Getting Started:

The Process Automation

Center of Excellence (CoE)
Handbook

January 2023 camunda.com

2 Contents

Contents

What is a process automation CoE?������������������������������������������� 3

Why is a process automation CoE important?���������������������������� 3

Getting started with a CoE�������������������������������������������������������� 5

Structuring your CoE�����������������������������������������������������������������������6

Real-world CoEs in action: National Bank of Canada���������������������7

The job of a CoE ������������������������������������������������������������������������������8

01. Delivery: Planning and/or execution������������������������������������8
02. Enablement and knowledge-sharing�����������������������������������8
03. Evangelism����������������������������������������������������������������������������9
04. Governance���������������������������������������������������������������������������9

Sharing CoE resources across the organization���������������������������10

Real-world CoEs in action: Desjardins������������������������������������������10

Risks for scaling a CoE������������������������������������������������������������ 10

Measuring success of a CoE���������������������������������������������������� 11

Scale your process automation CoE to your needs������������������� 12

camunda.com

3 What is a process automation CoE?
What is a process automation
CoE?
Process automation continues to gain
momentum across all industries. According
to the 2022 State of Process Automation
report, 82% of IT leaders believe that process
automation is a greater priority for their
organization than last year. And, a massive 92%
of IT leaders describe automation as vital to
their digital transformation. Many organizations
choose to adopt a Center of Excellence (CoE)
model to manage their process automation
efforts. In fact, 76% of organizations either
already have a CoE in place, or are actively
working on it.
A process automation Center of Excellence
(CoE) is a team that spans IT, development,
and business stakeholders. Their job, at a high
level, is to accelerate the adoption of process
automation and process orchestration across
the whole enterprise.
For some organizations, the term CoE may not
be well-received. The terminology itself carries
some legacy baggage from centralized Business
Process Management (BPM) software. Some
relied on a centralized approach for their CoE,
relying on one team to implement process
automation for the entire organization. That
approach often led to bottlenecks for both
developers and line of business leaders, giving
the CoE a bad reputation with few demonstrable
results.
For those reasons, it may make sense to
“rebrand” the CoE as an automation or
orchestration team, or at least be mindful
of a CoE’s perception. Regardless of the
name you use, a CoE model can accelerate
process automation, if done correctly for your
organization. The guide below will describe how
to customize your CoE to enable and empower
teams, rather than cause more bottlenecks.
camunda.com

What is process
orchestration?
Process automation and orchestration
are closely related. Process
orchestration coordinates the various
moving parts (or endpoints) of a
business process, and sometimes
even ties multiple processes together.
Process orchestration helps you work
with the people, systems, and devices
you already have – while achieving even
the most ambitious goals around end-
to-end process automation.
Why is a process automation
CoE important?
One of the most important roles of a CoE is
to establish a process mindset across your
company. Industry leaders like Amazon think
in processes. They use them to solve business
problems, such as creating a better customer
experience (CX) or improving internal efficiency.
They understand that processes can be a major
differentiator. A process automation CoE can
evangelize process automation. In other words,
they help the organization adopt a common
language for business processes — including
how to describe and execute them.
The CoE can also drive governance and
consistency across business processes
throughout the organization. That could
mean anything from establishing a common
infrastructure, software and services, to
managing projects from end-to-end. This team
often provides “accelerators,” or reusable
components, to improve time-to-value for
automation projects. As companies scale,
this level of consistency and governance
becomes more critical. However, with too many
restrictions, a CoE can become a bottleneck for
progress, as described above.
4 Why is a process automation CoE important?

Of course, there’s a lot of area in between

those two extremes. The amount of
centralization that’s right for you depends on To centralize or
your company’s size, industry regulations, and decentralize your CoE?
culture. According to Forrester, one-quarter
of automation CoEs will reorganize to support Generally there are two CoE models:
federated development. That often means centralized and decentralized. At a
the CoE manages a centralized governance basic level, think of it this way:
and/or infrastructure model, where individual
project teams own the development and
implementation. In other CoEs, different
business domains leverage a common cloud
service, such as Camunda, to scale more
efficiently.

