Become obsessed with Microsoft Power Platform
Microsoft Power Platform is a low-code solution for transforming service delivery. It’s likely that you’ve already invested in the software as part of your Microsoft 365 package, so with some time investment, you can do more with less.
With Microsoft Power Apps, you have the scope to quickly develop custom business apps. With Power Automate, you can easily automate repetitive tasks such as handling invoicing slips and responding to enquiries. While Power BI offers a comprehensive view of information by consolidating disparate data sources into a centralised, self-service reporting system.
Last year we worked with Northumberland County Council and they used our expertise in Power Apps, Power Automate and Dataverse to improve service delivery. As our partnership develops, we’re not only creating more efficient services but also upskilling council staff and increasing their confidence using Microsoft Power Platform.
Solving your challenges
Local Authorities are under extreme pressure to maintain service delivery with already stretched resources. Cross agency collaboration, citizen engagement and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are three areas we get asked about all the time. Power Platform can help you out across all three of these areas, and we can advise on how to make them work for your organisation.
Cross agency collaboration
From automating simple cross-agency comms with Power Automate, to data layer integration via Connectors and even creating collaboration portals via Power Pages – there are a multitude of ways to enable cross-agency collaboration using Power Platform that allow for receipt or sharing of data in a safe and secure way.
Citizen engagement
Citizens expect a brilliant user experience. They expect to be able to access government services with a limited amount of friction and they want it at their fingertips. With Power Pages you can build custom citizen facing portals quickly, or use the wider Power Platform to integrate with existing citizen engagement platform. For example, if you need a web app to register and track sign-ups for a children’s holiday club or a booking web app for hiring rooms in council buildings, it is possible to build these in under four weeks.
RPA
Many council employees are working with legacy desktop systems and are still doing lots of tasks manually. Each task might only take you a few minutes, but these build up over the course of a month and take up precious time. Power Automate Desktop can be set up to process repetitive tasks such as handling invoicing slips, responding to enquiries or even sending holiday requests. This gives employees time back to spend on delivering vital services. Power Automate includes the ability to perform Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Digital Process Automation (DPA), meaning that strategies to move away from the underlying legacy systems are supported.
Your Digital Strategy
There have generally been two modes of Digital Strategy available to Local Authorities – bespoke solutions, which are custom-made but expensive, and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, which are ready-made but often force Local Authorities to adopt processes that do not fit well. Power Platform provides a 3rd low-code strategy, allowing for the creation of custom solutions with less coding, making them less expensive than a bespoke strategy, but more flexible than COTS products. This new strategy allows resource constrained Local Authorities to introduce digital solutions quicker and with less effort.
How Marra can help
We work with Microsoft Power Platform every day. We understand how versatile it can be and the opportunity it presents to support service delivery. It’s a complex piece of software and we can work with you to empower your team. Whether this be to have our expert eyes audit your existing set up and recommend how to optimize existing processes, deliver some one-off training or be your trusted delivery partner on an end-to-end build.
As a Microsoft Power Platform specialist, we’re seeing significant take up of this low-code platform across Local Government. We understand the need for robust governance and security when deploying this technology. There’s an important balance between driving innovation at pace versus ensuring a well-governed and supported environment. This is why we have developed a Power Platform Centre of Excellence model specifically for Local Authorities. This is not just guidance but a real-word operational capability that accelerates transformation where it’s needed most.
If you’d like a chat about some of the challenges you’re facing, or hear more about establishing a Centre for Excellence then get in touch with us today.
Written by Jo McGovern, COO
