Month: April 2024

In today’s fast-paced global business environment, process automation has become the need of the hour. Automation, when paired with advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics, can play a vital role in transforming businesses and delivering best-in-class products and services to end customers. 

Yet, the dependence on legacy systems and manual efforts makes it difficult for organizations to keep up with changing business needs and market fluctuations. Read on to learn more about the challenges organizations face in their day-to-day operations and how Power Apps helps overcome them via intelligent automation. 

Common Business Challenges

As businesses look to compete in today’s volatile business environment, they come face-to-face with many challenges that restrict them from achieving their goals.  

• Legacy systems: Most organizations continue to operate on a foundation of rigid, inflexible, and unsecured legacy systems. Built using proprietary technologies and offering a rather poor user experience, these systems are complex, and costly to maintain and dilute productivity. They also restrict the organization’s ability to respond to changing market conditions. It is estimated that at least $1.14 trillion is spent on the maintenance of legacy systems.
• Restricted data sharing: When teams work in silos and rely on systems that are poorly integrated, there is restricted data sharing. Outdated technology makes these systems incompatible with newer systems, resulting in poor decision-making. 
• Manual efforts: Despite the emergence of automation technologies, the manual overload on the modern workforce is substantial. Employees who are compelled to do most of their tasks manually face several issues, including poor morale, excessive burnout, and the inability to meet business objectives on time. Large financial institutions incur costs upward of $500 million a year by relying on manual customer due diligence processes.
• Over-dependence on IT teams: As technology gets increasingly integrated into the day-to-day workings of any business, there is also an over-dependence on IT teams. From addressing minor user experience issues to building new apps, solving integration problems, system failures, data loss, and more, today’s IT teams are overburdened with several competing priorities, leaving no time for strategic IT work. 
• Poor collaboration: With the hybrid work model here to stay, many businesses continue to face challenges in driving effective collaboration. With employees using different tools and working from different time zones, working together on projects and resolving issues in real time doesn’t come easy. According to a recent study, 86% of employees cite the lack of effective communication and collaboration as the main cause of workplace failure. 

The Business Case for PowerApps

Automation seems to be the first solution organizations embrace to solve business problems, streamline processes, and enhance decision-making. But in today’s era of volatility and change, simple automation tools are not enough. These tools need to be combined with advanced AI and ML technologies to deliver true business value. 

Microsoft Power Apps empowers users to build and leverage apps using the power of AI. As an intelligent automation tool, it allows users to make use of low-code/no-code capabilities and build the apps they need, regardless of their coding capability. By enabling organizations of all types and sizes to quickly build custom applications, Power Apps aids in the automation of workflows, driving high levels of agility, efficiency, and innovation in a fast-paced digital environment. 

Power Apps’ AI-enabled development, low-code capabilities, and enterprise-grade governance allow organizations to: 

• Simplify development and integration using trusted tools, extend app capabilities to specific tasks and roles, and reduce application development costs by 45%. For example, HR teams can build apps to get real-time visibility into employee data across training, leaves, and attendance, skills, and more. 
• Automate complex processes using the power of AI and have Copilot design the app they need. For example, finance teams can curate apps to digitize physical documents, automate the KYC process, and onboard customers quickly and more efficiently. 
• Improve workforce productivity via streamlined processes and improve business outcomes, resulting in business benefits of over $14.25 million. For instance, operations teams can use Power Apps to count objects in a warehouse or receive AI-powered insights into real-time inventory. 
• Ensure secure data sharing by making the most of advanced security and compliance capabilities. For instance, sales and marketing teams can connect disparate systems and share critical information about customers as they progress through the sales funnel. 

Streamlining Power Apps Implementation – The Role of a Partner 

Power Apps can help overcome many of the challenges organizations face daily. However, like any other technology implementation, there are many things to keep in mind while embracing Power Apps: 

• As a cloud-native system, Power Apps requires organizations to have some level of cloud maturity. Those not completely cloud-based are likely to have a few hurdles in realizing its full potential. 
• Power Apps’ ease of use puts the governance and scalability of the apps built by citizen developers a major issue. While this might not be an issue for small or localized implementations, the consequences might be far-reaching for enterprise-wide rollouts. 
• Licensing is another issue that comes with adopting Power Apps. Since the costs of embracing Power Apps depend on several factors like team size, existing Office 365 licenses, and capabilities, most organizations struggle with choosing the right plan. 
• Configuring Power Apps and ensuring they meet necessary functionality, performance, and availability requirements is another challenge that organizations face. 
• When employees who have created apps using Power Apps leave the organization, maintaining and managing these apps becomes difficult. 
• While building apps, existing data sources are completely exposed to citizen developers, which increases the risk of data theft, misuse, or breach. 

Successful Power Apps adoption requires the right approach and skill sets. A qualified partner can streamline the implementation process, allowing for long-term business benefits. 

With a Power Apps partner in tow, organizations can: 

• Undergo a detailed discovery session, understand the business case for Power Apps implementation, and address their immediate pain points, both from an IT and business perspective. 
• Get a detailed roadmap on how best to maximize value from Power Apps implementation and accentuate enterprise-level delivery. 
• Make the right decisions on which users can build apps to minimize the risks of shadow IT and data misuse. 
• Build a robust data security strategy, ensuring data is always encrypted and only accessed via strong access control mechanisms. 
• Understand and resolve larger business problems via comprehensive process automation, the integration of data-driven decision systems, and the adoption of collaborated enterprise analytics. 
• Achieve economies of scale via well-planned integration of Power Apps with various existing enterprise applications. 
• Get much-needed assistance on a Power Apps licensing model that makes the most sense for their users and business use case. 

