To support investment decisions, Microsoft commissioned a 2024 Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study that quantified Power Platform’s impact. The study highlights a 224% ROI, USD82 million in net-present value (NPV), and a payback period of under six months. These benefits stem from reduced development timelines and IT costs, time savings for users, and faster revenue growth from quicker solution deployment. 

The even better news: these figures don’t account yet for the transformational capabilities of generative AI. Currently, Microsoft is seeing organizations create workflow automations two times faster and developers successfully build low-code applications at a 60% higher success rate. 

The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Power Platform

Explore the cost savings, efficiency gains, and revenue growth that organizations experienced using Microsoft Power Platform.

Read the report

Over time, we expect time savings for users and developers, IT costs savings, and topline revenue growth to dramatically increase as generative AI matures.  

For now, we encourage you to learn how customers are maximizing their current low-code investments below—and learn how you can do the same. 

Accelerate development timelines by 35% with low-code 

Microsoft Power Platform has enabled organizations to significantly reduce development and IT costs by significantly streamlining the creation of solutions and automations.  

By combining traditional development environments with Microsoft Power Platform’s low-code tools, companies have accelerated their development processes by 35%, allowing them to bring new solutions to market faster and with fewer resources.  

This efficiency gain, combined with the ability to replace costly legacy tech stacks, has resulted in substantial savings. For example, the Forrester study found that the composite organization was able to reduce their tech stack expenses by up to 80% within three years and cut support staff by up to nine full-time employees.

Time isn’t the only thing enterprises are saving by investing in low code tools for developers. Companies like G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers, who was not interviewed for the Forrester study, used Microsoft Power Platform to achieve over USD1.5 million in savings by streamlining development and reducing costs. Their IT team quickly built apps like a Store Audit app that saved USD100,000 in external development costs and a Parking Lot app developed in one day, saving drivers time and reducing delivery costs.

The Forrester study found that the composite organization achieved a risk-adjusted total of USD43.6 million in direct development and IT cost savings over three years, demonstrating Microsoft Power Platform’s powerful impact on operational efficiency and cost reduction. 

Complete tasks 25% faster with Microsoft Power Platform 

Microsoft Power Platform has proven to be a transformative tool for organizations, enabling significant time savings and increased productivity across various departments. By building solutions with low-code products such as Microsoft Power Apps, Microsoft Power Automate, and Microsoft Power Pages, organizations have streamlined processes that took weeks, now completing them in hours or minutes.

For instance, one energy customer Forrester spoke to reported savings of USD1 million, with a third of that coming directly from employee time savings. In another case, a financial services firm reduced an up-to-six-week manual HR process to just one hour, freeing up resources for more strategic initiatives.  

Additionally, while they were not interviewed for this particular TEI study, EY separately reported that they used Microsoft Power Platform to create PowerMatch, an app that increased automatic payment clearing rates in their SAP system from 30% to 80% and improved matched payments to 95%. PowerMatch is set to save EY 230,000 hours annually, illustrating the time saving capabilities of low-code solutions. 

On average, organizations have seen a 25% reduction for users in the time required to complete key processes improved using Microsoft Power Platform, translating into a risk-adjusted total of USD44.4 million in time savings over three years. This efficiency not only drives operational improvements, but also empowers teams to focus on innovation and value creation. 

Revenue increased by 7% by empowering employees 

Microsoft Power Platform has proven to be a catalyst for topline revenue growth by notably improving the time to market for new solutions, enabling organizations to better meet customer needs and capitalize on market opportunities.  

By rapidly building and iterating on prototypes, businesses have swiftly adapted to client feedback, enhancing user experience and maintaining competitive market share. For example, companies using Microsoft Power Platform have seen up to 7% of their revenue growth directly attributable to these accelerated processes, resulting in a risk-adjusted total of USD15.4 million in additional revenue over three years.  

This capacity to quickly deliver tailored solutions not only strengthens customer loyalty but also drives net new business, contributing to substantial revenue increases across impacted areas.  

For example, one head of new product at a manufacturing organization said, “By being able to deliver the right product to the customer, we’re getting additional orders from repeat customers. We avoid churn because customers are not going to competitors. We’re getting net new customers. For certain parts of our organization, our revenue increased by 18% to 20%, split between net new customers and repeat customers.”

Customers such as Lerøy Seafood Group, who was not interviewed for this TEI study, separately shared they used Microsoft Power Platform to streamline operations and drive millions in savings annually—contributing to topline revenue. Key innovations that drove savings and revenue increases included apps that optimized production schedules and improved fish weight estimation accuracy, to the tune of USD8 million annually. 

Get a custom business value assessment today

And the implementation of Microsoft Power Platform goes beyond quantifiable benefits, offering organizations a robust foundation for future growth, improved governance, and enhanced employee satisfaction.  

Organizations are reporting reduced risks of shadow IT by empowering employees to solve problems with low-code tools and governance via embedded tools such as Managed Environments. This not only strengthens compliance and security, but also leads to a more engaged and satisfied workforce. 

As businesses continue to explore new opportunities, the flexibility and scalability of Microsoft Power Platform position it as a key enabler of digital transformation, driving long-term success and sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive market. 

We invite you to read the Forrester Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Power Platform report and sign up for a custom business value assessment with your Microsoft Power Platform specialist. 

The post Reduce development times and increase ROI with Microsoft Power Platform  appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

And it couldn’t come at a better time, because technology has a talent problem. There’s just not enough high-tech talent in the pipeline to help organizations develop and maintain the complex software solutions they need to stay competitive.¹

Microsoft Power Platform

Embrace the benefits of AI and low-code with Microsoft Power Platform.

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And the work is indeed complex. Developers need to solve challenges around user interface design, storage requirements, security, compliance, and scalability in their work, and finding the right talent to meet challenges is difficult.

The problem is compounded with the amount of work that needs to get done. Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) have to manage growing app backlogs and pushed-back schedules for the development of the apps they know they need, and a general lack of resources for talent and software makes the outlook for new custom apps unclear. 

With more development work to be done than there are developers to do it, many CIOs and CTOs are looking to AI and low-code solutions to transform their application development approach and strategy.

AI and low-code are helping in three ways:

1. Increasing developer productivity
2. Automating repetitive tasks
3. Boosting the skills and abilities of non-developers who can now make meaningful contributions to development

Let’s look at those benefits in detail. 

Increasing developer productivity while remaining compliant and secure

The first thing that low-code can do for a team of developers is enable it to work more quickly with no tradeoff in attention to compliance and security.

As described in a recent white paper on generative AI disruption in software from McKinsey, putting AI and low-code into the hands of developers can improve productivity by as much as 45%, something which can lower code development costs considerably.

