Introduction
Modern technology stacks are complex and sprawling, to the point where choosing the right operating model for integration and automation across teams makes or breaks your strategic IT initiatives and line of business efficacy. Many enterprises adopt a Center of Excellence (CoE) approach to designing, deploying, and operating automations to address this. Below, we’ll dive into what a CoE is and how leading companies like Asana and DataStax have implemented thriving CoEs with Workato.
What is a Center of Excellence?
A center of excellence (CoE) consists of a small group of individuals who institute security and governance controls and provide enablement resources and activities on behalf of colleagues involved in building automations. Unlike less structured models, a CoE provides centralized governance to ensure security and compliance across the organization, driven by experts who offer technical expertise, support, and training to other teams. A CoE gives you the best of both worlds: centralizing governance while decentralizing execution so different teams can implement and manage their own automations.
Tips for Implementing a CoE
With a strong Center of Excellence, enterprises can begin to tackle automation challenges at scale. However, establishing and maintaining a CoE is not a one-size-fits-all process — it requires careful planning and real-world tested best practices to succeed. Here are some tips you should keep in mind.
Administer the right amount of access. Contrary to popular belief, CoEs are not meant to be controlling and bureaucratic — they’re designed to give teams as much freedom as possible without compromising governance. Keeping this in mind, it is crucial to configure access based on role. For example, some users may require view-only access, while others need the ability to test and push solutions. Allen Armas, Tools and Integration Engineer at Asana and one of the two CoE owners, states, “We arm other teams to build while maintaining security and policies.” In that way, Allen’s CoE practice maintains security without curbing innovation.
Use a proven training path — the “Capability Ladder.” When opening up automation responsibilities to the larger company, including employees with non-technical backgrounds, it is essential to provide the proper educational training. Workato provides a structured learning pathway designed to help learners progress through different levels of expertise in using Workato for automation — the Automation Pro series.
Composed of three online courses, the Automation Pro series covers everything from creating recipes to batch processing and database integration, increasing in complexity the further you go. This is the capability ladder — as learners complete each course, they gain more advanced skills and capabilities, allowing them to handle increasingly complex automation tasks.
Engage in backlog prioritization. With the wide range of business and technical problems that can be solved through automation, choosing the right project to build out can occasionally be overwhelming. Protik Ganguly, an Integration Architect at Asana, recommends looking at executive sponsorship, revenue impact, and the estimated hours it will save as key factors when making a decision.
Follow through with best practices in error handling. The first best practice is the use of self-healing automations. These automations are designed to retry or reprocess failed events intelligently without manual intervention. Arlen Thurber, IT Innovation Architect at DataStax, uses short “retry windows” so that if an event fails due to a transient issue—like a temporary API outage—Workato automatically reprocesses it, drastically reducing repetitive error-resolution work. However, he stresses that persistent errors must be “noisy” enough to get immediate attention so real operational issues don’t go unnoticed. The key is distinguishing transient glitches from mission-critical failures: if a workflow truly breaks, it should trigger high-priority alerts via Slack or email that teams can’t ignore. At Asana, these alerts feed into dedicated Slack channels, and logs go into Splunk, providing real-time visibility and a long-term record for pinpointing root causes.
Meanwhile, Workato’s event streams capture every step in a recipe, aided by clearly defined event IDs, making it easier to troubleshoot and continuously improve. Thurber’s automations even query historical data to check for duplicates or recurring errors, ensuring faster triage and fewer blind spots.
Drive Business Impact with a CoE
At DataStax, the CoE has been essential in driving automation initiatives across the company. A noteworthy example is their “Today I Learned” (TIL) application, designed to capture and share insightful moments or lessons from customer interactions. It was designed using a combination of Workato, Slack, Big Query, and other third-party tools. SlackBot is the data input interface and supports customer lookup functionality to associate with the correct Salesforce account or opportunity. The TIL notes are then disseminated across several platforms to drive awareness and strategy. The scale of this initiative cannot be understated, as DataStax has collected over 12,000 entries over 5 years, continuing to provide valuable insights into their customer interactions.
Beyond the TIL application, the DataStax CoE has also:
- Helped HR sunset a superfluous ticketing system and save on significant costs by orchestrating the archival of over 30,000 historical tickets with a more cost-effective solution.
- Automated the Finance team’s unique revenue recognition processes for subscription- and consumption-based products.
- Extended revenue recognition integrations will assist engineering in automating customer-facing communications triggered by credit consumption, encouraging proactive renewals.
By centralizing governance while decentralizing execution, DataStax’s CoE ensures security and compliance while enabling its IT team to deliver projects across the organization. This results in significant cost savings and efficient growth.
AI Acceleration
Many organizations are now looking to artificial intelligence to amplify the impact of their automation initiatives. Arlen points to the Workato copilot as a powerful accelerator for custom integrations, noting that “Custom builds with Open APIs and/or Workato’s SDK are faster than ever with copilot.” By leveraging AI-assisted development, CoEs can stand up complex integrations more quickly and with less room for error, enabling teams to scale faster.
AI has also become a critical tool for generating revenue-impacting use cases at Asana. Protik explains how they’re tapping into AI-driven insights to support sales teams: “Some of the use cases make money, and that’s how you prioritize. For example, we’re using AI to analyze call data, prepare for the next calls, and pull insights from our CRM so sales reps know the best way to tackle each opportunity.” By integrating these AI capabilities into its broader automation framework, Asana is driving efficiency and actively contributing to top-line growth. Using AI to streamline development and inform business decisions, this dual approach illustrates how a well-structured CoE can harness cutting-edge technologies for real, measurable impact. By defining AI-related governance and best practices, offering training on new toolsets like Workato copilot, and coordinating cross-team collaboration, a CoE ensures that AI adoption remains secure and business-aligned.
Continue Your Journey
Innovators like Allen, Protik, and Arlen show how effective a well-structured Center of Excellence can be, from governance to prioritization. Their efforts upskill the company, unlocking powerful efficiencies and massive, sustainable growth. Join the many companies that scale integration, automation, and AI with Workato.
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