Why Consider Power Apps?

You may have heard of Power Apps. It may have been word of mouth, from Microsoft themselves or the brilliant community sharing their stories of using the Power Platform for all sorts of solutions to many different types of problems. If you’re wondering why it would be a good fit for your business, then hopefully this read will intrigue you to look more in-depth into the solutions it can offer and why you might consider Power Apps.

Power Apps is a part of the Power Platform. It is used to build applications to offer solutions to various business problems. For companies using Office 365, apps can be built to streamline the jobs of their staff and make their day that little bit easier whilst also extending capabilities to current process by linking with other Office 365 services.

The first thing I like to appreciate is how well Power Apps can remove paper-based solutions currently in businesses. It is in the best interest of our planet, not to mention our ease of access, to remove most paper-based form filling and do so digitally. Power Apps is perfectly catered for the workers who are on the move filling out forms and collecting data. A mobile Power App reduces the equipment required to carry to just one device. This reduces paper if not removing the need for any at all. A process being digitised also brings the benefit of being able to handle and analyse this collected data using the tools available in Office 365.

When it comes to linking up with other parts of Office 365, I have to shout out to Power Automate, another part of the Power Platform. This is the service which handles any of the logic that can’t be directly done within the app itself. This will allow you to automate parts of the process which currently takes the time of a member of staff. A good example is as follows:

The user entering data in the app and clicking a button

Using other services and logic to make a decision based on the provided data

Send an email to the appropriate person within a matter of seconds

Power Automate also has many actions linking it to many other services – both part of Office 365 and external. You can have a chat with us here at Nimbitech and we can discuss how the Power Platform could be used to solve some of your business problems.

Having a process which can be done via an app means that process will be much smoother for the end-user. This will then allow those users to better contribute and share their perspective of that process. There is indisputable value in listening to the end-users and applying changes to the app with their feedback in mind. This allows the end-users to be a part of the app’s life cycle and offer their suggestions for changes. Power Apps makes it easy to quickly make the changes to the app that are suggested and accepted. This makes the job of both the end-user and the developer much easier.

Why should you consider Power Apps? I see it catering for both the developer and non-developer alike. Arguably anyone can very quickly learn how to build a Power App and connect it to business data. However, as with many solution-building processes, best practises exist. It becomes apparent these are essential for making the jobs of your team a lot more intuitive.

Being able to share your perspective ultimately leads to a better collection of data. Better data often leads to benefits via accurate and meaningful analytics. This data can be very useful for decision making and improving your business processes. The Power Platform uses Power Apps to collect the data, Power Automate to process the data and Power BI to visualise it in a user-friendly format. I hope to hear more stories of how the Power Platform has helped you.