3 Ways Low-Code App

Development Can Help

with Immediate Response
3 Ways Low-Code App Development Can Help with Immediate Response 2

Contents

Key takeaways 3

Build custom apps in hours, 4

not months

Develop low-code apps for 5

immediate response

1. Get up and running fast 7

2. Empower everyone to build their 9

own apps

3. Use app innovation to drive 12

better decisions

Quick look: How Power Apps helps you 15

mobilize for immediate response

Microsoft Power Platform 16

Take action 17
 Adjust to your
new environment
You need to connect people, systems, and operations in new
ways. With low-code app development you can rapidly adjust to
the new environment and accelerate your digital transformation
affordably and with ease. This e-book explores three ways low-
code app development can help.

Key takeaways
Get up and running fast

Empower everyone to build their own apps

Use app innovation to drive better decisions

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Key takeways Back to top
 Build custom apps in
hours, not months

Low-code app development is a new—and more efficient—approach

to building professional grade web and mobile applications. Instead of
creating thousands of lines of code by hand, low-code development
typically involves a highly visual user experience with prebuilt templates
and drag-and-drop functionality.

This enables people with little to no programming experience—we call

them citizen developers—to build their own apps, while making it easier
for professional developers to accelerate foundational app development.
Low-code app development increases productivity, reduces time and cost
to build applications, including web and mobile, and powers innovation by
making it easier for any great idea to become a useful app.

of all occupations have at

60% least 30% of activities that
could be automated.¹

Low-code app development is not meant to replace traditional app

development. Rather, it brings new tools to the table that empower citizen
developers to build apps while giving professional developers a simple way
to accelerate app development. This liberates highly skilled talent to focus
on more strategic, high-value work.

¹ McKinsey, “Driving Impact at Scale from Automation and AI,” February 2019.

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Build custom apps in hours, not months Back to top
 Develop low-code apps
for immediate response

There are elements of low-code app development that will no doubt

play a big role in the future of app development in general. These
are the same elements that make it so well suited for business in a
disrupted environment.²

Businesses using Power Apps for low-code

74% app development see a 74% reduction in

app development costs.³

Whether using pre-built templates or creating custom apps, low-

code development allows you to deliver apps in hours or days. And
when companies need to respond in crisis situations, it’s even more
important to be able to quickly build apps that solve emerging
problems and give leadership insights into fast-changing, dynamic
situations so they can take decisive action.

² Forrester Consulting, “Microsoft Is About To Shake Up Low-Code Platforms.”

December 2019

³ Forrester Consulting, “The Total Economic Impact of Power Apps,” March 2020.

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3 Ways Low-Code App Development Can Help with Immediate Response 6

Because it doesn’t require coding experience, organizations can empower

citizen developers—those closest to the business problems—to build
custom apps to meet their unique needs in an environment that is secure
and compliant. By moving app development beyond the confines of the
IT department, organizations can alleviate the demands on IT, allowing
professional developers to focus on more complex, strategic initiatives.

of organizations report an
65% app development backlog.⁴

See the Microsoft Power Apps

low-code demo
Watch now >

Low-code techniques are changing the app development landscape,

bringing agility and speed to a process long encumbered by time-
consuming, expensive development cycles. When conditions are
challenging, low-code development is well-positioned to help
businesses in three specific ways.

⁴ Forrester, Q1 Digital Process Automation Survey (for process improvement efforts 2

years from now); Dresner Advisory Services, The State of Business Intelligence, 2018
(critical responses only).

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3 Ways Low-Code App Development Can Help with Immediate Response 7

1
Get up and running fast
When you need to mobilize your business for immediate response, you must
be able to quickly deploy the right solutions. Imagine a restaurant group
pivoting to provide free meals for families in need. Workers may need to
track food donations, match available supplies to recipes, and organize and
communicate with volunteers. None of these processes were in place before,
but now every day without a tool that helps workers be more efficient means
reaching fewer people in need and possibly unused food donations.

The low-code approach accelerates foundational app development and

testing cycles so there’s more time to focus on customizing, extending,
and deploying solutions for individual scenarios, such as budget tracking,
onboarding, asset checkout, or inventory management.

With Microsoft Power Apps, it’s also easy to connect your apps to other
platforms and services. A restaurant may want to integrate an automatic post
to Twitter every time a food donation is received and logged in inventory,
helping elevate the visibility of their mission in social media. Power Apps
offers more than 350 built-in connectors to your existing on-premises
solutions, from Adobe to Zendesk.

When off-the-shelf is off the mark

How can an off-the-shelf solution possibly meet the unique needs of
a business facing a crisis? Finding one that’s “close” means investing
further to re-engineer the solution to fit your needs, and even then you
make compromises. Power Apps gives you the ability to move fast by
starting with a template, then customizing to your exact needs.

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3 Ways Low-Code App Development Can Help with Immediate Response 8

Empower remote workers

Standard Bank built an app in 24 hours that is used by 100
remote workers every day to inspect ATMs all over South
Africa. Standard Bank records 5,000 to 6,000 monthly
inspection reports—a process that was previously totally
paper-based.

Today, the app enables the bank’s inspectors to record faults

and capture images of ATMs on company mobile phones,
with data automatically geotagged and saved to SharePoint
Online, where it’s then routed to the right department using
Microsoft Power Automate.

We can now move quickly across the

organization to create apps and solutions that
deliver greater productivity, becoming more
agile and digital in how we operate.”
Ian Doyle
Head of Enterprise Digitalization and Productivity Solutions
Standard Bank

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3 Ways Low-Code App Development Can Help with Immediate Response 9

2
Empower everyone to
build their own apps
Not long ago, a non-technical person wouldn’t dream of creating a
website. But now with simple drag-and-drop website-building platforms,
it takes much less skill. Low-code application development platforms
bring these same benefits to creating software, enabling everyone to
build apps and workflows that solve challenges. Low-code platforms
empower these citizen developers.

