Modernize and Enhance Your Project Management with the Power Platform

Oct 13, 2021Blog, Microsoft Power Platform, PowerApps

At GreenData, we work every day with customers that have tight deadlines, limited budget, and high expectations for quality project achievements.  We find that some customers want to create new processes and implement new solutions to manage their strategic projects.  In other cases, good practices can outgrow a tool, so our customers seek to find a new solution to fit their needs.  Then there’s the third case, where methods and tools are a pretty good match, but specific required capabilities are not present in the solution.  Every company is unique and has their own methodology for strategic execution – which makes it unlikely that any one solution will be a perfect fit. 

Microsoft Power Platform – a new way to approach the fit and finish of a complete solution

For decades the two main choices for implementing a technology solution to support an important business process was build or buy.  Building means a long and expensive period of development, followed by the continual need for break/fix support and the addition of new features as needs change. Buying means getting an imperfect but supported solution with new feature releases that may not may not follow the same evolutionary path as the business needs.    

Microsoft decided a new path was necessary that combines the best features of both build and buy – called the Power Platform.  Within this secure, supported environment, anyone can create “low code” applications, workflows, and reports.  All data is maintained and accessible in the “Dataverse” and industry standard application interface (APIs) allow for simple integration with almost any existing toolset.  This means companies can buy the solution that best fits their needs overall, but then use the Power Platform to add new capabilities and reporting that do not come “out-of-the-box.”   

Many companies are quickly jumping on-board with the Power Platform and asking technical resources to utilize the capabilities to streamline and modernize their mission-critical business applications.  GreenData has deep expertise in understanding and defining business needs, translating those to capabilities, and creating Power Platform solutions.  Because of this, we have been asked to lead many such initiatives. 

For example, one GreenData customer wanted to add the ability to capture, analyze and reports on project meeting details, project decisions, and many other categories of project meta-data that were not supported by their core project management solution.  They asked GreenData to design and build low-code Power Apps to address those requirements. 

GreenData Power App for tracking meeting minutes

GreenData Power App for tracking project decisions

GreenData Power App for tracking project decisions

Many simple apps were created utilizing modern, consistent design concepts with ease-of-use as a primary goal.  These apps work on a desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone and are platform independent. Once these were in use, reports combining data from the core system and data from the new apps were simple to create.  In a short period, this company was able to change the way they worked for the better. If you want to explore how the Power Platform could work for you – just let us know.