Optimizing Business Processes with Power Apps
If your business has Microsoft365, it has Power Apps. It’s often difficult to explain the true possibilities of Power Apps because it really is limitless. Think of the process that you have always wanted to streamline, or standardize, or alter in some small way, but the software needed to do so was too expensive or just did not do exactly what you were looking for. Power Apps solves these problems and more! By designing custom solutions for clients, we deliver operational efficiency and the ability to report KPIs only previously dreamed of in an affordable, easy to manage application.
Total Reduction in Preventable Human Errors
The automated quality checklist system we designed for a client allowed them to reduce staffing by 60% while doubling shipments and reducing the level of preventable human errors by 100%
Significant Drop in Errors and Expired Product
The Expiration Date Recording application we developed took our client from manually tracking thousands of items in hundreds of supply rooms in their multiple locations, to a streamlined predictive system that allowed them to know immediately which items in a room were going to expire in the near term. Accuracy improved from 85% to over 99% and was accompanied by a labor savings of roughly 30%. The ability to move close dated products to higher use areas resulted in an approximate 60% savings in waste
Courier Tracking gives assurance about Continuity of Program
Our client had a sizeable courier fleet and needed to know if the program should be outsourced. However, they had no means of tracking the couriers. We created an app that recorded stops based upon GPS coordinates from their handheld scanners to capture data about route efficacy, time on the road, provide proof of delivery/pick up to stakeholders, and the nature and volume of items being moved. It provided the client with the needed data assurance to decide if the program should remain in-house or be outsourced.
Data Analytics: Data is Only Powerful if you Use It
If there is one thing that businesses have in abundance today, it is data. It is everywhere, but at the same time it often seems meaningless. Spreadsheets and Power BI can help wrangle it, but what does it tell you? What meaningful actions can you take from the mountains of data your business creates and collects each day? Data analytics has always been a passion for us, and today we utilize Power Query, Python in Excel, and Power BI to marry different data sources, and provide deeper insights into areas of interest in operations and finances.
Sales Leader
A client who worked in sales needed a competitive edge. By leveraging a publicly available API and Python in Excel, we created a prospecting tool that identified prospect’s line of business, likely competitors, any customers in that same line of business, and created a PowerPoint slide for the client’s pitch deck that highlighted how many competitors were already using their product. This resulted in a promotion for our client.
Gross Margin Mystery
Our client had never accurately calculated gross margin. It was due to a variety of factors – but primarily because their operations system did not support custom data extraction. Using an SQL connection and Excel in an on-premises gateway, we were able to extract the necessary data and build them a reliable gross margin dashboard by service line.
GTIN Lookup
Our client had a need to bulk research the GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) for medical devices to update item information in Workday Inventory. Using a one-by-one search was tedious and consumed a significant amount of labor hours. Using a publicly available API and Power Query, with an Excel spreadsheet as a client interface, we built a new solution. The client can now bulk lookup up to 200 items at one time, resulting in a process that takes a fraction of the original required time.
Streamline and Connect with Power Automate
The driving engine for retrieving data and creating applications that get results is typically Power Automate. This Microsoft powerhouse lets you connect various Microsoft and non-Microsoft applications, and build complex workflows. For example, every time a form response is received, copying those form results into a SharePoint List and sending someone a notification in Teams. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Automating routine tasks is the beginning. Leveraging Power Automate to enhance the capabilities of Power Apps and Power BI take it to the next level.
Prefill Vendor Forms
In building a Product Evaluation Application Suite for a client, we were challenged to find a method to minimize redundancy by pre-filling the vendor form from data entered in Power Apps. By utilizing Power Automate to collect the form response, we were able to build a parameterized link that pre-filled much of the data for the Vendor, eliminating redundant entries and reducing the chance of duplicates or incorrect entries
Refreshing the Dashboard
Building a Shipping Dashboard for a client was a large challenge because their data was housed in an on-premises server-based program that did not allow for customization. Using a Power Automate flow that scraped the data from the system every 30 seconds and put any new items into a SharePoint list allowed us to build a custom dashboard to prioritize, track progress on, and assign outgoing shipping tasks to associates. None of these options were available in the original system.
Generating Documentation
Power Apps has a native ability to generate PDFs, but their styling is limited and they tend to be extremely large. With Power Automate, you can pass Power Apps data into a flow and dynamically format custom reports – PDFs, CSVs, Excel files – all at the touch of a button. This has been useful with almost 100% of client’s applications.