[Power Platform] Build an app consolidating business numbers without a coding background!

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Helena is a finance manager at our company. She manages accounting records and is responsible for the production of financial reports. Every month, she collects data from different departments through excel and email and consolidates different files into one. However, there are some challenges:

Human error and time consuming manual process are the main challenges

Human error: The respondents don’t necessarily follow the data format, for example, when asking a data type of number, the respondents sometimes answer “Yes” or “No”. As a result, Helena needs to spend an extract effort to correct the data.

Time Consuming Manual Process: According to the respondent, the user experience can be smoother if the interface can be mobile. They would open a laptop to open the spreadsheet. What if there’s an app they can play with on the go?

The situation has changed after a couple of sessions

We ran across each other one day and I shared the concept of Power Platform (Microsoft low-code development platform). She believed it may help her dealing with these daily challenges so we sat up a meeting with her team and had a discussion.

In the meeting, I helped the team clarify the issue and draw a roadmap of what an ideal process looks like, following with architecture design. Finally, the team has met a consensus regarding where they are and where they want to go.

Here is a diagram I summarized after the meeting:

Power Platform Solution — Finance Reporting App

For the next step, the team needed to build the app. Without a coding background, they weren’t sure if they could make it. I introduced the tool with a demo to help them overcome the hesitation. Furthermore, I sat up an office hour with the team to troubleshoot the question they came across. I also share some tips to make progress even faster.

In the end, the team has built an app that consolidates the data from different owners with the correct data format and Helena found her peace of mind, checking all the data in one single spreadsheet and focusing on other insightful tasks.

Here is a screenshot of the app:

Streamlined business process and greater engagement

• Streamlined business process: Helena no longer needs to chase the stakeholders regarding the data quality and can speed up the process, leaving more time for gap analysis and insight.
• Greater engagement: By clicking the application, the stakeholders get detailed up to date information about the data needing to enter. They no longer needed it in front of a laptop and open the spreadsheet.

Looking Ahead

After we built the Finance Reporting App, more and more colleagues are interested in how to leverage the power of Power Platform to help them with daily work. At this moment, I’m also engaging with colleagues from Business Process Office and Human Resource to discuss their challenges and how the business process can be optimized through a low-code development platform.

What do you think? Do you think the solution makes sense or do you have a better way to solve it? Let me know!

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