At Microsoft, we’ve observed the effectiveness ourselves. In a review of the first 126,000 organizations using Microsoft Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps, developers say using Copilot makes them faster (80%) and more satisfied with their work (65%). What’s more, the developers using Copilot have a 60% higher success rate than the developers who don’t.

But it’s not all about speed. Low-code solutions don’t just accelerate development—they ensure support of standards for security and compliance, so all the newfound speed doesn’t compromise safety. And low-code makes developers into better developers, too. It amplifies existing talent and experience to help developers identify roadblocks, find solutions, and dream up new innovations.

Visit the Microsoft Power Platform website to learn more.

Automating repetitive coding tasks   

AI-powered development tools excel at automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks that drain the fun out of development work. A routine chore like debugging code can make a developer do the same find-and-fix tasks repeatedly. And development work is filled with necessary but repetitive tasks.

With AI and low-code, writing boilerplate code, debugging, conducting routine software maintenance, performing code reviews, and managing deployments can be done by an AI assistant, allowing the developer to work on the interesting, creative challenges that drive business impact.

We’ve seen this ourselves at Microsoft. In a recent survey—quantifying GitHub Copilot’s impact on developer productivity and happiness—96% of respondents say AI increases their speed with repetitive tasks. They also say using AI makes them happier. Between 60% and75% of surveyed users said using the tool makes them feel less frustrated when coding and free to focus on more satisfying work.

Boosting the skills and abilities of non-developers

With AI and low-code, organizations can bring non-developers into the development process so they can help create apps and innovate alongside their developer colleagues. Democratizing development enhances an organization’s agility and flexibility.

Business users won’t need extensive coding expertise because AI and low-code let them contribute through natural language inputs, like “create a sales report dashboard” or “automate customer follow-up emails”. Additionally, business users can learn to build their applications faster than ever with the ability to query in-product assistants that can help them build in real time.

By equipping citizen developers with intuitive, low-code tools, they can autonomously create applications that address immediate business needs, such as a mobile app for onsite invoice submissions. This not only reduces the burden of manual tasks but also ensures more accurate data collection and enhances the efficiency of frontline workers. Meanwhile, professional developers can dedicate their expertise to more complex, strategic projects that propel the organization forward. This symbiotic relationship between low-code and traditional development practices fosters an environment where technical agility and innovation thrive, ultimately propelling the organization’s technical velocity to new heights.

When the AI and low-code development tools that an organization uses allow for simplified cross-platform integration as Microsoft Power Platform does, they can break down barriers and ensure business users receive the right oversight and collaborative inputs from colleagues’ developer and IT teams.

Next steps for CIOs and CTOs

If you want to fully embrace the benefits of AI and low-code by incorporating a solution into your tech stack at scale, consider a strategic plan that addresses the following:

• Identify high-impact use cases to begin testing. Determine what type of solutions would benefit your organization most: Do you need web or mobile apps for employees or customers? A website with customizable content management, styling, and data access requirements? Or perhaps custom AI agents that handle specific tasks? Once you’ve identified the best pilot project, implement the solution to deliver quick wins and demonstrate the value of AI and low-code. Document successes and share them to build momentum within your organization.

• Manage risks by ensuring data security and regulatory compliance. It’s important to choose an enterprise solution like Microsoft Power Platform that includes governance, management, and monitoring capabilities. With your solution in place, you can then establish a governance framework to maintain control, such as setting up regular review meetings to ensure compliance and having your IT department or risk management team conduct periodic risk assessments.

• Build a low-code center of excellence. With governance in place and some development wins under your belt, think about upskilling your workforce. Offer tailored programs to upskill both developers and non-developers, promoting continuous learning and cross-functional collaboration, such as hosting workshops and interactive training sessions, where your low-code users and developers can work together. The Microsoft Power Platform Adoption website has workbooks, best practices, and training materials to support organizations with this endeavor.

By following these steps, you can effectively integrate AI and low-code solutions like Microsoft Power Platform, bridging the development gap and driving innovation in your organization.

Visit the Microsoft Power Platform website to learn more.

Source:

¹ Forbes, Research: quantifying GitHub Copilot’s impact on developer productivity and happiness, March 6, 2023

The post Fast track development with AI and low-code appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

With AI and low-code development tools, IT teams can tackle the problems they know best on their own, without additional assistance from outsider developers. Putting AI-powered low-code development tools in the hands of pro developers is like handing over the keys to a solution machine. With vast, built-in app-building knowledge and conversational language prompts that guide beginners and turbo-boost pros, AI can speed the time to build solutions for the unique needs of your IT department.

By using AI and low-code development, IT teams can build smart, fast solutions to their own problems—problems exacerbated by growing demands on data. CIOs who can bring AI-powered low-code and no-code solutions to their employees are putting their organizations in prime position to drive innovation.

Use cases for an AI-powered, low-code development platform abound, especially in an organization’s IT department, but we’ll focus on the five things we’d imagine IT teams would want to start doing if they were empowered with those tools today.

1. Offloading boring, repetitive, and mundane tasks to custom AI assistants

Imagine getting your team to use a low-code development platform to build a self-service assistant capable of handling the most common IT support requests in real time.

Instead of writing code, beginner and pro developers on the team can use simple, everyday English to guide the development process, speeding things along. And if your platform can connect with knowledge base systems like Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Copilot Studio do, then they can build a tool that automates the retrieval of documentation, FAQs, and previous support tickets so employees who need help can get accurate support without the need for human intervention.

Even if your organization still relies on legacy IT systems, AI and low-code can build bridges to older tools with UI, API, DPA, and RPA automation capabilities that can help automate tasks like data entry, report generation, and system monitoring that would otherwise dominate time and tie up people.

To find out how Copilot Studio can help your organization’s IT department, try a demo today.

2. Providing a secure, streamlined process for resetting employee passwords

To dig deeper into AI and low-code development to build tools that automate mundane tasks, consider the process for resetting employee passwords—something that comes with considerable security implications.

With AI-powered low-code development tools, an IT team can create a secure, streamlined process for resetting employee passwords that gets employees back online while enhancing overall identity management.

For instance, a system could be built that verifies user identity through multi-factor authentication (MFA) and biometric checks. Once the requester has been reviewed and approved as authorized, reset instructions could be passed along automatically, minimizing downtime for the employee requesting the reset while allowing IT support staff to focus on other tasks.

The system could also analyze user patterns to detect and flag suspicious activity, like too many reset attempts or reset requests originating from an unusual location, adding an extra layer of protection. With low-code platforms, these complex identity verification processes can be implemented quickly and efficiently, reducing the burden on IT staff while maintaining high security standards.

3. Empowering employees to troubleshoot technical issues through self-service

Some technical issues require human intervention, but many don’t. To free your human experts for your organization’s most challenging problems, help them design the self-service solution that could handle the most common requests that dominate their time.

For example, consider a complaint about a slow computer.

