Meet Power Platform Champions

Rebecca is a citizen developer at Custom Air Products & Services (CAPS), an HVAC solutions company based in Houston, Texas. With no prior app development experience, Rebecca taught herself Power Apps, Power Automate and Power BI, and digitized the end-to-end quality check (QC) process for HVAC units as they progress through the manufacturing line from ‘cradle to crate’. This process along with several additional processes that were paper based are 100% digital thanks to the 40+ apps and flows developed by Rebecca. “It took about three days and I had my first app. I’m really happy with the end result because within minute of a unit being tested the report is completed and available for all to see without any extra work or steps.” Learn more: story | video | presentation and demo

Foyin was an IT Manager at Sterling Bank. With no app development experience, she taught herself how to build apps, flows and dashboards using Microsoft Power Platform. She automated a monthly ATM collation process which previously required complex manual tasks involving several spreadsheets. To enable the wider community to build tech skills for the future, she started a Citizen Developer Academy at the bank, a local user group in Lagos, and an online women-in-tech group called TechStylers. She continues her journey with low-code and digital transformation as a consultant at Avanade. “For me the Power Platform is not just another tool, it is actually a transformational agent.” Learn more: presentation | video | article on Silicon Republic

Brian Hodel is a Senior Systems Analyst with a pro-dev background who embraced low code and the Power Platform to rapidly build complex solutions at T-Mobile. With over 10 years of experience in multiple industries, Brian has steadily widened his adoption of the Power Platform at T-Mobile, where he now builds solutions using the entire breadth of capabilities including Power Apps, Dataverse, RPA capabilities in Power Automate for automating legacy systems, Power Virtual Agents and the newly release Process Advisor. “You can turn your ideas into reality in a surprisingly short amount of time. The platform helps you grow very naturally from simple tasks to more complex concepts. And as you figure out new capabilities, your applications become more sophisticated and advanced. It’s a tremendous learning tool in addition to being a great programming environment.” Learn more: story | presentation | case study

Claes is a Cross Delivery Coordinator at H&M Group, a Swedish multinational clothing-retail global company. Claes and his team established a Power Platform CoE that they call their “Center for Enablement” which strives to foster the creativity and innovation of citizen developers throughout the organization while at the same time having robust governance and security practices. Claes helped establish these digital guardrails and build a thriving internal community of makers who exchange ideas, share stories and support each other in their development journey. “It’s been particularly inspiring when makers can see apps developed by their colleagues that solve problems similar to their own. Together, Power Platform solutions created by our employees have made a huge impact on business processes across every brand and region in the H&M Group.” Learn more: story | blog | presentation

As a prolific citizen developer who has built over seventy apps, Georgia, also known as ‘Agent 001’, has advanced in her career from an intern to HR Digital Cell Lead for Schlumberger within a span of three years. Her COVID-19 rapid response app served as the inspiration for Microsoft releasing a crisis communication template. She continues to guide and train others across the company on building low-code solutions with Power Platform. “Whenever people ask me what do I do, my reply is I build solutions using Microsoft’s low-code platform.” Learn more: story | webinar | top tips

Alan is a self-taught Power Platform maker who built over hundred apps at Schlumberger and is now leading digital transformation and innovation across Schlumberger with the Power Platform. He’s trained a set of ‘Special Agents’ across the company, initiated an annual global hackathon that draws 2,000+ participants, and brought fun and creativity into scaling up a low-code innovation movement throughout Schlumberger. “Success to enterprise adoption of low code platform is to ignite a culture change and at the same time keep it structured, measurable and data driven.” Learn more: story | #LessCodeMorePower episode | webinar

Jacqui was a Senior Audiologist who is now working in Hearing Australia’s IT team as a Low-Code Developer and Analyst. She discovered Power Apps while solving problems for Hearing Australia’s ongoing “Hearing Assessment Program—Early Ears” or HAPEE. With the help of Umar Farooq, a code-first developer, she combined her knowledge of the business with Umar’s knowledge of IT systems as part of a fusion team. Both relied on each other’s strengths to build an application on Microsoft Dataverse to support HAPEE. “I really feel businesses using Microsoft Power Platform can leverage the knowledge of the workers and the people who are on the ground. The benefit of this is that we are providing Hearing Australia with a functioning mature product that we know is going to work.” Learn more: video | case study