For example, imagine a shift leader on a manufacturing floor is struggling

to keep track of people rotating into different positions on the line. The
rotations are required for safety reasons. With low-code techniques,
she can build a simple app that automatically assigns workers to a new
position each day. The app can notify workers the day before of specific
considerations for their new position.

She can build this app, deploy it and analyze the data to inform
adjustments to hiring plans. She can also work with the IT team to be sure
any data storage, security, or compliance issues are properly handled, but
IT isn’t required to develop the app that solves her problem.

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3 Ways Low-Code App Development Can Help with Immediate Response 10

With Power Apps, citizen developers are able to solve very specific
business process problems on their own while professional
developers are free to focus on custom solutions that require their
advanced skills, as well as other high-value tasks.

No coding experience required

People who work day-to-day in knowledge-specific or specialized
roles are often the first to recognize an inefficient process or identify
a simpler solution to a problem. These insights can be lost in a
complex coding environment, which excludes non-technical people.
Low-code tools gives those closest to the business challenge the
resources to create custom solutions themselves. It also encourages
collaboration across your organization, while still giving IT control
over data and management.

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3 Ways Low-Code App Development Can Help with Immediate Response 11

Simple but powerful solutions

Volunteers—citizen developers—with the American Red Cross
developed an app to help track shelter availability and other support
for people displaced by the Camp Fire in Butte County, California.
The app enabled multiple relief agencies to work together to track
how many people needed shelter and match families with available
space and other support. Within 30 days they had places for
everyone to stay and were able to close the shelter.

Power Apps has allowed us to solve complex

problems faster. We can utilize our volunteer
network to re-engineer business processes in a way
that was simply not possible earlier.”
Nick Gill
Delivery Logistics & Inventory Manager
American Red Cross

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3 Ways Low-Code App Development Can Help with Immediate Response 12

3
Use app innovation to
drive better decisions
The strongest decisions are those made with all available
information. In a crisis situation, it can be hard for leadership to
get visibility into the data they need to make a sound decision.
Disruptions in normal business practices can make some data
simply unavailable or harder to uncover.

For example, imagine a community bank wants to provide

emergency funding for small businesses in the quickest way
possible. The amount of federal funds available to the community
bank is dependent on the size of their small business clients,
based on number of employees. Small businesses with more
employees will get more funding. But this data point was never
collected from the account holders. Until they can collect this
data, leadership at the community bank doesn’t know how much
federal funding to request.

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3 Ways Low-Code App Development Can Help with Immediate Response 13

With low-code app development, the community bank can

quickly build an app for small businesses to use when applying
for emergency funding. They can capture the data points that are
required to support more informed decision making.

Know more
To effectively lead a company through a crisis, leadership must
have visibility into the variables that are driving it. With Power
Apps, its fully managed data platform significantly reduces the
time and effort to build web and mobile applications while
increasing overall data visibility and usability.

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3 Ways Low-Code App Development Can Help with Immediate Response 14

Insight through crisis

Swedish Health Services in Seattle, Washington, US, developed an
app that helps hospital staff monitor critical resources like available
beds and scarce supplies like ventilators and masks. Front-line
hospital workers use mobile devices to report counts of those who
are positive for COVID-19, track equipment and supplies in use,
make personnel requests, and other information. The app syncs
with hospital dashboards to help leaders gauge activity at five care
facilities, two emergency departments, and units in critical areas.

This near real-time view of quickly changing data

is empowering Swedish to better prepare for a
COVID-19 surge and better manage the needs of
our patients and caregivers.”
Kevin Brooks
Chief Operating Officer
Swedish First Hill

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 Quick look: How Power
Apps helps you mobilize
for immediate response

Fast, affordable, easy to use

• No coding required • Short development cycle

• Simple visual tools • No technical skills needed

• Drag and drop functionality • Develop faster, at scale

• 350+ connectors to other apps • Maintain security and control

• Templates or fully customizable

Optimal across industries, from startups to

multinational corporations

• Consumer goods • Utilities

• Education • Transportation

• Non-profit • Public sector

• Healthcare • Retail

• Professional services • Financial services

• Government • Technology

• Travel • Manufacturing

• Insurance • Energy

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3 Ways Low-Code App Development Can Help with Immediate Response 16

Microsoft Power Platform

Power Apps is part of the Microsoft Power Platform, a set of low-code
solutions that empower teams to build and deploy custom, end-to-
end business solutions across their organization.

Power Automate

Discover a better way to get things done across

your organization through digital and robotic
process automation.

Power Apps

Build professional-grade apps the easy way.

Increase agility across your organization by rapidly
building low-code apps that modernize processes
and solve tough challenges.

Power BI

Create a data-driven culture. Enable everyone at

every level of your organization to make confident
decisions using up-to-the-minute analytics.

Power Virtual Agents

Build the extra help you need. Respond rapidly

to your customer and employee needs using
intelligent chatbots, no coding required.
3 Ways Low-Code App Development Can Help with Immediate Response 17

Take action
A crisis situation can accelerate IT problem solving, as unexpected
demands and new needs surge into view. Now you can be
prepared with a low-code solution that helps you get up and
running fast, that lets you use the talent you already have, that
supports anyone in the development of the most critical apps,
and that gives leadership visibility into the data behind the crisis.

Now everyone can quickly build and share low-code apps with
Microsoft Power Apps

Start free

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