Build fast. Govern well. Scale without the sprawl.
Power Apps. Power Automate. Forms digitisation. Centre of Excellence. Managed services.
Most organisations have some Power Platform in use already. A form here, a flow there, an app someone built to solve a problem. The question isn’t whether to use it — it’s whether you’re using it in a way that scales securely, doesn’t create a governance nightmare, and actually delivers on the promise of low-code productivity.
Years of Microsoft expertise
Projects delivered across Australia
Typical time to first production app
Spectrum — build, govern, manage, optimise
The platform is everywhere. The governance isn’t.
Power Platform is genuinely powerful. When it’s used well, it replaces paper forms in weeks, automates approvals that were taking days, and puts application development within reach of the people who understand the business problem best. We’ve seen it work at scale, across sectors, for organisations with no low-code background at all.
But we’ve also seen what happens when it grows without direction. Apps that work until they don’t, and nobody knows who built them. Flows running on someone’s personal account. Data going to places it shouldn’t. IT teams who can’t tell you what’s running in their tenant, let alone whether any of it is compliant. The platform didn’t cause those problems — the absence of governance did.
The most successful Power Platform programmes we’ve worked on share one thing: someone made a deliberate decision about how the platform would be governed before too many people were already using it in too many different ways.
- Forms that are still printed and emailedPaper-based or PDF processes that shouldn’t exist any more — generating manual re-keying, no audit trail, and errors nobody catches until it’s too late.
- Shadow IT growing uncheckedCitizen developers building apps and flows with no oversight — personal accounts, no DLP policies, sensitive data going places IT never approved.
- No maker community or enablementPeople who could build useful things don’t know how. No training, no standards, no support structure — so the platform is underused by the people who understand the business best.
- No environment strategyEverything built in the default environment. Production, development, and test all mixed together. No application lifecycle management. No approval gates before apps go live.
- Apps built by one person, maintained by nobodyThe person who built the app has left. It’s still running. Nobody knows what it does or whether it’s still doing it correctly.
- Copilot Studio agents with no guardrailsAI agents being built by business users with no review, no testing, and no understanding of what data they’re surfacing, or to whom.
The full Power Platform spectrum, from first app to enterprise governance.
Whether you need a specific workflow built this week, or a governance framework that controls how an entire organisation uses the platform — Antares covers the full range. Most clients start somewhere in the middle and grow in both directions.
Forms digitisation
Replace paper, PDF, and email-based processes with structured digital forms and automated workflows — in weeks, not quarters.
App design and development
Custom Power Apps — canvas and model-driven — built to production quality with proper data architecture, security model, and lifecycle management.
Centre of Excellence
Governance frameworks, DLP policies, environment strategy, and the Microsoft CoE Starter Kit — designed and built for your organisation.
Power Platform as a Service
Ongoing managed service — app support, new development, governance monitoring, and CoE maintenance on a monthly retainer.
Forms digitisation that actually gets finished.
Most forms digitisation projects stall. Not because the technology is hard — Power Apps is genuinely capable — but because the scope expands, stakeholders disagree on the process, and nobody has designed the workflow underneath the form. Antares runs forms digitisation as a structured, time-boxed delivery. Discovery, design, build, test, deploy. First form in production in weeks.
Intake and request forms
IT requests, HR onboarding, procurement approvals, leave applications, access requests. Any process where someone fills in a form and waits for something to happen — digitised, automated, and tracked from submission to completion.
Approval and sign-off workflows
Multi-stage approvals routed to the right people, with escalation logic, conditional branching, and notifications. No more chasing emails to find out where a request is sitting. Full audit trail of who approved what, and when.
Incident and compliance reporting
Incident reports, near-miss forms, compliance declarations, audit checklists. Built with the data fields and mandatory logic required for downstream reporting — not just a tidy form that generates an email.
Staff onboarding and offboarding
Structured onboarding that kicks off automatically on a new starter’s first day — provisioning requests, equipment forms, policy acknowledgements, access approvals — coordinated across IT, HR, and the hiring manager without anyone manually tracking who has done what.
Customer and external-facing forms
Power Pages portals for forms that need to reach people outside your organisation — grant applications, customer requests, supplier onboarding, referrals. Authenticated or anonymous, with the same approval and data capture logic running underneath.
System integration and data routing
Forms that don’t just collect data — they push it somewhere useful. SharePoint, Dataverse, Dynamics 365, HR systems, finance platforms. We connect the form to the downstream system so data flows automatically, with no re-keying and no manual handoffs.
Forms digitisation delivered in weeks, not quarters
Antares runs forms digitisation as a fixed-scope, time-boxed engagement. Discovery and design in week one, build and test in weeks two and three, stakeholder review and production deployment by week four. Scope is agreed up front — no surprises, no creep. If you have twelve forms that need digitising, we scope them as a programme with clear milestones, not an open-ended retainer.