A generative AI-enabled self-service tool developed with AI on a low-code platform hears the user’s “slow computer” complaint, and then runs a series of diagnostic tests to determine the issue. Once the issue has been identified, the tool can generate instructions on what to do next.

This allows your IT experts to focus on more complex and critical problems, improving overall productivity and support quality within the organization.

To see how your IT department can use AI-powered low-code development to build a self-service help desk assistant with Copilot Studio, try a demo today

4. Making sure the right human beings get assigned the right tasks

About those complex and critical problems requiring human intervention—AI can actually help with making sure incoming helpdesk requests get to the right human agents.

Take the self-service tool we described above. Through the process of scanning incoming helpdesk requests, it can identify details that could help with prioritization and delegation. Once an issue’s urgency, complexity, and possible impact on the organization has been considered, the tool can direct tasks requiring human assistance to the teams or individuals best suited to help.

That way, team members can focus on what they do best, swiftly resolving critical issues and timely handling of less urgent tasks. This not only optimizes resource allocation, but also enhances overall service quality and response times within the IT department.

5. Logging service tickets and providing automatic status updates

Finally, instead of having to field status questions from waiting users, the IT team can build itself a tool for handling the task automatically.

On low-code platforms like Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot Studio, for example, the process would be easy. Without extensive coding knowledge, an IT team member could build an AI assistant that connects to whatever IT service management (ITSM) platform the company uses, and runs through the steps of creating, assigning, and updating tickets automatically, providing update notifications to employees via email, Teams, or other communication platforms.

If the team integrates its assistant with a network monitoring tool, it could even detect some likely issues before they have a chance to impact users. For example, if a connected monitoring tool detects an issue, the helpdesk assistant can create a ticket in the ITSM system that includes details from the monitoring tool alert, assigns an accurate priority level, and enables swift resolution of the issue.

Integrating AI and low-code can transform your IT strategy

We’ve walked through just a few examples of how IT departments can begin with AI-powered low-code development right away, but many more use cases, workflows, and connections are possible.

Integrating AI and low-code development tools revolutionizes IT departments by streamlining processes, enhancing productivity, and enabling rapid innovation. From automating repetitive tasks to improving ticket resolution times and empowering self-service troubleshooting, AI-powered low-code solutions unlock immense potential for IT teams.

By adopting these tools, organizations can optimize resource allocation, facilitate timely responses, and drive continuous improvement.

Start using AI-powered low-code development today to transform your IT strategy and stay ahead in the digital landscape. To find out how Copilot Studio can help your organization’s IT department, try a demo today.

The post 5 ways IT departments can get started with low-code and AI  appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

You can quickly: 

• Create low-code web and mobile apps, using Microsoft Power Apps, with complex security requirements, which are cross-platform and easy to deploy. 
• Integrate with internal and external systems using more than 1,000 connectors and robotic process automation, using low-code Microsoft Power Automate flows. 
• Publish websites, using Microsoft Power Pages, that have complex membership, content management, visual styling, and data access requirements.

Yes, ok, you’re highly likely to have heard all this before, and you may be thinking that all this talk of “low-code” is more hype than reality. With the advent of the age of AI where copilot is being used to build apps using natural language, you may even think that low-code is only for simple, low-usage applications in teams that do not have access to professional developers. Does it really suit large-scale application development that must adhere to a strict set of enterprise architecture requirements? And what about supporting all this low-code as it grows in complexity? Wouldn’t it be better to build using traditional software development tools right from the beginning and prevent any costly rewrites when the demands and complexity becomes too high for low-code. 

Let’s forget about low-code (for a minute)

Do you respond with a resounding yes to the questions above? If so, and you are a professional software developer, then this doesn’t surprise me, and I’m not sure that the term “low-code” is always that helpful when trying to describe Microsoft Power Platform. 

“Wait, what now?” Well, just hear me out!  

There’s no doubt that there’s a huge and growing demand for application development. We’re building new apps, modernizing existing apps, and adding innovations through AI and connectivity with Microsoft 365. Starting a development project requires making tough decisions, such as which technology to use for the data access layer, how security will be managed, and how to scale your app. The level of abstraction we choose often dictates the speed at which the software can be built, and there are tradeoffs between productivity, flexibility, and cost. Using Microsoft Azure services such as Microsoft Azure API Management is a good example of where the benefits, such as easy deployment and subscription access control features, outweigh the licensing and implementation constraints. With this in mind, following are some of the ever-growing features of Microsoft Power Platform, looked at through the lens of the software development tooling you may already be familiar with. 

Building business applications fast 

Business applications can be complex to develop due to the high number of factors that need to be considered, such as user interface design, storage requirements, security, compliance, and scalability. Microsoft Power Platform makes building business applications easier. 

• Responsive and accessible applications can be developed once and then used across multiple platforms on desktop or mobile devices. 
• Reusable UI components are built using React that can be assembled using a drag-and-drop interface. 
• React components can be developed and deployed using Microsoft Visual Studio Code for single application use or shared between multiple projects via a centralized repository. 
• Apps can be easily deployed as packages that include both metadata components, compiled code, and data import files. If required, canvas apps can be distributed as native mobile apps to end users through Microsoft Intune, Visual Studio App Center, Google Play store, and Apple Business Manager. 
• Native offline support uses a local MySQL database, and automatically stores data operations to be automatically replayed once reconnected to the network. 
• Test Engine uses Playwright to execute user interface tests as part of automatic testing pipelines. 
• Microsoft Power Platform CLI can be used to automate all parts of solution development, deployment and environment management using Azure PowerShell, Microsoft Azure Pipelines, or GitHub actions. 
• Public facing websites can be quickly created using Power Pages, and then edited using Visual Studio Code. These sites that use Azure-deployed ASP.NET as the backend, have automatic content delivery network (CDN) and caching support. Sites can use the built-in Web API with a configurable security provider to create complex single or multi page applications. 

Everything connected 

With data stored in so many places within your organization—and external services often being vital to business processes—integration and connectivity are crucial for successful business solutions. Microsoft Power Platform makes integration easier.  

• A library of more than 1,000 connectors can be used to create event-driven orchestrations that are built on top of Microsoft Azure Logic Apps and OpenAPI, but without the need for Azure subscription setup and deployment. 
• Microsoft Visual Studio can be used to create ASP.NET Web APIs that can easily be deployed as custom connectors. Debugging using dev tunnels is easy when using the Visual Studio Microsoft Power Platform Connected Services configuration. 
• Dataverse Synapse Link and Dataverse Link to Microsoft Fabric data can be used for real-time analytics within OneLake. 
• Dataflows in Microsoft Power Platform use Power Query to import or synchronize data from diverse data sources. 

