Get started quickly with digital applications
Microsoft saw that the world of business applications was changing and so came up with the Microsoft Power Platform. This is a no-code/low-code platform by means of which anyone with knowledge of Excel and/or PowerPoint can create business applications themselves. In other words, a platform for citizen developers and professional app developers.
Why a no-code/low-code platform? Often, standardized applications don’t meet the specific requirements of the business, but special custom-made applications cost a lot of money, time and resources. In between the two is a world of business applications that you can create quickly and easily using the Microsoft Power Platform. Using the no-code/low-code platform, citizen developers can, for example, very quickly replace paper forms with digital tools and automate manual processes to increase their own productivity.
But the Microsoft Power Platform isn’t just for citizen developers: the IT and development teams can also use it to develop business-critical solutions faster that reach more people within the organization.
Agile market anticipation with the Power Platform
Continuously changing markets require agile organizations that respond promptly to and anticipate the changes and developments. In particular a business must strive to adapt swiftly and needs business applications in order to operate more efficiently. In practice, though, persuading your IT people of this often turns out to be quite an organizational challenge, as they already have their hands full with existing applications – they’re not so much unwilling as over-extended. The business’s wishes therefore end up on a long to-do list, lost among other more mundane questions and challenges. The business wants to change quickly, but ends up waiting.
With the help of the Microsoft Power Platform, the business is now in a position to translate its requirements and ideas quickly into digital solutions by building apps using the no-code /low-code platform. In other words, every business manager can create his or her own apps using the available data.
With Microsoft Power Platform, no more time is wasted, because support from IT isn’t strictly needed. If the IT department facilitates the no-code/low-code platform, the business can make changes quickly and independently, without IT managers losing the big picture. In this way, they can also ensure that compliance and governance guidelines are adhered to – points that mustn’t be lost sight of for a moment. BNG Bank realized this: it built a secure compliance application on the Microsoft Power Platform in the space of just three days.
The no-code/low-code platform has advantages for IT professionals as well as citizen developers. With its user-friendly character, it strengthens innovation throughout your organization.
The Microsoft Power Platform in practice
Some inspiring examples where business applications have made the difference:
- BNG Bank. Risk management, mitigating measures and the monitoring of those measures. This risk management and measure monitoring function was designed with greater speed and cost-efficiency with the help of the Power Platform. Read the case.
- BAM. Planning of office capacity worldwide, with the help of a business application that was operational within three days. Read the case.
- Tata Steel. Reducing your employees’ workload by digitizing administrative processes as much as possible using business applications. 80,000 work permit applications now run on an application on the Microsoft Power Platform at Tata Steel. Read the case.
What does the Microsoft Power Platform consist of?
The expectations nowadays when it comes to applications are that they should be intelligent, that they should both collect and return information, and that ‘anyone’ should be able to build them. To meet these expectations, the Microsoft Power Platform consists of:
- Power Apps including canvas apps (mobile applications for end users)
- Power Automate (automating repetitive tasks and processes as much as possible)
- Power BI (interactive tool for data visualization)
- Power Virtual Agents (easy development of intelligent chatbots)
Using the data layer, known as Dataverse, you can link these functionalities with Dynamics 365 and countless external business applications such as Salesforce, SAP or Oracle. A mobile business application such as a canvas app is able to retrieve data from various sources via the CDS and bring them together in the app.
Efficiency gains and actionable insights
As well as boosting business agility, the Microsoft Power Platform has the big advantage that it makes processes more efficient and saves a lot of time. This is especially true of processes that normally take place on paper or in complex Excel sheets. The data are now brought together on the platform and are immediately used for intelligent purposes. Actionable insights are quickly generated with artificial intelligence or machine learning. Moreover, the loss of data that results from using a plethora of Excel files is no longer an issue.
The Microsoft Power Platform acts as a ‘glue’ that holds together an often fragmented IT landscape. It breaks down barriers and enables systems to communicate with each other, and this together with a new interface in the form of a Virtual Agent or a Power App means that you can create interaction between multiple systems in a user-friendly way. This saves time, is efficient and optimizes processes.
Macaw embraces the Microsoft Power Platform
Macaw is a strategic partner of Microsoft and technology leader, and our experts in the creation of low-code apps are convinced of the potency of the Microsoft Power Platform. Curious to know more about how the platform works and how your organization can benefit from business apps? Contact us, we would love to advise you.
