to request access to the limited private preview of Automation CoE Starter Kit (https://aka.ms/autocoestarterkitpreview)

Highlights from the Automation CoE Blueprint

New Automation Adoption guidance section on Power Platform Guidance documentation

Microsoft Power Platform adoption best practices for Automation CoEs provides proven guidance for establishing and scaling an Automation Center of Excellence in your organization. It consists of best practices, documentation, and tools.

By using these best practices, organizations can better align their business and technical strategies to ensure success. Automation CoE members, RPA developers, Cloud architects, IT professionals, and business decision makers use this information to achieve their automation adoption goals.

Strategy

Before you scale out an automation program in an organization, it is very important to understand the role of an Automation CoE, key stakeholders in the automation program and define the ROI from the automation program. Learn more in the Automation adoption guidance center https://aka.ms/autocoeblueprint.

Methodology – HEAT

HEAT (Holistic Enterprise Automation Techniques) is guidance that’s designed to help you deploy the automation platform and manage the entire lifecycle of an automation project. These are our learnings from customers and include industry’s best practices around enterprise deployments for hyperautomation scenarios. Learn more in the Automation adoption guidance center https://aka.ms/autocoeblueprint.

The figure below shows an iterative approach to HEAT.

The figure below shows details of the activities in each stage of HEAT

Automation Admin & Governance Whitepaper

We have condensed our learnings from HEAT into an automation admin & governance whitepaper. This whitepaper outlines key considerations for planning, deploying, and managing an Automation Center of Excellence (CoE) for hyperautomation scenarios in Power Automate.

Following are some of the key benefits of the whitepaper

  • Best practices for Automation CoEs for enterprise deployments
  • End-to-end automation lifecycle
  • Easy to follow check list model pointing to external deep-dive content
  • Based on industry’s best practices – HEAT

Get your copy of the whitepaper today (https://aka.ms/autocoeadminwhitepaper)

Automation CoE Starter Kit (Limited Private Preview)

The Microsoft Power Platform Automation CoE Starter Kit is designed to help organizations manage, govern, and scale automation platform adoption based on industry best practices. The toolkit is a collection of components and tools based on HEAT.

The Automation CoE Starter Kit is built on providing a near-real time value tracking system which allows Automation CoE stakeholders to track business ROI as well monitor, detect, audit SLA impacting events as they happen.

The Automation CoE Starter Kit is a long-term investment and today we are pleased to announce our first step towards a limited private preview to work closely with customers, learn and improve the product. Please signup to request access to the limited private preview of Automation CoE Starter Kit (https://aka.ms/autocoestarterkitpreview)

We would also like to thank the KMicro team (Josh Cook, Davood Ghatreh Samani, Cory Phillips) for their collaboration on Automation CoE Starter Kit.

Call to action

  1. Learn more at Automation Adoption best practices (https://aka.ms/autocoeblueprint)
  2. Watch the video: Building an Automation Center of Excellence with Microsoft Power Platform (https://aka.ms/autocoeblueprintvideo)
  3. Signup to request access to the limited private preview of Automation CoE Starter Kit (https://aka.ms/autocoestarterkitpreview)

Start rolling out an automation program today!

  • Automation CoE Blueprint https://aka.ms/autocoeblueprint
Kent Weare