The implementation of business development and management tools such as Microsoft’s PowerApps and Flow can be invaluable.

PowerApps enables users to build business-centric apps to streamline tasks and make work processes more efficient, while Flow triggers workflow events and ends them with an action in response to the event.

But how do these programs actually positively impact a business and by how much?  For those of us looking for an understanding of the numbers, read on.

The ‘Forrester Total Economic Impact of PowerApps and Microsoft Flow’ report has summarised some impressive key findings.

Key findings:

Average cost to develop an application is 70% less when using PowerApps and Flow

For applications that can be developed using these tools, the development effort, professional services fees and vendor applications purchase costs are much lower.  As well as this, the effort to maintain code and mange those applications is less.  Over the study conducted by Forrester, $3.5 million in costs were avoided when using these Microsoft tools.

PowerApps and Flow increases process automation and efficiencies

The applications and workflows that were created digitised existing paper-based processes.  Mobile workers especially benefited from these process improvements, where efficiency was improved on average by 15% with $5.32 million in process efficiencies achieved.

Employees make better and faster decisions from better access to information

Much of the development work completed with PowerApps and Flow enables faster collection of information from first-line workers and transferal to decision-makers in a more usable format.  This means better decisions can be made based on data sets that are larger and closer to real-time.

Mobile applications developed with PowerApps and Flow are more secure

Because these applications and workflows tie into Active Directory (AD) and other Microsoft security solutions, IT can control permissions at the data and application levels.  When users build in these tools, it also helps to reduce shadow IT, enhancing security.

Typical ROI and expected break-even period:

If you'd like to learn more about how to use PowerApps and Flow so your business can reap the benefits, check out our PowerApps courses and Office 365 courses.

 

 

Image credits:  Forrester's 'The Total Economic Impact of PowerApps and Microsoft Flow'