What challenges did Centrica face before AI implementation?

Rapid growth in Power Platform app development created the need for better governance and app lifecycle management at scale. The organization also wanted to accelerate AI for internal productivity and employee support while maintaining oversight and compliance.

What was the impact of the AI solution?

More than 430 makers developed over 1,100 apps. Centrica estimates cost savings of approximately $3.5M from native platform capabilities and a further $7.6M from Power Platform-led application development. The company tracks cost savings, productivity gains, and hours saved through dashboards linked to its Front Door process. One agent saves employees hundreds of hours a year by checking email content for policy compliance.

Source

Microsoft

Centrica: Power Platform governance plus Copilot Studio multi-agent AI and RAG agents

Use case typeWorkflow automationUpdated Jun 27, 2026

Centrica uses Microsoft Power Platform to manage enterprise app development at scale, with a Center of Excellence front door, Managed Environments, and code apps providing governance and app lifecycle management. The company also uses Copilot Studio and Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent Builder to build AI agents for compliance checking, knowledge retrieval, and employee self-service, including multi-agent orchestration.

Organization: Centrica
Industry: Energy & Utilities
Location: United Kingdom
Published: June 2026

Reported outcomes

7,600,000 USD

cost savings from Power Platform-led application developmentCost savings

1,100 appsapps deployed430 makersmakers3,500,000 USDcost savings from native platform capabilities

Strategic outcomes

Risk & complianceImproved governance and ALM at scaleRisk & complianceReduced manual compliance checking workOther strategic outcomePersonalized career guidance via RAG retrieval

Primary read

Use case focus

Showing 3 of 3

1Workflow automation
2AI agents
3Employee productivity

Rapid growth in Power Platform app development created the need for better governance and app lifecycle management at scale.
The organization also wanted to accelerate AI for internal productivity and employee support while maintaining oversight and compliance.

Built a Power Platform Center of Excellence Front Door workflow to register and assess apps and assign environments.
Used Managed Environments, environment routing, limit sharing, environment groups, and pipelines to govern makers and projects.
Developed Copilot Studio agents, including compliance and email checking agents, multi-agent employee self-service orchestration, and RAG agents for knowledge retrieval.
Stored employee self-assessment data in Dataverse and used it for career development recommendations.
Used Power Apps code apps to extend and customize internal applications such as desk and meeting room booking.

Technologies

Microsoft Power Platform Managed Environments Power Apps Copilot Studio Microsoft 365 Copilot Dataverse Power Apps code apps Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit Power Platform admin center

More than 430 makers developed over 1,100 apps.
Centrica estimates cost savings of approximately $3.5M from native platform capabilities and a further $7.6M from Power Platform-led application development.
The company tracks cost savings, productivity gains, and hours saved through dashboards linked to its Front Door process.
One agent saves employees hundreds of hours a year by checking email content for policy compliance.

Architecture

Centrica built a Power Platform Center of Excellence using the Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellence Starter Kit, customized it into a Front Door system that auto-detects app creation and routes makers through risk review, then used Managed Environments and pipelines for governance and application lifecycle management. On top of that foundation it built Copilot Studio agents, including multi-agent orchestration for employee self-service and RAG-based career guidance agents, with Dataverse holding employee self-assessment data.

Sources & evidence1

Groundedness: 5/5Type: Customer StoryPublished: Jun 27, 2026Publisher: MicrosoftEvidence: PrimaryConfidence: High

Primary source

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Customer evidence