The ARBENTIA consultancy stresses the need for organizations of various sizes and sectors to evolve their IT governance models in light of the rapid rise of apps and automations created with low-code and AI by their employees.
The interest of many employees in creating apps tailored to specific needs has become evident with the surge of low-code development. These capabilities have been key for the so-called business-area makers to generate automations and address needs quickly without relying on the overburdened IT teams. Examples include apps for expense management, multiple administrative automations, departmental dashboards, and a long etc.
With the advancement of AI, this phenomenon is gaining a new dimension, putting at the service of internal “makers” much more powerful capabilities to design automations, generate code, build conversational assistants, or accelerate analysis and decision-making processes.
The new business landscape
A new scenario is emerging that incentivizes innovation and boosts individual productivity in organizations, but it also hides risks. And without proper oversight, this autonomy in app creation can lead to duplications, loss of traceability, exposure of sensitive information, unauthorized connections between corporate systems or dependence on solutions that are difficult to maintain.
An example of this would be Shadow AI or the use of AI tools without approval, visibility, or control by IT teams or the organization’s compliance teams, whose rise is warned about by several international studies.
“Prohibiting productivity apps created by employees is not realistic. It would be like trying to put gates on the field. The key to generating value and avoiding risks is to enable responsible use, identifying and monitoring developments, controlling connectors, roles, and data, establishing governed and secure environments, etc. In short, evolving the organization’s IT governance framework to adapt it to a new reality that has come to stay,” explain ARBENTIA.
Turning autonomous innovation into a governed ecosystem
To meet this challenge, ARBENTIA has strengthened its services for creating and deploying Centers of Excellence for app governance created with the low-code/no-code Microsoft Power Platform and extended its reach to the new AI-driven innovation scenarios.
These Centers of Excellence give companies a centralized view of the apps, flows, automations, and solutions created by employees; establish security and governance policies; define approval workflows; classify solutions by their criticality; control connectors and data access; and foster best practices between business and technology teams.
And indeed, although Microsoft Power Platform already offers reference capabilities and tools to drive these governance models within its Power Platform, effective implementation in organizations requires strategy, technical know-how, change-management capabilities, and a clear view of the operating model for each organization.
“The arrival of AI does not reduce the importance of Centers of Excellence; it amplifies it. If previously these centers were necessary to organize and boost low-code development in organizations within a safe framework, now they are even more essential to channel this new wave of productivity based on apps, automations, and intelligent agents,” conclude ARBENTIA.
