Centrica drives a new wave of Power Platform innovation with Managed Environments and Copilot Studio

Centrica delivers energy solutions to millions of consumers and businesses across the UK through trusted brands like British Gas, Bord Gáis Energy, and Centrica Business Solutions. Centrica is also the UK’s biggest retailer of zero carbon electricity and has cut emissions by over 70% in the last decade.

As the company moves to a net zero emissions goal, it is driving an equally ambitious digital transformation strategy. This includes a low code development program for hundreds of makers using Power Platform. As James Boswell, Director of Digital Productivity and Innovation at Centrica explains, “The utilities industry is more competitive than ever these days. To stay competitive, we are using tools like Power Platform and Copilot Studio to quickly build internal efficiencies, better serve our customers, and ensure our engineers have access to the best tools for innovation.”

The company has been working with Power Platform since 2018. Early projects included simple but transformative apps. A good example is a tax timetable app developed by the finance team at Centrica. Coordinating tax returns for three different tax regimes had been challenging, especially with much of the process managed over email. The team developed an app which delivers automated reminders, ensuring all returns are filed properly and on time, avoiding fines and risk.

Today, there are over 13,000 active Power Platform users at Centrica. More than 430 makers have developed over 1,100 apps, including advanced, mission critical solutions. “We have really embraced Power Platform at Centrica,” adds Boswell. “Our maker community keeps expanding and the business benefits keep adding up.”  

An innovative Center of Excellence 

To maintain governance of low code projects at scale, Centrica established a Center of Excellence (COE) using the Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit (now part of the Power Platform admin center). Elements of the kit were customized by the team to develop a highly effective ‘Front Door’ system. As soon as a maker begins development of an app or flow, a customized app detects the activity and prompts the maker to register their solution. This includes questions about business objectives, stakeholders, business unit, and estimated number of users. There are also questions to uncover any financial, regulatory and business risks.

The system uses this information to automatically calculate a risk score. If the project is deemed advanced or high risk, the maker gets invited to a review call with the Power Platform leadership team which includes both technical and business stakeholders. The team also checks to see if there is an existing app for a similar use case that could be repurposed.

Once a project is approved, makers are provided with dev-test-prod environments. They also have access to multiple training and support resources, including self-help materials and best practices. For more hands-on support, makers can book time with a member of the COE team. To further drive best practices, makers are equipped with the Power Apps Code Review Tool which reviews apps for efficiency and provides suggestions for improvement. 

Improved governance with Managed Environments 

Up until recently, most makers began their Power Platform development in a default environment. However, as the number of apps accelerated, the company moved makers directly into managed personal productivity environments for better governance and compliance. “With personal productivity environments, we’re able to assign licenses more cleanly, apply policies more consistently, and better monitor who is building and using what,” says Baviya Surendran, Business Systems Administrator at Centrica.

A key part of this new environment strategy are the Managed Environment capabilities in Power Platform. For example, Environment Routing in Managed Environments automatically directs hundreds of new and existing makers from the default environment into their own personal environments. The company also uses Limit Sharing to better control app usage, Environment Groups to simplify policy management, and pipelines in Power Platform to help users move projects across environments.

“Managed Environments have been great at helping us better manage a rapidly growing number of Power Platform makers and applications—even with a small support team,” says Surendran. 

Pushing the boundaries with code apps 

With better governance and application lifecycle management (ALM) through Managed Environments, Centrica moved more confidently to other premium Power Platform features such as Power Apps code apps. With code apps, developers are bringing Power Apps capabilities into custom web apps built in a code‑first Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Code apps are currently being used to update and expand apps like the company’s Flex First application. Employees use the app—which ranks as the highest-used Power Apps application in the company—to book desks and meeting rooms. To add new capabilities, developers at Centrica had initially considered replacing the app with an off-the-shelf solution. A code apps demo changed their mind.

Developers have used code apps to fully customize the Flex App UI with Centrica branding and are adding over 200 other new capabilities. This includes a 3D wayfinding solution that makes it easier to map a path to a newly assigned work area. “Code apps are enabling us to really push the boundaries of what we can create with Power Apps while also maintaining the same guardrails that we’ve built into our managed environments,” says Dale Wakeman, Head of Power Platform at Centrica.

Accelerating AI development with Copilot Studio

Centrica is also leveraging its Power Platform foundation to support innovative AI development. The company started by enabling all employees to build simple AI agents directly inside Microsoft 365 Copilot using Agent Builder. These agents are bringing valuable improvements to everyday business processes. One agent, for example, checks email content to ensure compliance with company policies, saving employees hundreds of hours a year.

For more customized agents, Copilot Studio has also been made available to makers. To maintain careful oversight, agents are built in the same managed production environments as apps and flows, including policies to control sharing and publishing.

Agents in development include multiple RAG agents for faster knowledge retrieval. One such agent delivers career development recommendations aligned to an employee’s role, skills, and career aspirations. The agent draws from self-assessment data completed by employees within a Power Apps application and stored securely in Dataverse. By simply asking questions such as “How can I progress?” or “What skills do I need?”, users receive personalized guidance on roles, capabilities, and training opportunities.

Other projects are set to deliver even more advanced AI capabilities. One such project is a version of Microsoft’s pre-built Employee Self-Service (ESS) Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot for help with HR and IT queries and other company information. The agent is being customized using Copilot Studio and connects to multiple specialized agents. This includes autonomous platform agents like Now Assist for ServiceNow which enables employees to open helpdesk tickets directly from the main ESS agent interface.

Multi-agent orchestration for the ESS system is handled entirely through Copilot Studio. Along with better performance, this multi-agent architecture was set up for easier management. As Wakeman explains, “Each system we connect to with our ESS agent has its own business logic and rules which often change over time. Rather than having to continuously update a single ESS agent, we simply hand off to a system’s platform agent using Copilot Studio and the updates are handled automatically.” 

Measurable results and a strong future 

The success of Power Platform development at Centrica can be measured in real time.

Along with positive feedback from users, all Power Platform solutions at Centrica are tracked through quantifiable business metrics. To do this, the team created a dashboard which linked to their Front Door development process to display and analyze makers specific metrics such as cost savings, productivity gains, and hours saved.

Centrica estimates cost savings of approximately $3.5M, driven by native platform capabilities, including automation, integration, and self-service solution development. In addition, a further $7.6M in estimated savings has been achieved through Power Platform–led application development, reducing reliance on third-party suppliers and accelerating delivery of business-critical solutions. Together, these outcomes highlight the platform’s ability to deliver scalable, cost-effective innovation while enabling teams to build and manage solutions in-house.

Beyond the immediate cost savings, there’s a wave of low code innovation at Centrica that bodes well for the long term. Boswell shares this experience: “The other day I sat across the desk from someone in procurement and they were using Power Apps to automate an invoice approval process. I see pockets of value like this being delivered across the company with Power Platform. With Copilot Studio, employees are set to do the same on the AI front. It’s great to see this kind of grassroots innovation at Centrica.”