A CoE should be leveraged to make the digital Centralized: Implementing automation

transformation journey easier. That might mean projects on behalf of business units
establishing or accelerating the adoption of throughout the organization
process orchestration across the organization —
particularly within organizations with diverse
process endpoints and high process complexity.
Some teams adopt process orchestration to
gradually enable digital transformation. For
example, the CoE team may rely on process
orchestration to bridge the gap between
developing modern, microservices-based Decentralized: Providing enablement,
applications and working with legacy systems frameworks, training, and guidance so
the company has today. teams can execute process automation
independently.
Finally, the CoE should enable collaboration
across the organization. In some companies,
that might mean fostering a process
orchestration community, where practitioners
can share best-practices and ask questions
of one another. The CoE should help team
members avoid reinventing projects from
scratch, and empower them to drive
continuous improvement.

Further reading: How Camunda

8 supports process automation at
enterprise scale

camunda.com

5 Getting started with a CoE

Getting started with a CoE

Once you establish the need for a CoE, how
do you get started? The first step for many
companies is to get buy-in from management,
so the CoE has both the authority and funding
to meet its goals. The CoE must be set up for
success, and built as a service that meets the
needs of your internal customers.

When you create a vision for your CoE, be sure

to incorporate feedback from your community Further reading: How do you create
of developers. These people will be responsible and grow a Center of Excellence?
for carrying out process automation projects
day in and day out, so you want them to
be aligned with your CoE’s purpose. Your
vision should outline the reasons why you’re
establishing a CoE, and set some initial goals on
what the CoE is meant to accomplish.

In some companies, a CoE may need an

executive sponsor to gain authority and
establish a strong foundation for internal
evangelism. That may be a technical executive,
such as a CIO or CTO. The CoE typically
maintains the executive sponsorship by
continuously reporting on the ROI or achieved
business value to the internal customers. . The
executive sponsor can help communicate the
value of the CoE to various lines of business
leaders, answering questions such as:

▪ What can we achieve with process

automation?

▪ How does it help the company gain

competitive advantage?

▪ Why will the CoE approach help accelerate

project automation and orchestration?

▪ How will we measure ROI?

camunda.com

6 Getting started with a CoE

Structuring your CoE

When it comes to structuring your CoE team, personas will vary

depending on your organization’s goals. Many CoEs have the
following personas, although some individuals may span multiple
personas. For example, an enterprise architect may also be an
expert at modeling and deploying processes.

Visionary: A head of automation or technology

leader sets the vision and goals for the CoE, and
has the skills to market the vision throughout the
organization.

Architects: Enterprise or IT architects create a

high level technical and business overview for
automation experts and developers to follow, and
also evaluate and manage automation pipelines.

Automation experts: This person or group can

model processes in BPMN and draw advanced
workflow patterns.

Developers: These teams will deploy automation

projects, as well as build internal services, asset
libraries, integration artifacts, and accelerators.
Deployment teams may also include enterprise
architects.

InfoSec experts: A CISO and/or security architect

would focus on maintaining IT security, which will
become even more important in a cloud-native
world.

IT: A sysadmin, IT administrator, or operations

manager manages the infrastructure and/or tools
used for process automation and orchestration.

Whether you choose a centralized vs. decentralized approach

greatly affects which personas belong within the CoE. What kind
of infrastructure will you choose, how will you govern automation
projects, and in which method will you ultimately deliver them?
Keep in mind that a CoE doesn’t have to be large. Some major
enterprises have two-person CoEs functioning in a decentralized
model, which works well for them.

camunda.com

7 Getting started with a CoE

Real-world CoEs in action: National

Bank of Canada

National Bank of Canada is the sixth-largest

bank in Canada, with approximately 25,000
employees. With a CoE of only two people, the
team narrowed down three distinct goals:

▪ Build in-house expertise around process

automation: Working with Camunda
Consulting, the company was able to
build their own expertise, through a mix of
training and contextualizing that knowledge Watch this video to learn more about
within concrete projects. National Bank of Canada’s CoE strategy.

▪ Build a community of BPMN/Camunda

experts: Bringing together IT, ops, and
business stakeholders, the team set up
a one-hour weekly meeting to discuss
process automation and Camunda.
Over time, they’ve actively managed the
community by providing guest speaker
presentations, demos, challenges for
discussion, and more.

