A fractional capability. Fixed monthly fee.
Most mid-market organisations and not-for-profits carry the same backlog. Paper forms that should be digital. Approval chains running through email. Spreadsheets passed around by hand. You don’t have enough sustained work to justify hiring a full-time Power Platform developer — and one-off projects rarely finish the job. This is the model that solves that.
Building inside Australian mid-market and not-for-profit organisations
Why the backlog never clears
Every IT manager and operations lead we speak to has the same list. Forms that should be apps. Approvals that should be flows. Spreadsheets that should be agents. The case for digitising is settled — it’s the path to getting it done that keeps stalling. Here’s where most organisations get stuck.
A senior Power Platform developer in Sydney costs $140,000 to $180,000 base, plus on-costs and recruitment time. Most mid-market and not-for-profit teams don’t have enough sustained work to justify that. So the role doesn’t get approved, and the backlog stays.
Project engagements always cost more and deliver less than they should. The team that starts the work doesn’t know your environment. By the time they do, the scope is closed and the next process on the list is still on paper. You end up doing the same procurement and onboarding again three months later.
Onboarding forms. Expense claims. Incident reports. Permission slips. Maintenance requests. Most organisations have dozens of these. Each one represents minutes of manual handling, rework when fields are missed, and a compliance gap when records are lost. They’ve been on the to-do list for years.
Email is where approvals go to die. Someone’s on leave. The thread forks. Decisions get made verbally and never recorded. When the auditor or board asks who approved what and when, the answer is a folder of forwarded messages — if it can be found at all.
Spreadsheets are great for analysis and terrible for process. The “tracker” no-one can find. The “master version” that exists in seven copies. The single point of failure when the person who built it leaves. Most of these should be a Power App with a SharePoint list behind it — and they would be, if anyone had the capacity to build them.
Your one or two internal IT people are running help desk, infrastructure, security, vendor management and the next strategic initiative. They have a backlog of automation requests they can’t get to and they’re tired of saying “next quarter.” This is exactly the kind of work you’d hand off if there was a sensible way to do it.
How the service works
We front-load delivery effort in the first 60 days. You typically get up to 10 forms digitised, initial Power Automate flows live, and your first Copilot Studio agent in production — alongside service onboarding and an established backlog for the months ahead.
Paper, PDF and email-form processes converted into native Power Apps with SharePoint or Dataverse behind them. Mobile-friendly, role-aware, and integrated with your Microsoft 365 environment from day one.
Approval chains, notifications, scheduled tasks and cross-system integrations. We replace the email-and-spreadsheet workarounds with proper flows — logged, auditable, and visible in the same place every time.
Purpose-built AI agents that handle repetitive enquiries, draft responses, and surface information from your SharePoint and data sources. Configured to your tone, your data, and your access controls — sitting where staff already work.
You always know where the hours went, what shipped, and what’s coming next. Every month we deliver a status report, an updated backlog, and a roadmap conversation with the people you’ve nominated as service owners.
If the workload picks up in a given month — an audit deadline, a sector reporting cycle, a board request — top-up hours are available at the standard retainer rate. No new contract, no procurement loop. Just more capacity in the same engagement.
Pick the right size for your backlog
Most organisations land at Standard. Small not-for-profits often start at Essentials and step up. Larger and more complex environments — multiple business units, regulated data, or a heavy first-year build — typically start at Advanced. All tiers are 24-month engagements with the same pre-loaded fast start.
Small not-for-profits and single-team automation. One business unit, a clear list of priority processes.
Mid-market organisations and larger not-for-profits with multi-team digitisation. The tier most clients settle into.
Larger organisations, regulated environments, or a heavy first-year build programme. Dedicated technical lead.
How a typical engagement unfolds
The model is built around two phases. The first two months are concentrated: more people, more hours, fast wins on the board. From month three, the team you’ve already worked with settles into a monthly cadence — same faces, same backlog, getting faster each month because they know your environment.
