Harnessing the Potential of Power Apps with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CRM)
Microsoft Power Apps is becoming an incredibly powerful service by giving everyone the tools to be an app builder. Providing Apps with a very responsive design that runs seamlessly in a browser or mobile device, allowing users with no IT background to build their own apps without using code, and also providing pro developers an extensible platform to create custom connectors, apply business logic, and integrate with external data. Power Apps really has something to offer all user skill levels.
Power Apps makes it easy to bring your data together using the Common Data Service, by standardizing it using the Common Data Model. Dynamics 365, Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Automate all share this data, making the CDM a single source of truth, and eliminating the need for an integration tool to bring it all together.
Here are some of the highlighted success stories Microsoft has recently released on Power Apps:
• Virgin Atlantic – Using Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Dynamics 365, Virgin Atlantic developed apps that help its business and field workers excel at their jobs. The company equipped all remote workers with tablets and went to work developing useful apps that made them more efficient and gave them the ability to provide even better customer satisfaction. In addition, Virgin Atlantic has created apps for their customers that help support the best travel experience from beginning to end.
• Mall of America – With over 40 million visitors each year, it’s 46 escalators are particularly critical, enabling visitors and employees to quickly move throughout the property. Using Power Apps and Power BI, the MOA is able to empower team members using dashboards and real-time data analytics. They offer a mobile app to their guests, and 100 digital maps throughout the mall provide direction and location information. Sensors on the escalators feed data directly in the Business Management System API. As a result, the escalators have improved from roughly 90 percent uptime to 95-97 percent uptime in the first 6 months of operation.
• TransAlta – Leveraging Power Apps, they built a decision-making tool called Economic Callouts to calculate the economic viability of sending an immediate response to service calls outside of their core operating hours. Due to the tremendous savings from avoiding unnecessary callouts, the Power Apps solution implementation was paid for in just two weeks.
• Heathrow Airport – Through the low-code development of 30 apps, Heathrow employees have eliminated 75,000 pages of paperwork and reduced data entry by nearly 1,000 hours!
These are great examples of how Power Apps drives business transformation. Using Canvas apps you can truly let your imagination run wild. Incorporate a large variety of data sources, flows, and controls to create your own app.
Power apps editor:
Power Apps isn’t limited to Canvas apps. You also have the power to create Model-driven apps and Portals. In the screenshot below, we are looking at the Create option in the site map in the maker portal. We have the option of creating from blank, or also starting with a template. There are several templates available out of the box that will either give you a great starting point, or could also be used as a training opportunity to become more familiar with how the apps are built out.
Maker portal create view:
Using Model-driven apps, you can create role specific applications that fit a certain team or users. Whether that is for a sales team, field installers, management, or various other scenarios that better fit your business needs.
Model-Driven app editor:
Sample model-driven app shown on the desktop and mobile device, created for field installers:
Using Portals, you can unlock your data to both internal and/or external users, such as customers, vendors, or subcontractors. Customizing your own portal is easy with the templates and themes readily available, and you can create and manage the content that users have access to using step-by-step guidance, without code.
Portal app editor:
Independent Study:
Lastly, I’d like to share a link to a document that Microsoft posted in October 2019, a Forrester Total Economic Impact Study was commissioned by Microsoft, see here:
TEI-of-MSFT-Power-Apps-and-Automate-2019.pdf (1673 downloads )
, titled The Total Economic Impact of Power Apps and Power Automate.
Some key findings and results were:
In addition, this report listed the unquantified benefits of using Power Apps and Power Automate:
• Employees can make better and faster decisions from better access to information
• Power Apps and Power Automate empower users which increase employee satisfaction
• Mobile applications developed with Power Apps and Power Automate are more secure than would likely otherwise have been developed
• Streamlining and automating processes delivers business transformation and improved business outcomes
If you’re ready to start using Power Apps with your business, contact our team at Stoneridge and let us help you get started!
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