Jo McGovern, chief operating officer of Marra says there are real advantages to be gained from using low code to build digital services in-house
Digital transformation is hard. Especially when you are constrained by time, budget and internal resources. Traditionally there have been two ways of supporting digital transformation with software:
- Bespoke solutions, which can come with a hefty price tag;
- Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, which can limit functionality.
But, Microsoft Power Platform is gaining traction in local authorities.
Microsoft Power Platform provides a third way - a low code method. It allows the creation of custom solutions, based on your immediate operational needs. With less coding, it's less expensive than a bespoke strategy, but more flexible than a COTS product. Interoperability with Microsoft 365 is also seamless and if you have an enterprise agreement then you may already be paying for the licensing, but the tech is being wasted.
You want to deliver real change and you want to do it quickly. From building custom apps that help support your communities to saving your staff time doing tedious admin tasks. Power Platform can help you do that.
Here’s some impact you could make with Microsoft Power Platform (in under four weeks!)
Create real value for families: Managing the provision of school holiday clubs can be challenging due to the number of families within the community, the range of holiday club providers and the data sources required. A low code solution could be built using Power Pages and a Power App. Back office staff can allocate holiday club bookings to families using the Power App, while the confirmation of bookings can be automated, and families can have the ability to manage their bookings via the Power Pages website.
Make your employees lives easier: Power Automate is a powerful tool for creating automated process flows. Automating employee leave requests can streamline the process, ensure consistency and improve efficiency, saving employees time so they can work on delivering vital services. By creating SharePoint lists and introducing some workflow steps, approvals could be automatically sent to the required manager. Once the approval is made, the employee can be automatically notified via email and their leave balance could be updated accordingly.
Improve data quality and reducing friction with partners: Power BI can integrate data from multiple sources to allow you to pull in data from other services to paint a full picture of the landscape. The data could be used to forecast the needs across the communities, identify trends or correlations between services. If data quality is an issue, there is a range of functionality within Power BI to cleanse and transform the data as required and help you make the best decisions.
Microsoft Power Platform is here to stay. The opportunities this low code technology presents for rapid, low-cost development but not at the expense of compromising on security or user experience is revolutionary. Before you commit your budget to a bespoke development or COTS product, explore what Microsoft Power Platform has to offer.
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