Turn intelligence into action
The Microsoft
Power Platform
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Introduction
Now more than ever, organisations are embracing the value of using their data to drive business outcomes.
The adoption of the cloud to store large quantities of data has made many organisations more efficient at harnessing data coming from sources such as web traffic, social media and systems such as CRM and ERP. Once an organisation has implemented the infrastructure for harnessing data, they must maximise how they can make that data work for them to drive business outcomes. Organisations require a layer on top of their data that lets all workers, regardless of their technical skills, leverage it straightforwardly.
This is where the Microsoft Power Platform comes into its own. The Power Platform consists of Power BI, PowerApps and Flow. These three applications work together on top of an organisations data to help everyone, from the CEO to front-line workers, drive the business forward with data.
This guide offers an introduction to the Power Platform, its components and how it is being used to transform organisational processes. The guide is targeted at everyday users who want to leverage the data at their disposal, to create apps and derive insights and easily automate processes. This guide covers:
THE MICROSOFT POWER PLATFORM
» Converging trends that have shaped the Power Platform
» An introduction to the Power Platform
» Power BI
» PowerApps
» Flow
» Power Platform success stories
» Pricing
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Converging trends that have shaped the Power Platform
There is a significant change in the business intelligence (BI), automation and application landscape. Historically, organisations were forced to choose between pre- configured commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software that was difficult to tailor or a custom solution which was far more costly and took a long time to develop. There are also lots of applications that do not fit in either camp.
In the gulf between the two arose a generation of combination-apps, such as self-created spreadsheets, that the end-users created to fill the gap between what solutions their organisation provided and what was needed to do their job.
Three trends have converged to break this pattern, changing the relationship between business users, technologists and their technology.
1. Connectivity
The new generation of business applications connects organisational functions that were previously considered siloed or unrelated. It is easy to automate processes across applications and services and to trigger actions and requests.
For example, travel plans set in motion by human resources, or recruitment driven by increased sales.
2. Citizen empowerment
Business users used to settle for spreadsheets and intranet solutions, but now new no-code/low-code tools like
PowerApps are empowering everyday users to become citizen creators. PowerApps gives non-technical users the capability to build professional grade apps on their own, without the need to involve or get sign-off from IT. For example, airport baggage screeners at Heathrow have developed mobile apps that cut down the paperwork involved in their roles. .
3. Smarter ways of using data
It is not just about enhanced BI and visualisation tools. Now, with the likes of Power BI, you can join together, beautifully visualise and help users interpret data that your organisation already owns.
Data + intelligence Engage
customers
Optimise operations
Empower employees
Transform products Microsoft’s Power Platform and the Future
of Business Application Software
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An introduction to the
Microsoft Power Platform
The Power Platform is an end-to-end business application platform, made up of Power BI, PowerApps and Flow, that underpins Dynamics 365 applications. A combination of these technologies enables you to:
» Rapidly create custom, no-code/low-code applications that meet different business and user objectives.
» Integrate all data natively on the platform. There are no custom components required and data can be made available to any other application.
» Provide tools that are easily extensible by developers and readily integrated with Azure cloud services.
The Power Platform handles your data through the use of Microsoft’s Common Data Service (CDS) or third-party applications. The CDS is a cloud-based tool hosted on Azure which allows you to store and manage your data securely.
The Power Platform’s three tools enable users to analyse, act and automate their data:
1 Power BI - Gain insight into their data (Analyse)
2 PowerApps - Use your insight to drive intelligent processes through custom applications (Act)
3 Flow - Automate your processes (Automate)
Analyse, Act and Automate
The Power Platform creates a closed-loop system that allows users to analyse, act and automate. Data is increasingly flowing from everything and from anywhere. Organisations that understand how to exploit data and gain insight into their business will create better results and thus will out-compete organisations that do not have this insight.
Power BI, PowerApps and Flow each represents best-of-breed solutions in their categories and their combination as the
Power Platform is a game-changer. THE MICROSOFT POWER PLATFORM
Azure
Dynamics 365 Office 365 Standalone Apps
Common Data Service for Apps Data Connectors
P o w er Ap ps
M ic
roso f t F l ow
P ow
er B I
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Gain insights from your data regardless of where it lives
The Power Platform’s answer to rich, visually compelling data visualisation and business intelligence, Power BI consumes all of the data stored by PowerApps in CDS and then integrates with data found across hundreds of third-party services. The result is charts, dashboards and other powerful visualisations that are as aesthetically pleasing as they are rich in content.
Power BI is a self-service business intelligence solution that makes it easy to connect, analyse and gain insight from all the data in your organisation, wherever that data may be.
