Power Experience | Step 5 Proof of Concept

The journey continues, my friends. We have highlighted The Power Experience | LinkedIn your 7-step guide to evaluating the Power Platform. During our journey we have covered Step 1 | Executive Alignment, Step 2 Governance + Power Team, Step 3 | In a Day, and Step 4 | Hackathon.

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We will again, cannonball, into why you're likely here in the first place, building a proof of concept.

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We would like to shout out to our latest and greatest set of tools Copilot and AI. If you haven't heard, perhaps the stone tablet needs refreshing, but it's the best thing since sliced bread which allows you to build apps and flows with natural language and a host of other futuristic features which are outlined quite nicely on Copilot for Power Apps - Microsoft Official

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For additional information on AI and Copilot, check out AI Copilot overview - Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

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While there are great on Official learning paths and modules | Microsoft Learn, if you're interested in more than the self-taught version of this choose your own adventure, stick with us here and we'll help you knock this POC out of the park.

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First of all… resources are great but the right resources, at the right time, can be a game changer. Think through a project you've led or something you heard about where your team had reverse engineered perpetual energy or something slightly less complex like a process for work.

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It's great to have a place to start and ensure you're on the right path. Your resources at Microsoft like Solution Specialists and Technical Specialist are great first responders to ensure this proof of concept will meet and exceed expectations. Other resources include, Global Black Belts, Engineering, Executives and a host of insightful groups like the Microsoft Technology Centers and Microsoft Experience Centers are a great compliment to your Account Team.

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Before you get out your s'mores for the fire your about to start on the POC, you'll want to take a good review through steps 1 through 4 to ensure your firm is set up properly to have a successful sprint.

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Partner Prep

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When you are all set to go, make sure the Partner you engaged has the expertise to architect and build the solution you intend to show to your colleagues and executives. More often than not, Partners are great however it's usually a best practice to interview three partners and introduce them to the team for consult prior to moving forward with a POC or other work.

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Your Microsoft resources are also a great sounding board to validate a partner. Keep in mind, some Partners have a great reputation but may be struggling to put the right team together for your project. Other partners may be tiny but mighty and could bring a great, tight knit team, for a fraction of the cost - but lack brand recognition.

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Either way, before you get your POC fire stoked too hot, make sure the Partner has a Master Services Agreement in place with your firm or you will have challenges getting them access to your internal network.

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Define the Problem

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The saying… if I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes defining it, 5 minutes solving it, and then have a mojito. There is truth in some of that - hopefully, you agree.

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When the Power Team describes the problem, it's good to have the right folks in the room to collaborate and ensure we are responding to a real business need.

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Processes, workflow, and nearly every interaction at work, can be automated. I'll take answer d) false. But come to think of it, when you have a real world job at a real world firm doing real world work… the last think you want is to be bogged down with menial, repetitive tasks, that add little value to your impact.

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For a hot second, think like a person who designs sustainable widgets. In this job, you need to increase your efficiency of widget production while delivering zero waste. Same is true for how you show your accomplishments to your boss during reviews.

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While each task you perform at work could be more efficient and save you time, your ability to be more efficient, more accurate, and deliver more widgets at scale, can have an enormous impact on your firm's productivity and profitability.

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Selecting the Use Case

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When you are all geared up for efficiency, have your partner selected, and have the Microsoft Team engaged, you're ready to select a use case for your POC.

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Similarly to the hackathon, POCs can be set up as a single use case for a single team. If there is an appetite for some friendly competition, multiple POCs can be set up between multiple teams with results published for scoring by the executive team. Again, results should encourage increased revenue - efficiency - productivity - sustainability - net income - earnings per share… and decreased cost - risk…etc. Your firm's KPIs may be a more fitting measurement however, stating the obvious, these categories here are a good place to start.

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You and the Power Team will be a better judge for which use cases are the right fit for this POC. Keep in mind, some use cases will be small but have massive value. Some use cases will be big and have no value - hopefully these will get tabled early. Most use cases will serve a team or a division. Check out this list of publicly available use cases to start thinking of the possibilities.

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Moving the POC to Production

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Prior to moving the POC to production, you'll want to have another mojito, but not before you get the environment ready for prime time. Keep in mind the Center of Excellence (CoE) overview - Power Platform | Microsoft Learn and Application lifecycle management (ALM) with Microsoft Power Platform - Power Platform | Microsoft Learn or Software Development Life Cycle - SDLC will need to be ready. It's usually a good practice to keep these motions in tandem to the Step 1 and on-going to ensure the environment is well equipped to handle scale.

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Speaking of CoE and ALM… we'll catch you real soon to deep dive into how these can impact your firm's growth on Power Platform.

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But wait… there's more! (a teaser for a future step…)

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ROI + Benefits

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We recently completed the Power Experience with a number of firms with around 50,000 employees. Out of their couple hundred use cases we distilled the benefits down to an average of approx. $300K per app, annually. While this was a customized Business Value Assessment (BVA), we have other tools like a Business Value Insight (BVI), we can bring to your firm early in the process to find the gold bricks aka… value.