Historically, organizations were only able to get software or applications from a limited number of sources. They could either buy something off the shelf that might meet some or most of their needs, or they could utilize expensive developers from their internal IT team or overpriced software developers. Project time could easily be over a year and costs could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a fully tailored system.
The result? Complacency with outdated processes due to upgrade projects being poorly prioritized. It shouldn’t have to be this way. What if every process could exist in a collaborative setting full of low code automation?
Using the Microsoft Power Platform
With Microsoft’s Power Platform Solutions, organizations can utilize internal Power Users who have the best understanding of a business process to create customized solutions. With Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Dataverse, Power Users can create complex solutions tailored exactly to their specific business needs, thus freeing up the IT team’s capacity and improving the quality of the final solution.
Many organizations still rely on emailing multiple versions of a spreadsheet around and pray that data entry is accurate and that the correct document version is being used. These types of processes cause decisions to be made on outdated information or, even worse, outright incorrect data. The process is clunky and requires switching between multiple desktop applications all because it would be too expensive to get away from such a bad practice.
The Fix?
It doesn’t have to be this way anymore. With the Power Platform, transformative projects which may have taken a year or more of multiple full-time developers can now be completed within a couple of months by one or two motivated users. With the lower costs of the Power Platform, a project to change an outdated process can suddenly become extraordinarily profitable.
We see it too often: accountants or other data-oriented teammates do hardly anything related to their job function because they’re too preoccupied with data entry. Processes that previously took an eight-hour day of manual work can be automated with Power Automate to take less than an hour of unattended cloud processing. This allows skilled people to use their skills rather than just doing data entry all day. With Power Apps, data collection can be streamlined like never before. With drag and drop no code development along with a few tables, an entire process can be represented in a fully functional cloud app. These apps lend themselves to faster, better data entry with guided process flows breaking the business process into manageable stages all in an integrated setting be it Teams, a web browser, or your mobile device
Conclusion
Using the Microsoft Power Platform and Power Users, your company can affordably move forward from outdated systems and business processes which have been holding you back for years. With faster development times, you’ll enjoy a smooth transition into an updated process that can be maintained by people who own the process rather than having to take time from your IT team every time an upgrade is needed.