Data platform as a service 

Storing data in a secure, performant, and scalable way is vital to every business application’s success. Microsoft Power Platform makes this easier using Microsoft Dataverse to underpin all its tools. 

• Dataverse is a highly available, cloud-based data platform that is built upon Azure, providing all the robustness, scalability, compliance, and security that you’re used to with Microsoft Azure SQL, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Data Lake, and Microsoft Azure Blob Storage. 
• Data can be relational, blob, or unstructured, and is metadata-driven so that it can be accessed in a highly contextual way. Fully functional apps can automatically be built using this metadata, and AI can be used to query using natural language. 
• Uptime guarantees and monitoring tools give you complete visibility of your data without the need for building additional logging and monitoring solutions. 
• An Open Data Protocol (OData) Web API and connector is available to interact with your data and expose it to other applications that can be built using traditional software tools. 
• The Dataverse SQL endpoint is used to automatically create compelling and visually appealing Microsoft Power BI dashboards and reports. 
• C# can be used to extend Dataverse with custom business logic and create custom APIs that run inside the Dataverse platform. 
• Native integration with Microsoft Azure Service Bus makes it easy to extend using Microsoft Azure Functions, Microsoft Azure Event Hubs, and Microsoft Azure Event Grid. 
• Virtual tables allow non-Dataverse data sources to be surfaced, queried, and linked to standard Dataverse tables. Out-of-the-box support for Azure SQL, SharePoint, and C# custom providers makes it extremely easy to build apps upon multiple data sources in a unified way.
• Built-in audit log capabilities and long-term data retention features allow you to track changes and retain unlimited data long term in a cost-efficient way, without the need for any added development or management. 
• Dataverse search gives users a fast, AI-powered way of finding data and documents within Dataverse.  

Native AI support 

• Conversational bots that use Azure Bot Service can be quickly configured, trained, and deployed to be used inside Microsoft 365 or external facing websites. 
• Complex AI models can be trained in document, image, and sentiment recognition and then easily deployed and used in business applications. 
• Microsoft Copilot Studio supports building natural language conversational AI copilots that can be built using a graphical UI and trained on data for internal or external scenarios.  
• Copilot plugins can be built using OpenAPI connectors in combination with prompt engineering. 
• Copilots can be automatically added to business applications to give a natural language interface to data and information that is most relevant to the user.  

Performance and scale 

Microsoft Power Platform is built on Azure and is already tried and proven so that you don’t need to build your own platform. With automatic elastic scale, it can manage thousands of users and terabytes of data. Where performance cannot be met due to the tradeoffs that come from a higher level of abstraction, Microsoft Power Platform can be extended using lower-level tools and technologies, and connected through the many extension-points such as custom connectors, custom controls, Service Bus integration, and C# plugins. Many of these extensions can be deployed using Microsoft Power Platform solutions to make versioning and dependency management easier. 

Consumption and licensing 

It can often be extremely difficult to calculate the cost of Azure resources required by an application that you’re building once it is deployed. With Microsoft Power Platform comes a higher degree of predictability of cost through seat-based licensing, with consumption-based licensing being applied to services such as AI Builder and Copilot Studio copilots.  

The pay-as-you-go plan for Power Apps and Power Automate does give you the flexibility to use an Azure subscription if you prefer a pure consumption-based model. 

So, what about low-code? 

A common challenge in software development is that there are simply not enough hours in the day. It is generally accepted that adding more developers to a team does not always mean higher productivity. Adoption of new tools or technologies is usually driven by the desire to write less code to make the development process faster, less prone to bugs, and to make it easier to meet standards—especially around security. This is exactly what Microsoft Power Platform does for professional software development. Yes, there are tradeoffs, but as with all technology choices, the benefits are balanced against the drawbacks. Microsoft Power Platform provides a huge degree of functionality with minimal coding—making development much easier and faster. Where needed, it can be extended using traditional languages such as C# and TypeScript, deployed to cloud or even on-premises servers. So low-code is more about less code, and the less code we write, the easier it is to maintain, support, and upgrade—leaving more time for innovation on new features. Any software libraries that we might have used to speed up development before always need to be kept up to date to avoid deprecations and security vulnerabilities. An often-overlooked benefit of writing less code is that Microsoft Power Platform always keeps up-to-date with security patching, and very infrequently removes a feature. Multiple years notice is given before it is. 

But should everyone really develop apps? 

In addition to reducing the time and effort needed to build software, Microsoft Power Platform can also lower the barrier to entry, enabling those without traditional software development skills to build low-code solutions. 

As a professional developer, you may think that giving everyone access to build apps would cause software to be created that does not follow your organization’s IT policies and standards. With Microsoft Power Platform’s focus on governance, management, and monitoring, it creates an ecosystem that is safe and controlled for both low-code and pro-code developers to build applications within. This gives one set of standards for everyone, where administrators create clear boundaries and policies without restricting innovation.  

These managed environments foster collaboration and innovation, so that you can easily share and co-author your solutions with other developers, business users, and stakeholders. Inevitably, this will result in applications being built that are more likely to meet requirements and delight your users. When Microsoft Power Platform is available to all, there is also a lowered risk of teams procuring their own Shadow IT solutions. 

Write less code with Microsoft Power Platform

The term “low-code” is used to describe the next level of abstraction in software development and empowering everyone to build applications. However, Microsoft Power Platform is also a set of tools that is built upon the technologies you may already be using in Azure. It can coexist, augment existing solutions, and be extended by using traditional software development techniques. So next time you hear “low-code”, think about writing less of that tedious boilerplate code, to give you more time to create more robust, exciting, and innovative solutions. 

Get started as a developer

• Sign up for a free developer plan, discover self-paced learning paths, and read the full Microsoft Power Platform developer documentation. 
• Register here to attend the DEVintersection Conference and the Microsoft Azure + AI Conference. 
• See the full list of sessions at DEVintersection. 

Interested in learning more about how Microsoft Power Platform accelerates productivity for professional developers? Sign up for our monthly newsletter to get the latest updates! 

The post Accelerate developer productivity with Microsoft Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Before your business starts using Copilot capabilities in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, you may have questions about how it works, how it keeps your business data secure, and other important considerations. The answers to common questions below should help your organization get started.

What’s the difference between ChatGPT and Copilot?

ChatGPT is a general-purpose large language model (LLM) trained by OpenAI on a massive dataset of text, designed to engage in human-like conversations and answer a wide range of questions on various topics. Copilot also uses an LLM; however, the enterprise-ready AI technology is prompted and optimized for your business processes, your business data, and your security and privacy requirements. For Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform users, Copilot suggests optional actions and content recommendations in context with the task at hand. A few ways Copilot for natural language generation is unique:

• The AI-generated responses are uniquely contextual and relevant to the task at hand informed by your business data—whether responding to an email from within Dynamics 365, deploying a low-code application that automates a specific manual process, or creating a targeted list of customer segments from your customer relationship management (CRM) system.
• Copilot uses both an LLM, like GPT, and your organization’s business data to produce more accurate, relevant, and personalized results. In short, your business data stays within your tenancy and is used to improve context only for your scenario, and the LLM itself does not learn from your usage. More on how the system works is below.
• Powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot is designed from the ground up on a foundation of enterprise-grade security, compliance, and privacy.