▪ Create governance foundations: The

team centered its governance around
three pillars: standardization, KPIs, and
reusability. The CoE reduces wasted work,
and provides support for kickstarting
projects, including code examples,
infrastructure, and more.

As a result of the CoE, demand to automate

mission-critical processes in Camunda is
growing. The team has 27 completed projects,
with four to five in active development. The
community has grown to 400 meetings with
more than 100 participants. And time to start
new projects has accelerated from weeks to just
days.

camunda.com

8 Getting started with a CoE

The job of a CoE

The job of the CoE team varies greatly

depending on the level or centralization or
decentralization that makes most sense for
your organization. Depending on your culture
and desired structure, your CoE may take on
the following roles and responsibilities.

01. Delivery: Planning and/or execution

Planning Further reading: The Ultimate Guide to

Building Your Hyperautomation Tech
▪ Setting expectations and gathering Stack
requirements for automation initiatives

▪ Running and reporting on pilot/lighthouse

projects

▪ Prioritizing the order of operations for automation

projects (managing the automation pipeline)

Execution

▪ Evaluating, selecting and providing technologies in the

hyperautomation tech stack

▪ Setting up the infrastructure and/or IT environment for success

▪ Building and implementing process models or empowering

others to do so

02. Enablement and knowledge-sharing

▪ Defining the automation skills you need in the organization

▪ Establishing and/or outsourcing a training curriculum (for many,

Camunda Academy is a great resource)

▪ Running internal sessions to contextualize training (e.g.

reviewing models, code, testing strategy, etc.)

▪ Empowering developers via self-service (e.g. creating

documentation, and/or sharing templates, process models, and
best-practices where necessary)

▪ Providing a forum for questions and best-practices (e.g. internal

wiki or Slack group)

▪ Providing developers with tools for scaling process orchestration

(e.g. leveraging resources such as Camunda Connectors)

camunda.com

9 Getting started with a CoE

03. Evangelism

▪ Spreading the word about process orchestration and automation

throughout the organization (e.g. via blogs, events, newsletters,
speaking engagements, etc.)

▪ Establishing authority and trust with business stakeholders

▪ Building a community of practice (CoP) for automation (or

facilitating a grassroots community if it’s already established)

04. Governance

▪ Establishing standardization around architecture decisions

▪ Meeting compliance regulations

▪ Creating templates and/or rules (depending on the level of

centralization)

▪ Providing heavy or light guardrails for developers

Camunda Platform 8 orchestrates complex

What are Camunda
Connectors?
Out-of-the-box Connectors are designed
to help you overcome one of the biggest
hurdles to process orchestration: figuring
out how the process should interface
with different types of endpoints such as
APIs, RPA bots, CRM and ERP platforms,
user-facing applications, and so on. Most
processes—even fairly simple ones—involve
at least a few of these endpoints, and the
level of complexity can grvow very quickly.
For example, if a process invokes an RPA
bot, you need to know exactly what data the
bot will need to execute its task.
business processes across different
types of process endpoints in your
organization, and Connectors make it easier.
They communicate with any system or
technology, reducing the time it takes to
model, implement, and automate business
processes. They’re modular and designed
for reuse, so teams don’t have to reinvent
the wheel every time they need to work with
a particular endpoint. And they’re user-
friendly; if you can add a task to a BPMN
process diagram, you can use Connectors.
CoEs can design, provision and manage
their own catalog of custom Connectors
(e.g. for specific legacy systems), using
the Camunda integration framework.

camunda.com

10 Risks for scaling a CoE
Sharing CoE resources across the
organization
In practical terms, a CoE could share resources
in a number of ways. It could be as simple as
leveraging code version control systems like
Git, or creating and sharing an internal folder
where you store BPMN process models, DMN
tables, and forms. Or, if there’s a community of
practitioners in place, your CoE can facilitate
conversations and/or manage this community.
This can be done synchronously through
monthly or quarterly community meetings,
or asynchronously through online forums,
newsletters, intranets, videos, and more.
Real-world CoEs in action: Desjardins
For Canadian financial services organization
Desjardins, the process automation CoE sits
within the IT department. With a specialized
CoE, Desjardins leverages domain experts to
help accelerate process automation. Separate
disciplines within the CoE focus on specialized
aspects of automation. By selecting Camunda
as a centralized automation platform, the
team avoids process automation silos, and
standardizes on BPMN 2.0 as a process
modeling language.
Instead of a bureaucratic approach, the CoE
team opts to give development teams the
autonomy to build what they want. The CoE is
both a knowledge resource and a hub for shared
technology. Rather than implementation, the
Desjardins CoE focuses on enabling developers
with process modeling design patterns,
approaches as well as accelerators. The team
has expert knowledge on the Camunda platform
and related toolsets, and how they are used
together in transformation journeys.
camunda.com

