A programme that scales without sprawl.
We set up the operating model, governance, standards and reusable assets that let automation grow from a few bots to a managed estate.
Ten bots is easy. A hundred is not.
Early bots are usually built by a small, motivated team. As demand grows, different groups start building in different ways. Credentials sit in config files. Nobody knows which bots touch the ERP before an upgrade. Licences are bought for peak and sit idle.
A Centre of Excellence gives the programme a spine. It defines who decides what gets built, how it is designed and reviewed, how it is released and who supports it. Done well, it speeds delivery because teams stop reinventing the basics.
Centralised, federated or hybrid, matched to your organisation and maturity.
A single intake and assessment route keeps the pipeline visible and prioritised.
Reusable components for common systems cut build time and defects.
Guardrails let business users automate without creating shadow IT.
The pieces of a working CoE.
Operating model and roles
RACI, team structure and role definitions for CoE lead, solution architect, developers, analysts and support.
01Governance and intake
Idea submission, scoring, approval forums and a pipeline dashboard that sponsors actually review.
02Design and coding standards
Naming conventions, project templates, logging and exception standards, and static analysis rules enforced at review.
03Reusable component library
Tested, versioned components for login, navigation and common transactions in your core applications.
04Credential and access management
Vault integration, least-privilege bot accounts, password rotation and segregation of duties for releases.
05Licence and capacity planning
Utilisation analysis, robot scheduling and licence mix recommendations based on actual run data.
06Assess, design, stand up, hand over.
Assess maturity
We review the current estate, team skills, tooling, release process, incident history and licence use against a maturity model.
Choose the operating model
With leadership we decide where development, support and governance sit, and how business units fund and request work.
Write the playbook
Standards, templates, review checklists, release procedures and support processes are documented and agreed with IT and risk.
Stand up and pilot
The CoE runs its first intake cycle and delivery wave with our people embedded, so the process is tested on live work.
Transfer and coach
We hand over to your CoE team, run code reviews alongside them and step back as their metrics show the model holding.
Governance tooling we put in place.
Pipeline and intake
Quality and release
Security
Insight
What a working CoE typically changes.
Delivery
Templates and reusable components shorten build time for every new bot.
Pipeline
Sponsors see demand, status and realised benefit in one place.
Licence utilisation
Scheduling and pooling put idle robots back to work before new licences are bought.
Run risk
Standard logging, credential handling and reviews reduce production incidents.
Centralised, federated or hybrid: which is right?
Centralised suits early programmes that need control and consistent quality. Federated suits large organisations with strong business-unit IT. Most mature programmes settle on a hybrid, with a central team owning standards, platform and support and business units owning delivery.
How do citizen developers fit in?
We define what they can build, in which environments and with which connectors. On Power Platform that means environment strategy and DLP policies. Anything touching core systems or sensitive data moves to the professional team.
How many people does a CoE need?
It depends on pipeline size. A starting CoE often has a lead, a solution architect, two to four developers, a business analyst and a support engineer. We can provide some of these roles while you hire.
Do you only set up CoEs on one platform?
No. Many organisations run two platforms, for example Power Automate for departmental flows and UiPath or Automation 360 for enterprise bots. We design governance that covers both.
Find your first ten automations in two weeks.
A structured discovery sprint that maps your processes, scores them for automation potential and hands you a prioritised roadmap with effort and payback for each.