Read on for more details about these topics. 

How does Copilot in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform work?

With Copilot, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform harness the power of foundation models coupled with proprietary Microsoft technologies applied to your business data:

• Search (using Bing and Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search): Brings domain-specific context to a Copilot prompt, enabling a response to integrate information from content like manuals, documents, or other data within the organization’s tenant. Currently, Microsoft Power Virtual Agent and Dynamics 365 Customer Service use this retrieval-augmented generation approach as pre-processing to calling an LLM.
• Microsoft applications like Dynamics 365, Viva Sales, and Microsoft Power Platform and the business data stored in Microsoft Dataverse.
• Microsoft Graph: Microsoft Graph API brings additional context from customer signals into the prompt, such as information from emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more.

Copilot requests an input prompt from a business user in an app, like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales or Microsoft Power Apps. Copilot then preprocesses the prompt through an approach called grounding, which improves the specificity of the prompt, so you get answers that are relevant and actionable to your specific task. It does this, in part, by making a call to Microsoft Graph and Dataverse and accessing the enterprise data that you consent and grant permissions to use for the retrieval of your business content and context. We also scope the grounding to documents and data which are visible to the authenticated user through role-based access controls. For instance, an intranet question about benefits would only return an answer based on documents relevant to the employee’s role.

This retrieval of information is referred to as retrieval-augmented generation and allows Copilot to provide exactly the right type of information as input to an LLM, combining this user data with other inputs such as information retrieved from knowledge base articles to improve the prompt. Copilot takes the response from the LLM and post-processes it. This post-processing includes additional grounding calls to Microsoft Graph, responsible AI checks, security, compliance and privacy reviews, and command generation.

Finally, Copilot returns a recommended response to the user, and commands back to the apps where a human-in-the-loop can review and assess. Copilot iteratively processes and orchestrates these sophisticated services to produce results that are relevant to your business, accurate, and secure.

How does Copilot use your proprietary business data? Is it used to train AI models?

Copilot unlocks business value by connecting LLMs to your business data—in a secure, compliant, privacy-preserving way.

Copilot has real-time access to both your content and context in Microsoft Graph and Dataverse. This means it generates answers anchored in your business content—your documents, emails, calendar, chats, meetings, contacts, and other business data—and combines them with your working context—the meeting you’re in now, the email exchanges you’ve had on a topic, the chat conversations you had last week—to deliver accurate, relevant, contextual responses.

We, however, do not use customers’ data to train LLMs. We believe the customers’ data is their data, aligned to Microsoft’s data privacy policy. AI-powered LLMs are trained on a large but limited corpus of data—but prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft Graph and Microsoft services are not used to train Dynamics 365 Copilot and Power Platform Copilot capabilities for use by other customers. Furthermore, the foundation models are not improved through your usage. This means your data is accessible only by authorized users within your organization unless you explicitly consent to other access or use.

Are Copilot responses always factual?

Responses produced with generative AI are not guaranteed to be 100 percent factual. While we continue to improve responses to fact-based inquiries, people should still use their judgement when reviewing outputs. Our copilots leave you in the driver’s seat, while providing useful drafts and summaries to help you achieve more.

Our teams are working to address issues such as misinformation and disinformation, content blocking, data safety and preventing the promotion of harmful or discriminatory content in line with our AI principles.

We also provide guidance within the user experience to reinforce the responsible use of AI-generated content and actions. To help guide users on how to use Copilot, as well as properly use suggested actions and content, we provide:  

Instructive guidance and prompts. When using Copilot, informational elements instruct users how to responsibly use suggested content and actions, including prompts, to review and edit responses as needed prior to usage, as well as to manually check facts, data, and text for accuracy.

Cited sources. Copilot cites public sources when applicable so you’re able to see links to the web content it references.

How does Copilot protect sensitive business information and data?

Microsoft is uniquely positioned to deliver enterprise-ready AI. Powered by Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot features built-in responsible AI and enterprise-grade Azure security.

Built on Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, compliance, and privacy. Copilot is integrated into Microsoft services like Dynamics 365, Viva Sales, Microsoft Power Platform, and Microsoft 365, and automatically inherits all your company’s valuable security, compliance, and privacy policies and processes. Two-factor authentication, compliance boundaries, privacy protections, and more make Copilot the AI solution you can trust.

Architected to protect tenant, group, and individual data. We know data leakage is a concern for customers. LLMs are not further trained on, or learn from, your tenant data or your prompts. Within your tenant, our time-tested permissions model provides safeguards and enterprise-grade security as seen in our Azure offerings. And on an individual level, Copilot presents only data you can access using the same technology that we’ve been using for years to secure customer data.

Designed to learn new skills. Copilot’s foundation skills are a game changer for productivity and business processes. The capabilities allow you to create, summarize, analyze, collaborate, and automate using your specific business content and context. But it doesn’t stop there. Copilot recommends actions for the user (for example, “create a time and expense application to enable employees to submit their time and expense reports”). And Copilot is designed to learn new skills. For example, with Viva Sales, Copilot can learn how to connect to CRM systems of record to pull customer data—like interaction and order histories—into communications. As Copilot learns about new domains and processes, it will be able to perform even more sophisticated tasks and queries.

Will Copilot meet requirements for regulatory compliance mandates?

Copilot is offered within the Azure ecosystem and thus our compliance follows that of Azure. In addition, Copilot adheres to our commitment to responsible AI, which is described in our documented principles and summarized below. As regulation in the AI space evolves, Microsoft will continue to adapt and respond to fulfill future regulatory requirements in this space.

Next-generation AI across Microsoft business applications

With next-generation AI, interactions with AI across business roles and processes will become second nature.

Discover more about AI 

Committed to responsible AI

Microsoft is committed to creating responsible AI by design. Our work is guided by a core set of principles: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. We are helping our customers use our AI products responsibly, sharing our learnings, and building trust-based partnerships. For these new services, we provide our customers with information about the intended uses, capabilities, and limitations of our AI platform service, so they have the knowledge necessary to make responsible deployment choices.  

Take a look at related content

• Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot, the world’s first copilot in both CRM and ERP, that brings next-generation AI to every line of business
• Power Platform is leading a new era of AI-generated low-code app development
• Copilot in Viva Sales available as thousands of customers adopt next-generation AI in Dynamics 365 Copilot and Power Platform

We’re always looking for feedback and would like to hear from you. Please head to the Dynamics 365 Community to start a discussion, ask questions, and tell us what you think!