Risks for scaling a CoE
The CoE should be a value driver in the
organization, and not an impediment to teams’
progress. In other words, teams shouldn‘t be
forced to work with a CoE, but rather choose
to do so because the CoE makes their lives
easier (e.g. by providing reusable tools such
as standard accelerators, or off-the-shelf
components like libraries).
One of the biggest barriers to overcome is the
notion that an automation CoE is an “ivory
tower” and doesn’t generate value to the
organization. As a result, it’s important to set
out quantifiable key performance indicators
(KPIs) as a CoE, and measure them frequently
to demonstrate success.
Some may perceive that the CoE is detached
from automation teams’ day-to-day reality.
A related risk is the idea that CoEs are the
“governance police.” That dynamic may happen
if the guidelines are too strict and don’t take
into account the real challenges developers
experience on the ground. As a result,
developers may hesitate to cooperate with a
CoE, especially if they’re used to working with
small, agile, iterative implementations.
Other risks may come from laying the
groundwork improperly. Without authority or
executive buy-in, many CoEs fail. Alignment
and goal-setting should apply to both business
and technical stakeholders. What’s more, a
CoE should be scaled to the resources you
have. Instead of taking on overly ambitious
goals, adapt your CoE’s vision and approach by
starting small.
11 Measuring success of a CoE

Measuring success of a CoE

To help the organization understand the value of the CoE, it’s
important to find quantifiable ways to measure its success. A few
examples of KPIs might include:

Performance Enablement

▪ Achieved business value for ▪ Reusability (e.g. how many

the organization in terms of
successful projects
▪ Process performance and
optimization (e.g. lifecycle
duration, or number of processes
per month, etc.)
▪ Platform performance per Service
Level Agreement (SLA)
▪ Project performance (e.g. time to
value)
reusable components does the
organization have and how often
are they reused?)
▪ Community growth (e.g. number
of community meetings, blog
posts, newsletters, increase in
participants over time)
▪ Measuring the ROI of software/
technology

▪ Project timelines

Some solutions, like Camunda Optimize, provide real-time process

monitoring and analytics, which can make it much simpler to
measure the performance of your processes. You can use this to
continually improve your processes, or communicate how process
automation and orchestration are helping the company track toward
a certain business goal.

camunda.com

Scale your process automation CoE
to your needs

A modern process automation CoE can be an accelerator, instead of

an inhibitor of growth. Regardless of what you choose to name your
CoE, you can adapt your approach depending on your organization’s
size or culture. At a decentralized level, a CoE can aggregate and
cultivate knowledge, and provide the necessary tools to avoid
wasted work. More centralized CoEs may undertake complex
governance tasks, or even fully manage process modeling and
execution. Some teams choose a hybrid approach, with centralized
governance, but decentralized project delivery.

We’ve seen large enterprises with successful two-person CoE

teams, and smaller companies with larger CoE teams. There’s no
one-size-fits-all approach. If you’re still unsure of where to start,
Camunda can help you assess which style of CoE is best for your
organization, and get off the ground running with training and
enablement to excel with process automation and orchestration.

Contact Camunda to accelerate your CoE

About Camunda
Camunda is the leader in process orchestration software. Our software helps orchestrate
complex business processes that span people, systems, and devices. With Camunda,
business users collaborate with developers to model and automate end-to-end processes
using BPMN-powered flowcharts that run with the speed, scale, and resiliency required to
compete in today's digital-first world. Hundreds of enterprises such as Atlassian, ING, and
Vodafone design, automate, and improve mission-critical business processes with Camunda
to drive digital transformation. To learn more visit camunda.com.