Technology can play a vital role in the growth of your organisation, where the right solution at the right time can prove to be a differentiating factor. Microsoft Power Apps can be that differentiating factor for your business.
You may have heard of Power Apps, but you might not be entirely sure what this program is and how your company can utilise it. Through this blog post, we aim to explore the benefits Microsoft Power Apps has to offer your business.
What is Microsoft Power Apps?
Power Apps marked Microsoft’s foray into the world of low-code development platforms. Like other products in this category, the goal was to provide non-professional developers with a means of creating business solution apps using a program that reduces the amount of coding involved. Therefore, developers can use Power Apps to build custom apps swiftly and with less complexity than traditional methods.
Types of apps you can build using Microsoft Power Apps.
a) Canvas apps
- It is possible to drag and drop app elements onto a canvas and connect data sources to the app through Excel-style formulas
- Highly customisable and suitable for apps with straightforward business processes, e.g., for holiday approval, event registration, etc.
b) Model-driven apps
- You can create apps with the help of data models built on Dataverse, an underlying data platform for Power Apps.
- Limited layout and functionality customisation
- Suitable for complex apps, e.g., customer service apps, event management apps, etc.
c) Web portals
- Designed using custom templates, forms, and views
- Suitable for users outside the organisation like customers or associates
Now let’s explore the potential benefits of Power Apps for your organisation in detail.
Benefits of Microsoft Power Apps for business
1) Easier app creation
Coding an app might be challenging for non-programmers, thanks to technical stuff like APIs, libraries, functions, and objects. Power Apps makes it easier to execute most, if not all, programming tasks by simply dragging and dropping elements from the library as required. Power Apps manages all of the traditional overhead that goes into making the programme fit the environment, whether you’re designing a mobile app, an app that runs in a browser, or in-house desktop software. There is no need to understand the pros and cons of frameworks, dependencies, and libraries – Power Apps takes care of all of that behind the scenes.
2) Scale effortlessly
As your business expands, your processes increase. And the bigger your business, the trickier and more complicated these processes become.
The accounts team can process the expenses in a couple of hours for a company with ten employees. However, a company with over 100 employees might take a week to complete the task. Microsoft Power Apps can automate this process, freeing their time to focus on more critical studies.
Power Apps can grow with your company and ensure that your processes remain streamlined with your business objectives – no matter the scale of growth.
3) Accelerate transformation
Developing a custom app tailored to your business requirements can take months or even years. However, you must be adaptable if your organisation is expanding. With Microsoft Power Apps, you can build a program tailored to your business needs in a few days.
Many organisations find it hard to pinpoint where to deploy Power Apps. Don’t let that dissuade you. Pick one aspect of your business that could improve. You’ll discover a task that takes longer than it should. That’s where your focus should be.
Similarly, you can identify areas that need improvement and deploy Power Apps to streamline those processes. Soon, your organisation will discover the benefit of Power Apps in terms of efficiency and productivity gains.
4) Save money
Using Power Apps will undoubtedly result in time savings, cost savings, and increased productivity. But one of the critical advantages of Power Apps is the initial cost of investment. Power Apps come for free if you have an MS Office 365 Enterprise subscription. Moreover, you don’t have to spend a fortune to subscribe to SharePoint, as it is a standalone service for a nominal fee.
Thanks to Power App’s low-code nature, it makes app creation quicker and more affordable. Businesses can accelerate their Return on Investment (ROI) if you can automate processes. The software will save you money throughout its lifespan.
5) Easy standard connectors
For non-professional developers, one of the hardest things about developing apps is knowing how to connect to data. Thanks to Microsoft Power Apps connectors, many standard data storage services are easy to connect to and use with the platform. Additional drag and drop selections and templates make accessing data from cloud services or typical Microsoft applications easy. All you need to do is find the connector that matches your needs from Microsoft’s standard connector library, fill in some information, and create the app in a couple of hours.
6) Seamless Office 365 integration
Acquiring the data from an app is one thing; figuring out where to move that data is different altogether. Thanks to Power Apps integration with Office 365, Microsoft Flow, and Microsoft Power BI, it’s easy to get data in and out of SharePoint, Excel, or any other Office 365 apps used by your business. Power Apps can also integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and other applications from the Power Platform. Adding Power Apps to the mix can significantly maximise efficiency if your business utilises any of this software.
7) Extremely secure
Security comes as standard for all applications built using Power Apps. These applications and workflows tie into Microsoft’s IRAP-certified Azure data centres and other Microsoft security platforms like the Common Data Services (CDS) that provide a role-based security model. As a result, you can set control permissions at the data and application levels, which means users only see the data pertinent to their job roles. That’s not it. Apps built using the platform automatically qualify as GDPR-compliant.
8) Pre-integrated with Microsoft Flow
Using Microsoft Flow, you can create workflows for repetitive tasks. Microsoft Power Apps are pre-integrated with Flow. They can respond to changing data on the fly without creating a poll or alerting the app to run when there’s an update.
Microsoft Power Apps Use Cases
Few use cases of Power Apps for your business.
a) Workflow management
- Drag-and-drop workflow editor for creating custom workflows
- Pre-built templates for typical workflows
- Workflow-related emails and notifications
- Real-time dashboards with workflow status, progress, due dates, etc.
b) Financial management
- Expense reporting
- Review and processing of accounts
- Invoice creation and review
- Financial reporting (e.g., end-of-year reporting, expense reporting etc.)
c) Cost control
- Cost estimation
- Budgeting
- Cost allocation and tracking
- Reporting (actual and committed costs, cost variances, cost trends, etc.)
d) Inventory management
- Automated inventory data uploading and editing
- Storage of multiple data types (e.g., image, RFID data)
- Inventory Search by keywords and serial number
- Purchase order creation and approval
e) HR management
- Recruiting and onboarding
- Employee database management
- Time and attendance tracking
- Performance reviews
f) Project management
- Project planning and scheduling
- Project monitoring (tasks, stages, milestones, etc.)
- Resources (people, assets, budget, etc.) tracking and allocating.
- Project team collaboration
Conclusion
Many businesses struggle to find an appropriate solution to a challenge. A dedicated app would be an obvious choice, but it takes a long time to implement. Microsoft recognised this issue and created Power Apps. It enables organisations to develop custom solutions.
Microsoft Power Apps offer immense, perhaps even endless, possibilities, and Neologix can help you accomplish them. Whether deploying standard sales intake forms, complex integrated systems, modernising legacy apps, migrating your company data, or needing guidance on how to develop or manage Power Apps solutions, our in-house team of technical experts will get your projects up and running in no time! Reach us today to redefine the way you do business.