A 20-minute conversation to understand your environment, your backlog, and whether the model is the right fit. Followed by a 45-minute working session with your IT lead to confirm the first two months’ priority list. No proposal until we both know it makes sense.
Concentrated delivery effort. Service onboarding, ways-of-working established, up to 10 priority forms digitised, initial Power Automate flows live, and the first Copilot Studio agent in production. By the end of month two, the backlog for the steady-state phase is shaped and visible.
A predictable monthly rhythm. The team you’ve already worked with picks the next items off the backlog, builds them, ships them, and reports back. The longer they’re in your environment, the faster they get — because the platform, the patterns and the people are already known.
A quarterly conversation with your service owner about what’s shipped, what’s coming, and what’s changed in your environment. A chance to re-prioritise the backlog, adjust the tier if needed, and bring new ideas from the Microsoft roadmap into the conversation.
Three ways teams try to solve this
A fractional managed service isn’t the right answer for every organisation. It’s worth being honest about the alternatives. Here’s how the three most common approaches compare on the things that actually matter once the contract is signed.
| Hire a developer | Project engagements | Rapid Forms managed service | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | $170k+ salary plus on-costs and recruitment | Variable — usually higher per outcome | From under $47k a year, fixed and predictable |
| Time to first delivery | 3–6 months including recruitment and ramp | Per-project SOW cycle — weeks of paperwork before work starts | Weeks — fast-start delivery in months 1 & 2 |
| Continuity across processes | Strong while they’re employed | Each project a fresh team; knowledge resets | Same team across 24 months; environment knowledge compounds |
| Risk of key-person loss | High — institutional knowledge leaves when they do | Moderate — consultants rotate between engagements | Held by the practice, not one individual |
| Utilisation risk | High — backlog spikes and dips; resource doesn’t | Variable — pay for scope, not outcomes | Fractional by design; scale tier up or down |
| Commercial flexibility | Hard to scale down without redundancy cost | Per-project negotiation each time | Tier review at 12 months; top-ups in-flight |
| Sector experience built in | Whatever the individual brings | Whatever the consultancy specialises in | NFP, education, mid-market patterns reused across clients |
| When to use it | Sustained 0.8–1.0 FTE workload, long-term internal IP build | Discrete, well-bounded transformation with a clear end | Ongoing backlog of varied small-to-medium automations across the organisation |
If your situation is a one-off platform build, a hire is right, or your backlog is genuinely tiny — we’ll tell you. The Discovery conversation is structured to figure this out before any agreement is on the table.
The Antares team weren’t afraid to pull their sleeves up. We genuinely worked together to achieve a great result, and I hope that we may work together again in the future.
Shyam · NSW Department of Justice
Why teams stay
The decision to commit to 24 months is one most organisations don’t take lightly. Here’s what tends to make the difference once the conversation gets serious.
The hours you buy are delivered by senior Power Platform and Copilot Studio consultants. You’re not paying for someone to learn on your environment. Antares carries Microsoft Advanced Specialisations in Copilot, AI on Azure and Modern Work — three of the harder credentials to earn.
In month two, the team is still learning your SharePoint, your data, your naming conventions, your governance. By month eight, they know all of it. The same hour delivered in month two and month eight produces different amounts of output — and that compounding is the reason this model beats project engagements over time.
If a process needs redesign before it can be automated, we say so. If a candidate piece of work belongs as a project rather than inside the retainer, we say that too. The Discovery conversation is structured to figure that out before any commitment is on the table — not after.
No job ad. No agency fees. No three-month notice period. No risk of the wrong hire. The capability turns on with a signed agreement and stays on as long as the engagement runs. If the role does eventually need to be in-house, we’ll help you transition the knowledge across.
If you have Microsoft 365 E3 or E5, Business Premium with Power Platform plans, or a similar configuration — you’ve already paid for the platform. The service uses what you have. No new vendor stack, no platform fees, no licensing surprises buried in the proposal.