The post How Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform delivers enterprise-ready AI built for security and privacy appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Today, I want to acknowledge and celebrate the community of developers, partners, and publishers who have helped us reach an exciting milestone—1,000 certified connectors. That is 1,000 highways our customers can use to connect apps, services, and data sources in the cloud—immediately useable out-of-the-box in Microsoft Power Platform. Thanks to the continued dedication and passion from our low-code community, it has never been easier to accelerate the development of solutions that enhance productivity and streamline business processes.

Certified connectors

View our current catalog of certified connectors.

View the catalog

A collection that continues to grow at an accelerated rate

Seven years ago, we began building connectors in-house, focusing predominantly on products within the Microsoft ecosystem and a few key third-party products with broad market applicability. It didn’t take long to find that our customers’ appetite for connectors was greater than we had originally imagined, and far greater than we could keep up with alone. The number of new services was ever expanding, customers began tailoring their low-code platform for industry specific use cases, and niche markets required connectors for highly specialized applications.

Fortunately, we were able to lean on our broader community and developed a certification program for partners and publishers to work together with our internal teams to build, test, contribute, and publish new connectors. This enabled our ecosystem to skyrocket to 1,000 certified connectors, the last 300 of which came in the last year alone. Combined, they deliver more than 12,000 actions available to developers for building new solutions.

Navigating our ecosystem of connectors

For those less familiar with our connectors, the Microsoft Power Platform certified connector ecosystem services Power Apps, Power Automate, and Azure Logic Apps by default and is starting to expand its reach into other services, like Microsoft Viva Sales and Microsoft Teams. Our connectors can also connect to on-premises systems via gateways to enable on-premise applications equally. “Certified” refers to the immediately available out-of-the-box connectors available for users by default (contrasting the “custom connectors,” which are available on a per-environment basis).

Of the certified connectors, there are three main types: first-party, verified publisher, and independent publisher.

• First-party connectors are connectors made in house by Microsoft. Most of these connectors represent Microsoft services like SharePoint, Excel, and Dataverse. However, a few Microsoft-made connectors include other large external services like LinkedIn and YouTube.
• Verified publisher connectors are created by third-party enterprises that leverage the APIs that they own to grow extensibility between Microsoft Power Platform and their services, like Autodesk, one of our more recent additions.
• Independent publisher connectors are made by “independent publishers,” who can be anyone. IPs (for short) can be MVPs, citizen developers, students, employees, anyone! The conditions are that they are leveraging open-sourced APIs rather than an API to a service they own. Despite not representing a corporation, there are hundreds of rich use case scenario IP connectors in our ecosystem, including OpenAI, WhatsApp, and Discord.

Each certified connector starts off as a custom connector within the publisher’s personal environment. The publisher can then submit their connector to our GitHub, where they are then introduced to the connectors certification team. These individuals are the core group at Microsoft who help each of the hundreds of partners take their connector from an idea to a reality through support, validation, and testing until each of them is deployed for the public and considered fully certified.

Taking the next step on your low-code journey

Many of our customers begin their low-code journey with Microsoft Power Platform and a small set of connectors to mission critical systems, like enterprise resource planning or customer relationship management. This can be a great way to realize value and demonstrate returns very quickly. What happens after the first project, however, is particularly exciting. Our customers realize how broadly their team can expand the benefits of low-code across other areas of the business because connectors are already available to accelerate development, and they begin to tap into undiscovered value across their organization.

Whether you’re just beginning to explore low-code solutions or looking to expand your existing low-code footprint to maximize the potential of your people and your data, our ever-growing catalog of connectors is there to make each step faster and easier. Check out these resources if you are looking for a little inspiration for where to go next.

• Visit our connectors webpage to see how connectors can help you do more with less.
• Get technical on connectors with our Microsoft Learn collection.
• Learn how to get started certifying your first connector on GitHub. 
• View our current catalog of certified connectors.

The post Microsoft Power Platform celebrates 1,000 certified connectors appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Under current economic pressures, organizations are being squeezed at all levels, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects slowed global growth in 2023, down to 2.9 percent from 6 percent in 2021.¹ IT departments are no exception as they look for creative ways to cut costs.

Concurrently, IT departments are facing a growing application backlog. There are simply not enough developers and technical specialists to meet stakeholder demands. In 2021, IDC predicted that 750 million new apps need to be built by 2025.² Simply put, the demand for technical solutions is growing at an almost exponential rate, and there are not enough professional developers to meet that demand.

The way forward? Low-code. Edelman Assembly, on behalf of Microsoft, surveyed more than 2,000 IT CIOs and IT pros to understand the benefits they derive from low-code platforms. The research is clear: low-code empowers IT departments to rapidly build technical solutions and streamline data insights all while lowering costs.

Power Platform Adoption Assessment

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Take the assessment

Accelerate application development

Low-code platforms help drive efficiency gains by accelerating legacy application modernization and expediting development efforts via prebuilt components. In fact, 89 percent of CIOs and IT pros surveyed say low-code is effective in increasing efficiency.

To close the app gap generated by developer shortages and traditional development timelines, low-code helps organizations reduce time to value by extending existing legacy core capabilities, streamlining migration projects, and replacing legacy applications with low-code solutions. These solutions are an incredible boost to application modernization endeavors, as 87 percent of CIOs and IT pros say low-code is very useful in helping their organizations modernize legacy applications.

According to a 2021 Microsoft-commissioned Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study of Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Azure for Corporate IT, professional developer efficiency with low-code platforms significantly increases over time, averaging 62 percent over three years. These efficiency gains are necessary as 45 percent of IT pros say they first adopted low-code platforms to make up for staff shortages.

Additionally, IT pros can expect increasing efficiency gains due to recent announcements of embedded AI in low-code platforms. Features like Copilot in Microsoft Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents will further streamline solution development with natural language authoring and the ability to converse with an AI assistant. Similar features become increasingly important to organizations adopting low-code platforms, as 87 percent of CIOs and IT pros say increased AI and automation embedded into low-code platforms would help them better use the full set of capabilities, a trend we are seeing across low-code tools.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is embracing low-code to accelerate development after building its Cyber Technology Rationalizer solution in six weeks. PwC needed to migrate from its legacy system to improve maintainability, scalability, and versatility with a professional grade solution built for internal and external users.

PwC created a multitenant enterprise decision support website with Microsoft Power Platform. Using the Power Pages Web API management layer, the team found that they could use Microsoft Dataverse with C# plugins to reuse existing work and quickly create a new, low-code solution. Not only did this only take six weeks, but PwC has also achieved 85 percent cost savings and 30 percent time savings since its implementation.

