McLaren

McLaren Group is a global leader in luxury automotive and elite motorsports with a focus on their Automotive supercar and Racing businesses. Founded in 1963 by racer, engineer and entrepreneur Bruce McLaren, the Group is formed of McLaren Automotive – which hand-builds lightweight supercars – and a majority stake in McLaren Racing which competes in the Formula 1 World Championship and INDYCAR in the US.

The Group is globally headquartered at the iconic McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, England. With a reputation for innovation and technological excellence, McLaren is one of the UK’s largest independent companies.

The challenge

McLaren had previously worked with Transparity on a number of highly-successful Microsoft 365 initiatives, with the Microsoft Gold Partner proving themselves and establishing significant credibility as a strong technology partner. McLaren therefore requested Transparity’s assistance with a new project to further define their Microsoft Power Platform Governance Framework.

Having previously deployed Microsoft’s “Centre of Excellence” (COE) Starter Kit – which includes a collection of tools and templates to help organisations get started in developing a strategy for adopting and maintaining Microsoft’s Power Platform – McLaren wanted to add further processes and procedures to enable better control over the creation of their environments. This process would help streamline their existing framework and mitigate any potential risks, reducing extra costs whilst also providing them with better end user visibility.

Furthermore, McLaren were eager to evolve and expand their Security and Governance Framework by including additional Power Platform features. The company were looking to gain greater visibility and boost governance of the development and deployment of Power Apps, Power Automate and PowerBI dashboards.

The solution

Following initial conversations around McLaren’s technical requirements, Transparity reviewed the existing Centre of Excellence Kit and established a well-defined Power Apps Governance structure, facilitating a foundation for all sensitive information to be secure, as well as define access parameters in accordance with McLaren’s compliance requirements, regulations and values.

Transparity also introduced Microsoft’s PowerApps Application Lifecycle, which offers tools to standardise systems in accordance with best practice guidelines, allowing McLaren to manage governance, app development and maintenance to achieve efficiency through repeatable and dependable software delivery.

In order to effectively safeguard data, Transparity implemented Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies to ensure users could only connect their applications to those approved within McLarens’s Governance framework.

Additionally, to ensure that all end users understood the new processes and tools, Transparity assisted with training McLaren’s staff to migrate all apps and data from the existing ad-hoc environments into the new design. Users also had access to Transparity’s Training and Adoption Portal (TAP), allowing them to access training content at their leisure and learn at their own pace.

The outcome

As a result of this engagement, Transparity and McLaren were able to create and implement a controlled, well-governed and managed environment, providing structure, specified data access and heightened security in accordance with McLaren’s values and compliance requirements.

This project has resulted in robust, enhanced processes that give McLaren greater visibility into their environment. The PowerApps Application Lifecycle provides users access to tools which improve the consumption, creation and management of Environments, Power Apps, Flows and Data Gateways.

With their new system, McLaren are now better able to create custom solutions, improve data collection, surface real-time insights, and empower end users to be more informed and take actionable decisions.

“Over the past year, McLaren has seen a rapid adoption of Power Platform but was lacking a governance strategy across our Power Platform environment. The Collaborations Services team which I lead required a model that empowers employees to quickly create and iterate on innovative applications that were designed to guide the business units work more efficiently and effectively, but at the same time maintain standards across the platform.

“With Transparity coming on board, a well-defined Power Apps Governance structure was put in place along with customisation of our existing Centre of Excellence kit. This facilitated a foundation for restricting the creation of environments, performing an audit of connections, and implementing Data Loss Prevention policies. This approach allowed Collaboration Services to proactively reach out to app makers, support them, reduce sprawl and create a thriving community.”

Olalekan Sulaiman – Collaboration Services Manager at McLaren