Case study
The warehouse teams had built their own automation. They hadn't needed an IT project to do it.
National distribution company
We helped a national distribution company bring the Power Platform automation its operations teams had built under governance, without taking it away from them.
Also delivered as: Value realization.
Warehouse and operations teams had built useful automation themselves: order status trackers, inventory reconciliation flows and EDI exception handling. As adoption grew, so did the governance gaps. Environments had been created around warehouse locations, without a consistent separation between development, test and production. Data policies had not kept pace with the ERP, EDI and integration connectors being used. And apps and flows depended on individual makers, with no consistent team ownership or support model.
What we did
- Mapped more than 50 apps and flows, recording the purpose, owner and dependencies of each.
- Designed an environment structure around lifecycle and support boundaries, with separate development, test and production.
- Defined data policies for the ERP, EDI and integration connectors in use.
- Established team ownership for apps and flows, with a controlled release process for moving changes through development, test and production.
The economics
A fixed advisory fee, agreed in writing before work began. The inventory also identified several apps and flows that duplicated functionality elsewhere. These were marked for consolidation or retirement, reducing the number of automations IT would ultimately need to support. After the advisory engagement ended, the client completed the recommended consolidation and retirement work.
The outcome
The client's IT team applied the design. Operations teams kept building, but their automation now had clear ownership, appropriate controls and a defined path from development into production. Governance was added without turning every operational improvement into an IT project.
What we would recommend
Design environments around lifecycle, data and support boundaries — not simply around the warehouse where an automation originated.
Where operations teams are already building useful automation, don't shut that down. Put the ownership, controls and lifecycle around it so they can keep building within boundaries IT can support.
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