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Disrupting Custom Development – Microsoft Power Platform
Chelsea Sauder • August 14, 2019
The Microsoft Power Platform removes barriers which historically could only be negotiated by deep pockets and custom development.
Businesses often find themselves stuck repeating the same processes of shuffling documents between employees, updating data manually across multiple siloed systems, and sending the same weekly reports without giving thought to how technology can help streamline or outright eliminate the manual intervention required in these processes. In the recent past, these issues were only solved by the titans of industry, who had pockets deep enough to incur the cost of custom software development and maintenance. But now, with the advent of the Microsoft Power Platform, businesses of all sizes can improve upon these processes without the high costs of custom software development that requires external intervention to maintain.
By utilizing the Microsoft Power Platform, we can:
- Transform manual processes into business applications to drive efficiency across your organization
- Automate business workflows such as emails, notifications, and approvals across multiple data sources
- Build visual dashboards to turn business insights into actions
In this article, we will focus on one facet of the Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft PowerApps, which allows for businesses of all sizes to create visually appealing business apps quickly and efficiently.
Microsoft PowerApps is a web-based platform that provides a visual way to build applications without the need to write custom code to function. With PowerApps you can bring your data together into a common scalable data service that your Apps can be built upon, and with the addition of PowerApps Portals (currently in preview), a business can now give external users secure access into your data as well. The apps that are built with PowerApps can be accessed via the web or from mobile devices, and since the apps are accessed through the PowerApps mobile application, you don’t have to worry about them breaking when a new version of Android or iOS is released (say goodbye to expensive perpetual maintenance!)
A common starting point with PowerApps is existing paper processes within your organization that can be automated. A few common examples are new hire onboarding, inventory management, HR processes such as leave of absence requests, and business development tracking. All these processes typically require data to be captured in the same way every time and require the input of multiple people. With PowerApps, you can quickly develop common forms to capture and display this data in the appropriate context of the user without the need to send emails back and forth, or shuffle papers across the office. The time savings alone usually allow for a positive ROI, allowing your employees to stay more focused and not get bogged down with menial paper shuffling. PowerApps allows for your business to harness the power of digital solutions without the massive costs of custom app development and maintenance.
Check back soon for the rest of this series as we shift our focus to Flow and PowerBI.
Interested in seeing where your company can utilize the Microsoft Power Platform to increase efficiency and eliminate waste? Contact us here
and let’s talk!
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