Solutions
Build an
Automation Platform
Operaton is a community-driven, free, and open-source engine capable of executing BPMN, DMN and CMMN
To achieve true digital transformation, isolated automation projects are not enough. You need a unified strategy that scales across your entire organization. Building a central automation platform moves you from scattered, tactical wins to a strategic, enterprise-wide capability. It becomes the engine that drives operational excellence, accelerates innovation, and delivers a superior customer experience.
An automation platform is a central foundation that provides the tools, governance, and expertise necessary for teams across your business to automate their own processes. This guide outlines how to successfully implement a platform strategy and scale it to foster a true culture of automation.
How Do I Implement a Platform Strategy in My Organization?
Implementing a successful platform strategy is about creating a system of enablement, not a system of control. The goal is to empower your teams to innovate safely and quickly. This is achieved by establishing a central team with a clear mission, often called a Center of Excellence (CoE) or Platform Team.
The role of the CoE is not to build every automation solution itself, which would create a bottleneck. Instead, the CoE acts as a strategic enabler with three core responsibilities:
- Provide the Core Platform: The CoE selects, builds, and maintains the central automation infrastructure. This includes the process engine, modeling tools, and a library of reusable components like connectors and pre-built process templates.
- Establish Clear Governance: The CoE defines the “rules of the road.” This includes setting best practices for development, security standards, and guidelines for deployment. This governance ensures that while teams have autonomy, all solutions are secure, compliant, and high-quality.
- Empower Federated Development: This is the most critical step. The CoE empowers distributed “domain teams”—the business units and IT teams who are closest to the actual business problems—to build their own automation solutions on the provided platform. The CoE provides them with the tools, training, and expert support they need to be successful.
This model strikes the perfect balance between centralized control and decentralized innovation, allowing you to move fast without breaking things.
How Do I Scale the Platform?
Adopting process orchestration delivers transformative value across your organization. While the benefits are numerous, they can be distilled into three major advantages that drive efficiency, agility, and growth.
Once your platform strategy is in place and the first teams are successfully building automation solutions, the next challenge is to scale this success across the entire enterprise. Scaling is less about technology and more about people and knowledge.
The key to scaling is to evolve your Center of Excellence into a vibrant Community of Practice (CoP). A CoP is a network of practitioners from across the organization who share a common interest in automation. Its purpose is to break down silos and accelerate learning through collaboration.
Here’s how you foster and scale your platform through a Community of Practice:
- Promote Knowledge Sharing: Create forums for your community to connect. This can include regular meetups, dedicated chat channels, internal wikis, and “lunch and learn” sessions. Encourage teams to share their successes, their challenges, and their solutions.
- Build a Reusable Asset Library: The CoE should maintain a central, easy-to-access repository of reusable assets created by the community. When one team builds a connector for Salesforce, it should be available for every other team to use. This reuse of components drastically accelerates development time and reduces redundant work.
- Measure and Publicize Success: To get buy-in for further expansion, you need to demonstrate value. Work with your teams to measure the impact of their automation projects—whether it’s cost savings, faster processing times, or improved customer satisfaction. Publicize these wins across the organization to build momentum and inspire other teams to get involved.
By fostering a thriving Community of Practice, you create a self-sustaining cycle of innovation where knowledge is shared, assets are reused, and the value of your automation platform grows exponentially.
