I could ramble off several mistakes people make when it comes to optimizing their productivity. I could also offer solutions to fix those mistakes. But in the end, I haven’t answered the most important question: how much time is it going to take to adopt the best solution?
In 2021, Forrester performed a TEI (Total Economic Impact™) study, and determined that the solutions built through Power Platform showed a 3% efficiency gain within a single organization and within the first year of adoption. Without a doubt I know this to be possible just by watching our trainers and operations team build out automation tools on the fly, but we also have the most knowledgeable training team out there. What if a non-technical person (like me) tried to build a solution through Power platform? Would the risk of wasting time learning how to build a Power Platform solution outweigh the reward?
Nate’s first webinar in the Power Platform series, Intro to the Microsoft Power Platform, showed the extraordinary possibilities of the program. The most recent webinar, Power Virtual Agents, focused on how fast a chatbot program can be built. So, based on these two webinars I had basic knowledge of how Power Platform communicates with data sources and saw an opportunity on how we gather monthly campaign data.
Instead of creating an app from scratch, I took Nate’s advice and looked at some of the templates Power Apps already had premade. I landed on a template called Meeting Capture, and started customizing from there. This was the result:
A small (but mighty) app that allows our team to keep our campaign themes top of mind while in our planning sessions. The form included (middle) was the only piece that was customized from the original template, and this piece allows us to input our themes / notes directly into the master planning doc without ever opening it. This app is still very new and already we are seeing the positive results:
- Instead of managing a meeting while wrangling a document with over 50-line items and 20 columns, there is now an app with only 8 fields to fill out.
- By only showcasing our main campaigns during these planning meetings we can uncover any missing pieces and key takeaways way ahead of time, rather than wasting time back tracking later on in the month.
- Time spent fulfilling post-meeting tasks have reduced since sending meeting notes, scheduling follow-up meetings, resharing meeting attachments, and data entry now happen in one app.
- Creative requests have significantly improved since all the information given to the creative team is in one place rather than multiple files.
- In the end, the one hour I spent building this simple app will help me save over 4 hours of time in any given month.
One of the biggest “aha” moments I had while learning and experiencing Power Platform for the first time is how it’s seamlessly intertwined with all other M365 apps, especially Teams. The more I learn about Power Platform the more I realize I’ve only scraped the surface of the individual apps and the power of combining them.
There are so many ways to continue building your knowledge when it comes to M365. Contact us and explain your training goals to our sales team. They’ll find the perfect class and training program for you. Or, take a look at our class schedule to see individual class availability. Review our M365 Dedicated Training Engagement packages if you’re training a full team. M365 classes (including Power Platform classes) are bundled together at one price AND the training sessions are private to your team.