Mission Australia. Anglicare Victoria. Catholic Schools Broken Bay. Haileybury College. Newington College. CQUniversity. NSW Department of Justice. The patterns we build for one client often translate to the next — and the reference conversations are easy to arrange.
Start with a 20-minute intro. We’ll spend the time understanding your environment and the work that’s stuck. If the model fits, we’ll show you what the first two months would look like. If it doesn’t, we’ll tell you and point you somewhere that does. Either way, you’ll leave the call with a clearer picture than you walked in with.
No obligation. No long-form proposal. A working conversation about whether the model fits your situation.Frequently asked questions
A Power Platform managed service is an ongoing engagement where a specialist partner provides a defined number of consultant hours each month to build forms, automated workflows and AI agents on Microsoft Power Platform. Instead of hiring a full-time developer or running a series of one-off projects, you commit to a monthly retainer and the team works through your backlog continuously. The Rapid Forms service covers Power Apps, Power Automate, SharePoint forms digitisation, and Copilot Studio agent configuration — with a monthly status report and a backlog you can see at all times.
A senior Power Platform developer in Australia typically costs $140,000 to $180,000 base salary plus on-costs and recruitment time. Most mid-market organisations and not-for-profits don’t have enough sustained workload to keep one fully utilised — and when they leave, the institutional knowledge leaves with them. The managed service gives you the same skill set for a fraction of the cost (from $3,900 a month) with continuity held by the practice rather than one individual. If you decide later that hiring makes more sense, we’ll help you transition the knowledge across — we’ve done it before.
Months 1 and 2 are pre-loaded with concentrated effort — more people, more hours, fast wins on the board. The 24-month term lets us amortise that upfront delivery effort across a sensible period and gives both sides predictability. It’s also when the model starts paying back compounding returns: by month eight the team knows your environment well enough that each build is faster than the last. Shorter terms occasionally make sense for specific situations — talk to us about it.
Top-up hours are available at the standard retainer rate when the workload spikes — an audit deadline, a sector reporting cycle, a board request. They’re not banked: use them in the month or lose them, with a one-month roll-forward by exception. If your needs have changed materially by month 12, the tier itself can be reviewed. Most organisations settle into a predictable rhythm by month three or four.
Yes. Registered charities and not-for-profit organisations receive a published discount across all three tiers. The discount is applied automatically — you don’t need to negotiate for it. Antares has been working with the not-for-profit sector for many years and the discount reflects that ongoing commitment to the sector rather than a one-time concession.
The service is built for the operational backlog most mid-market and not-for-profit organisations carry — paper or PDF forms that should be digital, approval chains running through email, spreadsheets used for tracking that should be in a proper system, and repetitive administrative work that an AI agent could handle. The natural fit is small-to-medium pieces of work that add up over time. Complex platform builds, data warehouse work, full ERP integrations and large SharePoint migrations sit outside the retainer and would be scoped as separate projects — we’ll tell you when that’s the case.
Yes. The service is designed to work with the Power Platform licensing you already have — typically Microsoft 365 E3 or E5, Business Premium with Power Platform per-user or per-app plans, or a similar configuration. We’ll assess your existing licensing position in the first two weeks and flag any gaps before any build work starts. If your licensing isn’t quite right for the use cases you have in mind, we’ll tell you what would need to change — and what wouldn’t.
You do. Everything we build for you inside your tenancy — apps, flows, agents, supporting configuration — is your IP. The standard MSA includes a Delivered IP clause that makes this explicit. The only exception is general-purpose tooling, accelerators and frameworks we bring with us — those remain Antares IP, but you have the right to keep using anything built using them inside your environment.
A senior practitioner who knows your environment. On Standard, you have a named Technical Lead. On Advanced, that lead is dedicated and architectural governance is included. Across all tiers, the people you meet in week one are the people you’ll still be working with in month 12 — that continuity is the whole point of the model.