4 weeks
First form live
Low-code doesn’t mean low quality.
There’s a meaningful difference between an app someone built over a weekend and an app built with a proper data model, security design, lifecycle pipeline, and documentation. The first one solves an immediate problem. The second one still works two years later when the person who built it has moved on.
Canvas apps
Canvas apps are built to fit the task — a mobile inspection app for field staff, a booking system for a shared resource, a tracker that shows exactly the information a particular team needs. We design the interface around the user and the process, not around what’s easiest to build.
Model-driven apps
Model-driven apps are built on Dataverse and are the right choice when you need a proper relational data model, business rules that enforce data integrity, complex views and filters, and a system that can grow as your process evolves. Think case management, asset registers, service management systems.
Power Pages portals
External portals for people outside your organisation — customers, suppliers, students, applicants, community members. Power Pages surfaces Dataverse data through a branded, secure web portal with Microsoft Entra ID authentication or anonymous access, depending on what the use case requires.
Power Automate workflows
Approval flows, scheduled automations, event-triggered notifications, cross-system data synchronisation, and robotic process automation using Power Automate Desktop. We design flows with proper error handling, logging, and monitoring — not just the happy path.
A Centre of Excellence built for your organisation, not a template.
A Centre of Excellence isn’t software. It’s a governance capability — a set of rules, roles, processes, and tools that allows an organisation to scale Power Platform safely. Microsoft provides the CoE Starter Kit as a technical foundation. The rest — the environment strategy, DLP policies, review processes, maker community, and organisation-specific guardrails — has to be designed for your context. That’s what Antares builds.
Governance that enables innovation, not one that just prevents it
The most common mistake organisations make with Power Platform governance is treating it as a restriction. Lock it down, approve everything, slow it all to IT’s pace. That kills the value of the platform — the whole point is that business users can build things quickly.
A well-designed CoE lets the people who understand the business problem build solutions quickly, while giving IT the visibility and control they need over data, security, and licensing. It’s a balance — and getting that balance right is what separates a CoE that works from one that nobody follows.
Antares designs CoE frameworks based on your organisation’s current adoption level, your sector’s compliance requirements, and the makeup of your team — not on a vendor template that assumes you’re starting from a blank tenant.
- CoE Starter Kit deployment and configurationMicrosoft’s reference implementation installed, configured, and extended for your governance requirements.
- Environment architecture designDefault, development, test, production, and sandbox environments — with clear rules for what lives where.
- DLP policy frameworkPolicies that block high-risk connector combinations while enabling the legitimate use cases your teams need.
- App and flow review processA structured review and approval process for apps moving to production, with clear criteria and a review turnaround that doesn’t stall delivery.
- Lifecycle pipeline designApplication lifecycle management using Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions, so solutions promote between environments reliably and under version control.
- Tenant health dashboardA Power BI dashboard surfacing inventory, usage, risk flags, and licence consumption across the whole Power Platform estate.
- Maker community programmeTraining curriculum, champion network design, and a support pathway that helps business users build while keeping IT informed.
- Governance documentationPolicies, standards, and operating procedures that make the CoE repeatable and auditable — not something that lives in one person’s head.
We meet you where you are, and take you where you need to be.
Every CoE engagement starts with an assessment of your current adoption maturity. Most organisations land somewhere in the middle — not starting from nothing, but not ready for enterprise-scale governance either. Antares designs the CoE programme to match your starting point, not a generic four-year roadmap.
Assess and baseline
Inventory what exists in your tenant. Identify risk areas — ungoverned connectors, personal accounts, default environment clutter. Establish baseline governance: admin access, basic DLP, environment structure. Weeks, not months.
Design and configure
Deploy the CoE Starter Kit. Design the full environment architecture and DLP policy set. Define the app review process, maker onboarding pathway, and lifecycle patterns. Build the tenant health dashboard.
Enable and grow
Launch the maker community programme. Train champions. Run ideation workshops to surface high-value use cases. Establish the ongoing review cadence. The CoE moves from a project to an operating capability.
Optimise and scale
Continuous improvement — refining policies as the platform evolves, expanding the maker community, adding AI governance for Copilot Studio agents, and tracking value against the original business case.
Power Platform as a Service — your team, on retainer.
Most organisations can’t justify a full-time Power Platform team. But they also can’t afford to let their Power Platform estate sit idle between projects, or go ungoverned once the implementation partner has left. Power Platform as a Service is the middle path — a dedicated team available on a monthly retainer, doing the ongoing work your internal capacity can’t absorb.
Application support
Break-fix support for existing apps and flows — bugs, broken connections, changes to underlying data sources, and user access issues. Managed against a defined service level with clear response time commitments.