Drive organization-wide cost savings

Reducing costs and building more technical solutions at the same time can sound paradoxical. Application development and maintenance is a costly endeavor, to do more of it should clearly increase costs. So why do 87 percent of CIO and IT pros surveyed say low-code is effective in helping reduce costs?

Power Platform and Azure helped reduce costs by 24 percent due to increased developer efficiency, increased DevOps efficiency, and reduced spending on third-party solutions according to a 2021 Microsoft-commissioned Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study of Microsoft Power Platform and Azure for Corporate IT. 

In addition to reducing direct IT costs, low-code platforms help reduce costs across organizations by building solutions that otherwise would sit in an organization’s application backlog. These solutions drive cost reductions by eliminating manual processes, increasing user productivity, and increasing data-backed decision making.

A great example of the cost savings derived by IT and business departments is EY’s PowerPost app. The company used Microsoft Power Platform to automate the high-frequency, semi-manual General Ledger (GL) posting process used internally by the EY Global Finance team that integrates with its SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

The GL document posting process was prone to errors due to the data transfer steps between different applications. Sometimes successful posting in SAP could take longer than a day or two. Built in weeks, not months, by EY’s in-house development team with low-code, the PowerPost app reduced document processing lead time by 95 percent, is forecasted to reduce existing costs by 30 percent, and eliminated emails and Excel requirements by 100 percent with the new process.

Streamline data insights to actions

As technology becomes more prevalent in every business process, the volume of data grows at a rampant pace. That mounting data is often duplicated across databases and not properly formatted, making the data inaccessible for decision making. Low-code platforms help break down data siloes by centralizing that data and putting easy to consume data visualizations in users’ hands for cleaner, more actionable data.

Many low-code solutions are built to lift and shift legacy applications and automate manual time-consuming processes. These solutions help break down data siloes, reducing data duplication and centralizing data in a single source of truth. This centralized repository created by low-code platforms is why 86 percent of CIOs and IT pros say low-code helps their organizations generate more accurate insights from their data.

These more accurate insights enable IT pros to build more comprehensive and effective solutions for users. This means reduced re-work and greater adoption of solutions reducing costs and time to market, resulting in decreasing application backlogs for IT departments. The impact of these solutions is evident as 89 percent and 88 percent of CIOs and IT pros respectively say low-code has been effective in generating data-driven insights that they use to better service customers and internal stakeholders.

ÖBB, the Austrian rail operator, saw the benefits of low-code platforms in centralizing data with low-code platforms and is able to offer better service to customers with this data. ÖBB services 477 million passengers annually across Europe. ÖBB needed a way to provide quick, intelligent, automated responses to millions of customer queries—with the ability to hand off to a human agent when necessary.

Using the out-of-the-box AI capabilities in Power Virtual Agents, integrated with their customer relationship management (CRM) system, Power BI, and Power Automate, the company built a chatbot to answer basic customer questions, freeing human agents to concentrate on more complex and high-value interactions.

Moreover, producing detailed internal reports through Microsoft Power BI based on clean, centralized data from Power Virtual Agents bots helped the project team gain unique insights into how customers interact with the bot, including how it transitions them to a live agent. ÖBB used these insights to further refine its bot for improved customer experiences.

How can low-code help your IT department?

For IT departments and organizations looking to reduce costs, reduce their application backlog, and rapidly turn data insights into actions in 2023, low-code should be a key part of your development strategy. To learn how your organization can start, grow, and develop an expert level low-code practice, take the Microsoft Power Platform Adoption Assessment.

This assessment is designed to help you get started quickly by identifying opportunities to optimize and streamline efforts, and sharing best practices on how organizations can better use Microsoft Power Platform to achieve their business objectives.

End notes

¹International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook.

²IDC, 750 Million New Logical Applications: More Background.

The post Low-code signals 2023 appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Microsoft Power Platform has been on a journey to empower all developers with AI-powered development experiences since 2021. Power Apps was one of the first products to use GPT in a commercial capacity, and express design in Power Apps has enabled makers to automatically turn their drawings, images and Figma documents into app user interfaces (UIs). This union of AI and low-code revolutionizes the way solutions are built and fundamentally transforms the way people work, collaborate, and create.

Introducing Copilot

With Copilot, Microsoft Power Platform is bringing AI-powered assistance into Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents, and Power Automate. Makers now have a live in-studio copilot that helps them build solutions and provides suggestions for improvement. To build an app, flow, or bot, you can describe it using natural language and copilot can build it in seconds. It is that easy.

Copilot in Power Apps makes it easy to keep data at the center of every application. Describe your application’s purpose and a data table is automatically generated for your app. Using Copilot, makers can then leverage natural language to refine the app to suit their needs. Now, everyone can build an app, and professional developers can also save more time, focusing on more complex code, components, and integrations. Learn more about Copilot in Power Apps.

Power Automate boosts efficiency and digitizes tedious business processes. Copilot in Power Automate increases that efficiency by automating the creation of your flows. Makers can create flows in seconds, regardless of complexity, with natural language and an in-studio copilot. Microsoft Power Platform anticipates makers can dramatically reduce time to market using Copilot in Power Automate. Based on the preview launched in October 2022, we already see a 50 percent reduction in the time to develop Power Automate workflows when the copilot is used. Learn more about Copilot in Power Automate.

Intelligent chatbots must be designed to handle a wide range of topics, responses, and contextual knowledge—these bots take time to build, even with low-code. Now, makers can make short work of bot creation and modification with Copilot in Power Virtual Agents and build intelligent conversational bots in minutes. Makers can leverage an in-studio copilot that uses generative AI to build and refine topics through natural language. The copilot experience further removes these barriers and accelerates chatbot development. Learn more about Copilot in Power Virtual Agents.

Improved user experiences via generative AI

In addition to Copilot, and the recent create text with GPT model in AI Builder and conversation boosters in Power Virtual Agents announcements, Microsoft is also announcing another set of AI-powered capabilities across Microsoft Power Platform. This includes streamlining the user experience with embedded GPT enabled chatbots in Power Apps, that provide an in-app assistant. It also includes GPT enabled data exploration in Power Apps, which enable end users to intelligently query their data for immediate and actionable insights. Learn more about these announcements.

Innovate as far as your imagination takes you

Low-code already provides anyone, regardless of their technical ability, the opportunity to build their own solutions. Embedded generative AI dramatically increases the accessibility of low-code development as anyone can now bring their ideas to life with Copilot. IT departments can also lead the AI transformation and enable their organizations to rapidly innovate at scale, all whilst managing and monitoring solutions, makers, and data with built-in admin and governance tools.

Low code development skills enable you to build solutions that can save time, money, and drive productivity. Learn how to further increase your organization’s productivity gains with the new Microsoft 365 Copilot, introducing a new way of working. See all of Microsoft’s next generation AI announcements in the AI Hub and all of Microsoft’s Copilot announcements in the Official Microsoft Blog.

