As Airtable becomes more widely used across a large organisation, managing and improving existing applications becomes just as important as building new ones.
Airtable often starts within an individual team, solving a particular business problem. As its use expands, applications become more complex, interdepartmental linkages become more important, and teams increasingly depend on Airtable bases that may have started as relatively simple solutions.
This brings new challenges such as ownership, data quality, support, and change management that were often the responsibility of IT or a software team.
Rapid Indigo have helped establish and operate an Airtable Centre of Excellence (CoE) within a large global organisation. It brings together existing business owners, superusers, IT representatives,s and external specialists, each responsible for different aspects of managing and developing Airtable.
We also draw on 20 years of experience managing enterprise systems for organisations including Jaguar Land Rover, Santander and National Grid. This helps us bring established IT practices into Airtable without sacrificing the flexibility that makes it valuable.
Our experience has highlighted four areas that are particularly important.
1. Continuous managed evolution
Business needs change, processes develop, and new opportunities emerge as teams become more familiar with Airtable. New capabilities, including AI, also create opportunities to improve existing applications.
Without a coordinated approach, enhancement requests can accumulate, changes are made independently, and applications become harder to maintain.
A CoE provides a structured way to capture requirements, prioritise improvements and manage changes without disrupting existing operations.
This is particularly important when several teams depend on underlying data - especially with Airtable's powerful table sync capability between bases.
2. Data quality and ownership
As Airtable becomes more embedded in business operations, data quality becomes increasingly important, particularly where it supports reporting, decisions, or downstream systems.
A CoE helps establish clear data ownership, consistent standards and processes for identifying and resolving quality issues.
In our experience, this is as much about accountability as it is about technical controls. Clear responsibilities, tools for regular checks, and visibility into data issues are often more effective than adding complex validation rules.
3. Adoption and enablement
Airtable's flexibility lets teams develop and improve their own ways of working, but it needs the right skills and guidance to support it.
A CoE establishes processes for maintaining bases, monitoring integrations and automations, managing permissions and resolving operational issues.
These are often the areas that concern enterprise IT teams most. In our experience, relatively lightweight processes, clear ownership and regular system health checks can address many of these risks, rather than relying on a handful of Airable Builders to keep everything running.
3. System Management & Support
As Airtable applications become more business-critical, they need appropriate oversight and ongoing management.
Within a COE, it's important to establish the processes for maintaining bases, oversight of integrations, automations, user permissions and a route to log and resolve operational issues.
It's often areas that IT will regard as the biggest source of risk. Often, lightweight processes, establishing clear roles and responsibilities, will go a long way to making sure the smooth running of the system is not reliant on the goodwill of a few individuals.
Finding the right balance
A Centre of Excellence shouldn't become another layer of bureaucracy or remove the flexibility that makes Airtable attractive in the first place. The aim is to introduce appropriate oversight while allowing teams to continue improving how they work.
A CoE doesn't need to be a dedicated team from the outset. The important thing is establishing clear responsibilities and the right level of support, allowing these capabilities to develop as Airtable adoption grows.
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