As businesses drive efforts in enabling intelligent automation across various processes, Power Apps paves the way for high levels of efficiency, reliability, and agility. Although Power Apps allows organizations to solve business problems, streamline processes, automate tasks, and enhance decision-making, an implementation partner can provide vital guidance and tips for the best results. 

Learn how InovarTech can help you create true business value with automation!   

Last year, Google officially bid goodbye to the futuristic Google Glasses launched in 2013. 

It failed because of its clunky design, high cost, and customers’ concerns about data breaches and hacking. 

Amazon’s Fire Phone met a similar fate. The company launched the smartphone in 2014. However, it never gained popularity because of its bulky design, limited apps compared to Android and Apple, and unaffordable prices.

Both products failed because the companies did not fully understand the market and customer needs. Amazon, for example, underestimated the popularity of Google Play Store, Google Maps, YouTube, and Gmail. Customers could not access these popular apps, which became one of the main reasons for Fire Phone’s downfall.

Like Amazon and Google, many companies fail to see their innovations succeed. According to Harvard Business School, that number could be between 70% to 90%.

Failure in innovation could happen due to various reasons:

• Lack of practicality in ideas: The products were not designed properly, as in the case of Google Glass or Amazon Fire Phone. Google Glass was poorly designed, while Amazon Fire Phones were heavier than other smartphones. The product must address real-world needs and concerns for the idea to succeed. 

• Not understanding customer needs: A lack of research and understanding of customer needs could lead to building products that are not useful to customers.

• Lack of alignment with business objectives: Innovation cannot always happen in silos. After all, it involves the company’s resources, time, and money. It must align with the company’s overall objectives to deliver the desired outcomes.

• Not accounting risks: Most companies do not consider risks or unforeseen challenges while developing an innovative product. This could derail the plan and lead to early failures.

Luckily, it doesn’t have to always be this way. 

Innovation is not an impossible goal to achieve. At Inovar Tech, we call it the Art of Possible. It opens up a world of new possibilities for experimentation and growth.

To succeed, companies need a practical approach to building innovative products. 

Let me explain how it works.

Art of Possible – Bringing Practicality in Innovation

To build innovative products, companies must focus on solving real-world problems rather than building to demonstrate an innovative mindset.

This approach is called practical innovation.

Practical innovation is not just about developing new ideas. It is about turning those ideas into products that deliver tangible results. Innovation and practicality cannot function in silos. 

Practicality has to be baked into every step of innovation. 

Here are some ways to do it.

• Solve real-world problems

Do thorough research to understand the pain points of the customers. This will help you find solutions that will alleviate the customer’s problems. 

• Use multi-pronged approach

Don’t rely on a single approach to solve problems. For example, companies use a single tech stack to build products. A single tech stack could hinder innovation if it has limited features and does not evolve with time. 

Use a multi-pronged approach to consider multiple approaches to a problem. For example, multiple tech stacks provide more features and flexibility, making innovation easy.

There may not always be a correct answer, but a multi-pronged approach eliminates the assumption that there’s only one way to solve a problem. It encourages companies to find more solutions to solve problems and innovate. 

• Find the balance

Too much focus on creativity and innovation can pose several challenges. For example, complex interfaces and confusing navigation can lead to customer churn. Impractical products with no real-world use case can lead to wasted company resources and reputation damage. 

Find a balance between practicality and creativity to overcome these challenges. Define a clear goal, find multiple ways to achieve it, and choose the best solution after a thorough feasibility evaluation. 

• Take a customer-centric approach

Create detailed customer personas to understand the customers’ needs, behaviors, and pain points. Build products and features keeping these insights in mind. Once the product is ready, launch it to the most avid users for feedback. Conduct usability tests and customer surveys and seek reviews to identify areas of improvement. Implement their inputs to improve the product.

• Don’t forget the MVP

Don’t get distracted from the objective of building a practical product by including all shiny features. Develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with critical features and functionalities that solve real-world problems. Release it to the users to gather feedback and improve the product. This approach will accelerate the development cycle and save time on building products nobody wants. 

• Iterate always

Define the key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor and measure the metrics regularly. This will help you identify areas for improvement and iterate the product to achieve the business goals. Regular iterations will help keep pace with customer demands and stay innovative.

You must also collect feedback from customers and other stakeholders about the product, analyze it, and integrate the key takeaways to improve it. 

How To Decode The ‘Art of Possible’?

In a fast-paced business environment, balancing innovation and practicality can become challenging.

At Inovar, we understand this challenge well. That’s why we conduct workshops called the ‘Art of Possible’ to accelerate a company’s journey toward becoming a digital business.

In this workshop, we will walk you through our 4I framework: Inspire, Ideate, Innovate, and Integrate. 

In other words, through this workshop, we help you:

• Find inspiration for your digital innovation journey.
• Identify multiple opportunities to generate business ideas and capitalize on them.
• Build a roadmap and guide you through the innovation process.
• Brainstorm multiple strategies and implement the most viable to make the vision a reality.

From discovery to understanding challenges and conceptualizing innovative solutions, we will be with you throughout the process so that you can learn the impossible art of achieving practical innovation. 

To know more about our Art of Possible, contact us.