New development
Ongoing development of new apps, flows, and forms against a bank of monthly retainer hours. Requirements are triaged, prioritised, and delivered in fortnightly sprints — so your capability grows continuously rather than only after a new project is approved.
Governance uplift
Ongoing CoE maintenance — updating DLP policies as the connector catalogue evolves, reviewing new apps before they go to production, refreshing the tenant health dashboard, and keeping the framework current with Microsoft’s platform updates.
Licence management
Monitoring Power Platform licence consumption, identifying unused assignments, and advising on licensing changes as Microsoft’s model evolves. We make sure your licence position reflects what you’re actually using — avoiding over-spend and under-coverage equally.
Platform health monitoring
Proactive monitoring of the tenant for flows failing silently, apps not being used, DLP violations, and capacity consumption. We surface issues before your users do — and resolve them before they become incidents.
Maker and user enablement
Ongoing training, new maker onboarding, champion support, and a help desk for business users building on the platform. A support pathway that scales citizen development without overwhelming IT.
Monthly retainer. Predictable cost. Dedicated team.
Power Platform as a Service is structured as a monthly retainer with a defined allocation of hours across support, development, and governance. Unused hours roll forward. Engagements are reviewed quarterly — scope can be adjusted up or down as your needs change. No lock-in beyond 90-day notice.
Monthly
Flexible retainer
Discover first, build second.
Whether you’re coming with a specific app in mind or you’re not yet sure where Power Platform fits in your organisation, the starting point is always the same — understand the problem before we commit to the solution.
Discovery workshop
Fixed fee · half a day
A session mapping your highest-value use cases, assessing your current Power Platform environment and governance posture, and producing a prioritised roadmap. Clear deliverables, clear scope.
Design and scope
Fixed before build
Process design, data model, security model, and technical architecture agreed before build begins. You know exactly what you’re getting and when, before a single line of code is written.
Build and test
Structured sprints
Delivered in structured sprints with regular demos. You see working software at every checkpoint — not a big reveal at the end. User acceptance testing is a planned activity, not an afterthought.
Deploy and adopt
Through adoption
Production deployment with user training, champion enablement, and documentation. We stay engaged through the adoption period until your team is genuinely using what was built.
Sector experience that shapes what we build.
The use cases for Power Platform look different in a school than they do in a health service or a professional services firm. Our consultants bring genuine sector experience — which means we understand your compliance context, ask the right questions about data sensitivity, and design solutions that fit how your organisation actually operates.
“Antares are a vendor that don’t ‘sell’ for the sake of selling. They truly want the best outcome for the client and will advise us against decisions that would do more harm than good — regardless of the outcome for themselves.”
Digital Systems and Solutions Lead — Catholic Schools Broken Bay
Where could Power Platform actually add value for you?
Whether you want a specific form digitised, an app built, a Centre of Excellence designed, or just a clear picture of where Power Platform could add value in your organisation — the discovery workshop is the fastest way to get there.
Fixed fee. Half a day. Clear deliverables. A prioritised roadmap for Power Platform in your organisation — with no obligation to proceed further.
Common questions about Power Platform.
Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of four low-code and no-code tools: Power Apps for building applications, Power Automate for workflow and process automation, Power BI for data analytics and reporting, and Copilot Studio for building AI agents and chatbots. Power Platform sits on top of Microsoft Dataverse and integrates natively with Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Teams, Dynamics 365, and hundreds of external systems.
A Power Platform Centre of Excellence (CoE) is the governance, enablement, and oversight function that allows an organisation to scale Power Platform use safely. It defines the rules for how apps and flows are built, who can build them, what environments they live in, how they are reviewed and approved, and how the platform is monitored for security and compliance. A CoE is people, process, and tooling — typically including Microsoft’s CoE Starter Kit, environment strategy, DLP policies, and a maker community programme. Antares designs, builds, and implements CoE frameworks as a standalone engagement or as part of a broader Power Platform programme.
Forms digitisation is the process of replacing paper-based, PDF, or email-driven processes with structured digital workflows. In a Power Platform context, this typically means building Power Apps forms with Power Automate approval and notification workflows behind them — so data is captured consistently, routed automatically, and tracked from submission to completion. Common examples include onboarding forms, leave requests, incident reports, procurement approvals, IT requests, and compliance declarations.
Power Platform as a Service is Antares’s managed service model for ongoing Power Platform support. It provides organisations with access to a dedicated team of Power Platform consultants on a monthly retainer — covering application support, bug fixes, new workflow development, governance uplift, licence management, CoE maintenance, and proactive platform health monitoring. It’s designed for organisations that want the benefits of a Power Platform capability without the overhead of building a full internal team.