Empowering Everyone through Low-Code/No-Code Technology

When I was in high school, it was clear that Word Processing and working in Spreadsheets would be my future. My high school offered computer classes and I jumped at the chance to learn. When I entered the workplace, sure enough, they were there. I found Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, etc. and became their masters.

My children's future careers hold something very different, and it centers around Microsoft's mission statement: To empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more.

I used to think that coding would be the Word Processing and Spreadsheet of the future. Certainly, these tools (and email, chat, etc.) will be part of it, but there is a democratization of code happening with low-code/no-code tools that empower anyone to build out solutions that work on their terms. This is the culmination of all that empowerment Microsoft talks about. It is the democratization of Digital Transformation, putting it in the hands of everyone.

Automation

People have been trying to find ways to get out of working for centuries. Well, some people have. Others have been trying to offload simple tasks in favor of more complex, higher-value ones. Efficiencies have been built and built until they have royally messed with our corporate structures. This trend has led to employees wondering how much more blood employers could get from their collective stones.

Technology has led to (and continues to march toward) offloading commodity work to machines. While the cloud offers solutions like batch processing and serverless scripting, those tools are outside of the reach of everyday employees.

Power Automate allows anyone to connect to data and build workflows graphically. For example, I could create a button in SharePoint to email a list item to someone for follow-up or approval. This simple task could save hours of email back and forth. I could build a process that automatically saves all file attachments from my boss into a folder named "Critical" in my OneDrive.

Offloading these simple tasks or integrating them into your business workflow can free up time, allowing you to be more productive.

Data Visualization

Excel is a workhorse of modern business, there is no question. I have used Excel for analysis across IT inventories, pricing discussions, contract renewals, customer project timelines, and more. Pulling in data into Excel is pretty simple, but correlating data together across different data sets and pulling out insights can be difficult.

While PivotTables and PivotCharts do amazing things, crunching numbers and data processing on your local PC can slow performance. For those with large spreadsheets, it can be a real issue.

Excel tables, SQL databases, SaaS data platforms, and more can be connected to Power BI. Imagine importing your datasets and adding rich data visualizations that interact across charts. As you click around to a country, let's say, the charts all magically focus in on the relevant data to just that country. Not only that, but you can also use natural language to ask questions about your data!

Data visualizations surface insights into your data that you might not get with a spreadsheet alone. This can speed up the decision-making process and give you confidence in those decisions.

Application Development

I've been in technology since 1998. Since 2007, I have heard refrains of, "I have an idea for an app." Chances are, even if you aren't in tech, your brother, sister, roommate, doctor, barista, butcher, policeman, pastor, child, spouse, etc. has said the same thing.

Even with my 20 years+ experience in technology, I am no closer to developing an app than the day I graduated from college. This is simply a skill out of the reach of many.

PowerApps allows anyone to build applications through a graphical interface and pre-defined templates. You can connect to data sources, pull in data, and manipulate it. For example, I created a SharePoint list to track my team's activities for customers that aren't necessarily tied to sales opportunities. I fronted that list with a PowerApp that allows me to keep the list up to date on the go.

Applications that work the way you want or get things done on your terms is the next evolution of work.

Bringing it Together

You can bring these low-code/no-code tools together for an even more personalized experience around offloading or simplifying your workload.

For example, I recently attended a Financial Services conference. In preparing to meet potential Microsoft customers, I built a PowerApp based on an Excel spreadsheet of Microsoft sellers in Financial Services. I could look up a customer name and find their Microsoft Account Executive's name and email address. From there, I created a Power Automate button that would connect the customer with the Account Executive over email if they wanted to continue the conversation.

Like everything in Microsoft 365, Microsoft's Power Platform works best in concert with other tools.

Most importantly, these tools give you time back.

For more information on Power Platform, check out Sending Productivity Soaring.

For more information on my thoughts of the customer journey through the Microsoft technology stack, check out my thoughts at The New Microsoft is One Microsoft.