by Janus Boye
"Microsoft Power Apps is a game-changer"
That's what one of our non-technical Norwegian government members said when we returned from the summer holidays and met in our local peer group meeting.
Since then the Microsoft Power Platform and Power Apps have come up multiple times in several group meetings, be it communications focused, digital leadership and also our more technical groups focusing on Microsoft 365.
In a recent member conference call, Andrew Sayers from Heineken in the Netherlands told us more about the low code platform and the business apps he is responsible for. The call provided a look behind the scenes at how they approach governance, how he is responsible for the end-to-end support, and finally his work on promoting awareness and self-service usage of the Power Platform tooling to facilitate business processes and drive efficiency and transparency.
Below are my notes from the call which started with one of my favourite approaches and that’s by asking the good question: What’s the problem we are trying to solve?
An explosion of apps
Andrew opened the call by referring to a recent IDC study with this prediction:
“In the next five years, 500 million more apps will be created. That’s more than all the apps built in the last 40 years”
The IDC study is quoted in this interesting PowerApps blog post by Microsoft: 3 low-code trends: why low-code will be big in your 2021 tech strategy. One of the key points in the post is that automation can rescue your organization from cumbersome processes.
At Heineken, there’s also big growth in the number of apps. They currently have 40, which Andrew manages. One of the key needs that Microsoft is addressing with Power Apps at Heineken and elsewhere is the move from complex Excel sheets into apps.
Dealing with new Power Apps at Heineken
According to Andrew, the existing apps are for a variety of use cases spanning production, safety as well as learning and development.
For new apps, Andrew likes to map the process before starting development, but he also has 4 key questions before getting started:
Is the use case at all suitable for power apps?
How critical is it?
What type of SLA?
Is the business committed?
If the answers confirm the need for a new app, Andrew would then create an agreement that the app is to be added to a managed environment supported by IT.
For documentation purposes, Andrew and his team maintain a wiki, which serves both business and IT to document high-level workings as well as technical details such as data connections.
The good and the bad with Power Apps
One of the slides that clearly sparked some response in the call, was when Andrew openly shared his experience using Power Apps.
As he clearly stated:
It’s a team game with the need to utilize the many functions and groups within an organisation
Among the clear benefits, he highlighted the ability to have a very short delivery time (proof of concept in a week if not days), the strong integration with other Microsoft 365 apps and that it’s truly low-code: You don’t need to be a pro developer for basic apps.
Andrew also shared a few challenges:
It can be a steep learning curve for more complicated solutions
You need digital leadership, guidance and governance
Put the right KPIs in place to measure apps and consider going beyond the traditional FTE savings - could also be softer KPIs like better onboarding.
Learn more about Power Apps
On the closing slide, Andrew shared a few important links, in particular this one to the Microsoft Power Platform Center of Excellent (CoE) Starter Kit.
Note also, that at the Ignite conference held earlier this month, Microsoft announced New Power Platform capabilities.
You can also browse the slides from the call (PDF) or even lean back and enjoy the entire 28-minute call below