Power BI dashboards provide a 360-degree view for business users by showcasing their most important metrics in one place, updated in real-time and available on all their devices. This not only speeds up reporting but empowers all users to make data- driven decisions, every day.
Capabilities
» Combine data from disparate databases, files and web services.
» Fix data quality and formatting issues automatically.
» Over 20 built-in visuals and a vibrant community of custom visualisations – enables the creation of reports that communicate your messages effectively.
» Responsive design allowing your reports to be displayed in the browser or on mobile devices. Publish reports securely and set up automatic data refresh, so everyone has the latest information.
Power BI Gateways
Power BI can unify all of an organisation’s data, whether in the cloud or on-premises.
Using the Power BI gateways, it can connect SQL Server databases, Analysis Services models and many other data sources to your same dashboards in Power BI. If your organisation already has reporting portals or applications, it can embed Power BI reports and dashboards for a unified experience.
Microsoft Power BI
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Build and consume solutions for web and mobile
PowerApps enables organisations to rapidly solve business problems through the creation of low-code or no-code applications, created in a matter of hours rather than months. PowerApps enables non-technical users to easily create custom applications to support a wide range of tasks.
With PowerApps you can easily build business apps for mobile that run on iOS, Android, Windows and through most internet browsers. In addition, you do not need to create a different app for each operating system.
Microsoft also provides some useful templates to help you get started. Once you have created an app, all you need to do is publish it and share it with your organisation.
Capabilities
» Enable users to build feature-rich, custom business apps with no or minimal code.
» Have a responsive design allowing them to run in a browser or on mobile devices.
» Provide strong business logic and workflow capabilities to transform manual and paper-based processes.
PowerApps allows users to create apps that are targeted for particular use cases yet draw on the common source of business data housed in CDS. PowerApps lets you create two types of apps: canvas and model-driven.
Canvas apps
Canvas apps start with your user experience, crafting a highly tailored interface with the power of a blank canvas and connecting it to your choice of data sources. Canvas apps use a simple point and click approach to application design. Users can choose from a selection of templates or start from scratch with a blank canvas. Logic is added using well-known Excel-like expressions.
Model-driven apps
Model-driven apps start with your data model – building up from the shape of your core business data and processes to model your forms and views. Model-driven apps automatically generate an excellent user interface that is responsive across devices.
Model-driven apps can run as either a standalone or as the backend to a canvas app.
Microsoft PowerApps
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Empowering people to achieve more
Examples of PowerApps Incremental Group has helped to implement.
Supplier mobile application Provide purchasing managers with supplier information when they are visiting suppliers – including access to current costs, delivery times and quality information while on the move.
Holiday management
Allows people to request holidays, see their holiday allowance and approve any holiday requests from their team all within a simple to use app.
Project accounting & timesheets Allow employees to enter time directly against a project and build this into the project accounting module in your ERP system such as Dynamics 365.
New joiners
Schedule workflows with
predefined steps when someone joins your organisation. This combines tasks from IT, HR and new employees to make sure your people have all the access, equipment and training they need from day one.
Safety and compliance
An application that has health and safety checklists and procedures.
Providing a simple way to capture and ensure that all health and safety processes have been followed and completed with a simple audit trail.
Internal IT
Order new devices, refresh your IT, raise a support ticket and more, with an application designed to interact with your internal IT team.
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Automate and integrate business processes
Microsoft Flow is a no-code, cloud-based tool that allows users to create and automate workflows and repetitive tasks across multiple applications and services without the need of help from developers. By removing the need to involve IT, time to create workflows is dramatically cut down, empowering everyday users to create their own solutions and allowing IT professionals to focus their expertise on more advanced, value-add tasks.
Once a workflow is built, it can be managed on your desktop or through a mobile app.
Flow integrates with Microsoft services, including Power BI, PowerApps, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Office 365.
Microsoft Flow comes with over 200 connectors available out-of-the-box allowing you to connect to all your other business platforms.
Microsoft Flow delivers an easy-to-use workflow builder for line-of-business users, allowing them to automate time-consuming tasks and processes across apps and services with Flow’s low-code builder.
As an example, you can create a flow that adds a lead to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement whenever someone with more than 100 followers tweets about your company. Flow helps you create automated workflows between applications and services.
Capabilities
Microsoft Flow delivers benefits such as:
» Automating and modelling business processes across applications and services, from simple automation to advanced scenarios.
» Triggering actions, requests, grant approvals, or providing notifications to a computer or mobile device.
After users analyse data with Power BI and act on that data with PowerApps, they can then automate their repeating business process by designing workflows in Flow.
