St John Ambulance had ambitious plans for its Power Platform usage, but years of organic growth had created complexity and ungoverned processes.
Hundreds of apps and thousands of flows were operating within a single environment. Ownership was unclear. Standards were inconsistent. Critical processes were running without structured monitoring.
Before progressing with new initiatives, St John Ambulance needed clarity, control, and governance foundations.
Marra partnered with the organisation through an embedded resource model, providing specialist Power Platform expertise to stabilise and strengthen their estate from within.
When growth outpaces governance
As Power Platform adoption expanded across the organisation, governance hadn’t kept pace. Key issues included:
Unmanaged legacy estate
Over time, hundreds of apps and thousands of flows had accumulated — many built by staff who had since left. This created uncertainty around ownership, purpose, and long-term support.
Operational risk & limited visibility
Critical automations were running without structured monitoring or alerting. Failures could go unnoticed, increasing risk to essential business processes.
Inconsistent development practices
Solutions had been created using different approaches and standards, with limited documentation. This made maintenance harder, slowed onboarding, and restricted scaling.
Strategy blockers
Although a new Power Platform strategy had been defined, the existing estate hindered progress. Without clear visibility of what existed — and its condition — the organisation couldn’t confidently move into governed environments or start greenfield projects.
From complexity to control
Marra embedded a specialist consultant directly into the St John Ambulance team, combining hands-on delivery with practical governance improvements.
Governance automation and flow monitoring
We designed and implemented a Power Automate based governance system to monitor flow failures across environments. Criticality ratings were introduced, alongside automated Jira notifications, ensuring issues were identified and addressed quickly.
Strengthening Centre of Excellence (CoE) tooling
We repaired and enhanced key components of the existing CoE solution, restoring broken connections and improving data accuracy. This rebuilt trust in governance reporting and provided reliable insight into platform usage.
Estate-wide visibility and prioritisation
Using Power BI, we delivered dashboards surfacing every app and flow across the organisation. Solutions were categorised by ownership, usage, and complexity, allowing the team to prioritise remediation, migration, or structured IT support.
Practical governance roadmap
Working closely with stakeholders, we developed pragmatic recommendations to evolve governance maturity and align the platform to long-term strategy.
Building a foundation for confident growth
By combining embedded delivery with structured governance improvements, Marra helped St John Ambulance move from reactive management to proactive control.
Reduced operational risk: Automated monitoring and critical alerts significantly lowered the risk of silent failures disrupting essential processes.
Improved governance maturity: Enhanced CoE tooling and estate-wide visibility created a stable, governed foundation for future development.
Clear path forward: With every app and flow catalogued, understood, and prioritised, St John Ambulance can now confidently migrate into governed environments and progress new initiatives safely.
The power of embedded expertise
This engagement demonstrates the strength of Marra’s team augmentation model. By embedding experienced Power Platform specialists directly into your organisation, we deliver immediate hands-on outputs while contributing strategic thinking that strengthens your long-term capability.
You don’t just gain extra capacity. You gain governance insight, practical improvements, and trusted advisors who work as part of your team. It’s a flexible, low-friction way to accelerate progress, reduce risk, and build confidence in your platform without long procurement cycles or large transformation programmes.