Responsible AI at Microsoft

Microsoft Power Platform has built a copilot experience that always involves humans in the process who are responsible for approving, tracking, and accepting suggestions made by the AI. These new features have been designed and aligned to Microsoft’s responsible AI principles including fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. Microsoft’s comprehensive approach promotes AI that benefits society by combining innovative research, exceptional engineering, and responsible governance.

Disclaimers for the preview features

The new next-generation AI features in Microsoft Power Platform are experimental previews powered by Azure OpenAI Service with GPT. Preview features aren’t meant for production use and may have restricted functionality and limited deployment availability. Review product documentation to learn more.

Microsoft's responsible AI principles

Meeting the AI moment: advancing the future through responsible AI

Read the story

The post Power Platform is leading a new era of AI-generated low-code app development appeared first on Microsoft Power Platform Blog.

Low-code signals 2023

Low-code should be a key part of your development strategy.

Read the report

These feelings of satisfaction only increase as users further embrace these platforms and discover new possibilities. Their user-friendly model means a rewarding upskilling experience, one that instills confidence—even those not from a traditional software background—to see the value of their work contributing to team success. Of those surveyed in a recent Microsoft study, 82 percent of low- or no-code users agree that the technology helps provide an opportunity for software users to improve their development knowledge and technical skills. In addition, the use of no-code or low-code platforms or apps is shown to have led to an 83 percent positive impact on work satisfaction and workload by users, and an 80 percent positive impact on morale by users.

“(Low- or no-code) gives me the confidence to perform my job above what is expected by my employer.”—User, Retail Industry

Connecting employees with fulfilling upskilling opportunities

The learning opportunity of low-code or no-code platforms is exactly the kind of professional development that today’s workers are looking for. More than 80 percent of users and potential users of low-code or no-code platforms report that they would be more willing to work for a company that invests in their technical upskilling.

As users explore skilling in software development and programming, employers that offer training on low-code or no-code platforms see high rates of participation. Users of these platforms are more likely than potential users to report that they’ve taken advantage of relevant training opportunities within their organization (78 percent versus 41 percent). They also have a more favorable perception of their organization’s big-picture investment in technical upskilling, with 63 percent of users agreeing compared to 36 percent of potential users.

By leveraging technology like Microsoft Power Platform, business leaders can foster a strong learning culture that retains and develops employees. These benefits also directly address key concerns for Business Decision Makers (BDMs)—driving innovation and attracting and retaining talent.

The path to employee retention

The call to invest in employee development is urgent: 71 percent of potential users are more doubtful of their futures with a company that does not invest in their technical skills. Leaders and BDMs must critically examine the opportunities that they are offering employees and how they support their IT teams, business analysts, and developers of all identities. When it comes to offering meaningful learning opportunities and a clear path for advancement, low-code or no-code development platforms might be the answer they have been looking for.

Taking on tech’s gender problem

Embracing low-code or no-code platforms can also help combat the IT industry’s gender disparity. Currently, fewer than 20 percent of cloud computing professionals are women. In addition to filling the aforementioned skills gap, gender-diverse businesses are shown to perform better¹, and advancing gender equality could add up to $13 trillion to global GDP in 2030.²

Meanwhile, women in the industry are less likely than men to feel they are ahead of the curve in their technical skills—and yet, the survey revealed women are four times more likely to report restrictions in purchasing or testing new technology for their career growth. Investing in Microsoft Power Platform is one way to immediately support these women in their career development and promote gender equity within one’s organization.

BDMs fear lack of awareness creates a barrier to investment

If low-code and no-code platforms have such immense potential for company culture, why are they not more widely adopted? An overwhelming majority of BDMs and users (71 percent and 76 percent, respectively) point to a lack of awareness around potential use cases for Microsoft Power Platform or other programs. Also ranking highly are cybersecurity concerns and the cost and training needed for their employees to maximize the value of these platforms or apps. As with any business investment, leaders want to be sure that they will be getting a meaningful return. Choosing a new development platform will have an impact on people and processes across the organization, a reshaping that must be duly considered.

Once adopted, the results quickly speak for themselves and kick off a cycle of innovation—but securing the initial investment is proving to be a barrier. BDMs are more likely to know how to navigate their organization’s decision-making process; they play a key role in acting as a go-between with users to leverage the necessary proof points to advocate for organizational investment. Between the clear cultural benefits and users’ success stories, BDMs have a compelling case for adoption to bring to the C-suite.

Collaboration between BDMs and users critical for impactful use cases

BDMs should also recognize the value in coming together with developers and low- or no-coders to explore new use cases for Microsoft Power Platform. Events like Microsoft Build (May 24 to 26, 2022) are great opportunities to connect with peers, experts, and others from a variety of industries, sharing success stories and making a compelling case for investment in low-code and no-code platforms. Microsoft Build will feature a series of live programs and other immersive experiences exploring the latest innovations and tools for a trusted, integrated data platform.

Employees at all levels are looking for a company worth committing to, and a demonstration of reciprocal commitment is a positive indicator of a healthy workplace culture. By activating Microsoft Power Platform and other low- or no-code options as an opportunity for development, BDMs have the capability to foster a loyal, innovative, and inclusive workforce.

Why adopt low-code?

Low-code development can facilitate your company’s digital transformation.

Learn more

Methodology and Audience Definitions:

The Low Code Productivity Impacts Trend Index survey was conducted by an independent research firm, Edelman Data x Intelligence, among 322 Users of low code/no code platforms or apps, 300 Potential Users of low code/no code platforms or apps, 150 Business Decision Makers looking to hire for low code/no code skills, and 150 Business Decision Makers already using low code/no code platforms or apps across their organization. This survey was 15 minutes in length and conducted online in the English language between April 6, 2021 and April 25, 2021.

Audiences mentioned in the report are defined as follows:

• Users: self-selected at time of survey fielding as familiar with low code/no code platforms or apps and using them professionally or personally, including:
  • Professional Users: those currently using low code/no code platforms or apps for their job including information technology, computer engineering/developers, or those in functions such as marketing, communications, or HR
  • Citizen Users: those currently using low code/no code platforms or apps for personal use or side projects
• Potential Users: self-selected at time of survey fielding as familiar with low code/no code platforms or apps, but not currently using them professionally or personally and interested in doing so in the next 12 months
• Business Decision Makers: self-selected at time of survey fielding as those in mid to upper job levels (i.e., SVP, VP, Sr. Director, General Manager, EVP, C-Suite, President, etc.) who have at least some influence on decision-making related to hiring, budgeting, employee benefits, internal communications, operations, etc.

Sources:

1- The Business Benefits of Gender Diversity, Gallup

2- COVID-19 and gender equality: Countering the regressive effects, McKinsey & Company

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