Microsoft Flow
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American Red Cross reduces order lifecycles from 3-4 weeks to 4-5 days
A training specialist, with no IT experience, created a supply hub app that reduced order lifecycle from 3-4 weeks to just 4-5 days. The app was shared with three territories and approximately 200 instructors, where it was piloted for six months.
During the pilot, Power BI was able to easily connect to SharePoint and provide daily updates on the progress. The solution is now being rolled out to all 650 paid, and volunteer instructors and the SharePoint approval workflows are being replaced with Microsoft Flow.
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Autoglass gains £1.33m extra revenue per year
Autoglass deployed 40 apps across the business to over 3,000 staff. Their Vehicle Safety Condition Checklist app now provides an additional £1.33 million per year of potential revenue.
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DriveTime saves £1.3m a year
With their online buyer web app built on PowerApps, DriveTime inspectors and buyers have removed guesswork, saved time and transformed their business knowledge with an accurate and repeatable purchase process. With PowerApps, Drivetime can now fine-tune their auction processes to buy vehicles with lower reconditioning costs. By reducing costs to £8 a vehicle, they are saving £1.3 million a year potential revenue.
Find out more »
Power Platform Success Stories
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Presently, there is not a licensing bundle for all three products together. However, you can purchase the three separately (and mix and match) – or, if you have not tried them, you can use free versions or free trials to test their capabilities.
There are many different plans and ways that the applications can be licensed.
This includes separate licensing or the applications being included within one of Microsoft’s plans. PowerApps and Flow are included with a range of Office 365 plans and also Dynamics 365 plans.
Power BI
Pricing
THE MICROSOFT POWER PLATFORM
Power BI Free Power BI Pro Power BI Premium
» Author reports
» Publish to personal workspace
» Publish to Web
» Export to PowerPoint
Power BI free features plus:
» Self-service and modern BI
» Collaboration, publishing, sharing and ad hoc analysis
» Fully managed by Microsoft
Power BI free and Pro features plus:
» Enterprise BI, big data analytics, cloud and on-premises reporting
» Advanced administration and deployment controls
» Dedicated cloud compute and storage resources
» Allow any user to consume Power BI content
Free £7.50 per user/mo £3,766.60+
Monthly price per dedicated
cloud compute and storage
resource
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PowerApps
PowerApps requires a license for each user who needs to create or access PowerApps solutions. PowerApps can be licensed in the following ways:
PowerApps for Office 365 & Dynamics 365
Applications PowerApps Plan 1 PowerApps Plan 2
Services Included PowerApps and Flow PowerApps and Flow PowerApps and Flow
Service Features Create and run within the context of Office 365 or Dynamics 365
Run any app or flow & build against any existing data source
Run any app or flow & build against any existing data source
Model business data and create custom entities using the Common Data Model (CDM)
Set policy and view usage
Included Capacity 2,000 flow runs per month 4,500 flow runs per month 20MB data storage
2GB File storage
15,000 flow runs per month 200MB data storage
20GB File storage List Pricing Included with Office 365 &
Dynamics 365 offers Available standalone £5.30
per user per month Available standalone
£30.20 per user per month
Flow Free Flow Plan 1 Flow Plan 2
» 750 runs per month
» Unlimited flow creation
» 15-minute checks
» 4,500 runs per month
» Unlimited flow creation
» 3-minute checks
» Premium Connectors
» 15,000 runs per month
» Unlimited flow creation
» 1-minute checks
» Premium Connectors
» Org policy settings
» Business process flows
Free £4 per user per month £10 per user per month
Flow
0345 565 3000 The Power Platform opens up many exciting possibilities, but it can be challenging to
know where to start, or what it could do for your organisation. If you would like to find out more about the Power Platform or discuss a potential idea or time-consuming process, please get in touch with us. Incremental provides consultancy, workshops and Proof of Concepts (POC) so that you can test these technologies in your workplace with a low initial investment. Below are some packages we have to help you get started:
PowerApps Development Programme
Get an app designed, developed and deployed in under a week.
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Extend your ERP with PowerApps
PowerApps can extend your ERP and empower your employees. In our one-day workshop, we identify where your organisation would benefit from a PowerApp, create a gap analysis, list your recommended PowerApps and build your first PowerApp.
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2-Week Power BI Sprint
Our 2-week Power BI sprint is the perfect way to kick-start advanced analytics and reporting within your organisation. Our technical BI experts will work with you to design, model, develop, test and implement a Power BI solution based on your organisation’s reporting needs.
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Incremental Group is a leading Microsoft gold partner helping organisations drive digital transformation with Microsoft solutions. We help organisations with applications, data and process automation using the full range of Microsoft solutions.
To discover how we can help your organisation, contact us today.