As an elementary school principal, Lauren wanted to help improve literacy skills for students. Without any formal IT background, she used Microsoft Power Platform to build apps, cloud flows and dashboards for educators to capture and analyze detailed information on student reading levels and manage classroom activities. “My work is hard but being able to get creative, think outside the box, and provide solutions for others for some reason brings me peace!” Learn more: story | video | Ignite keynote highlight

Nashwin started his career as a geospatial technician at Eskom, South Africa. He fell in love with Power Platform and used it to build cost-efficient automated solutions for granting building access, fleet management, inspection, managing legal cases, and more. He is proud of the performance app he built that is used by executives to track progress against the company’s vision and goals. Nashwin’s success resulted in him being considered for multiple awards, and his role has progressed from the provincial level to now being an Information Systems Officer at the head office. “Where there’s an opportunity to digitize something, that’s where I come in. I want to be able to solve problems across many divisions, helping improve business processes in HR or finance or engineering, or anywhere else the company needs me.” Learn more: presentation

Derek was a brick layer for ten years before joining Nestle Waters as a production operator and then moved to line supervisor. He noticed all the different ways in which employees from line operators to managers were spending time completing paper-based processes and felt there ought to be a better way. He attended an App in a Day training where he learned about the Power Platform tools and went on to become a self-taught Power Apps expert. He has since built over fifteen digital solutions that are used daily at the manufacturing facilities to tag safety issues, conduct daily operational reviews, check-in visitors to the facility, enable leadership to perform shop floor checks, and more. His job title is now Digital Transformation Specialist at BlueTriton. “I see Power Apps as an enabler, that gives us the possibility to create apps and use technology in a way we had never thought possible before.” Learn more: story | presentation

Asuka Otani started her RPA journey in the HR team for a manufacturing company in Japan, where she found herself spending countless hours performing manual repetitive tasks. Without any prior IT background, she taught herself Power Automate for desktop and automated sending PDF documents to hundreds of customers, retrieving and aggregating data from legacy systems, and more. As her interest and skills advanced, so did her career. After sixteen years in HR, she is now a Technical Evangelist for an IT company, ASAHI Accounting Robot Research Institute, where she works with the customer success team, teaches people how to build RPA automation, and leads webinars. “I was actually surprised myself that I could learn all these RPA techniques in three months . I could transform the company through Power Automate for desktop. Not only did I change that, but it also changed my career journey.” Learn more: story | interview

Azure is a Bioprocess Engineer turned Data Scientist driving automation and digital transformation at GSK using the Power Platform. With a background in biochemistry and limited tech experience, Azure came across Power Automate in 2019 at a “Flow in a Day” event. From that point onwards she was hooked – she built cloud flows to automate processes such as managing adverse safety events at a manufacturing plant. She went on to co-lead a 10-week Power Platform Boot Camp, which enabled employees to gain skills and feel confident in building their own solutions to solve business problems. Azure continues to be an automation advocate and helps other sites at GSK launch their own Power Platform boot camps. “I am currently in a budding flowmance with Power Automate – using it to drive digital transformation at my company and the larger community, one automated workflow at a time.” Learn more: presentation

Nick was a training specialist at the American Red Cross who had no formal IT background. He taught himself Power Apps, Power BI and Power Automate and used them to transform the process that 650 instructors used to order supplies needed for their training classes. Nick was subsequently promoted to the Manager of Logistics for the Preparedness, Safety, and Services department for the entire country, where in addition to managing logistics, he and his team continued to use Power Platform integrated with Microsoft Teams to digitize and speed up several daily processes. Nick passion for technology led him to joining Microsoft partner, AIS, in 2020 where consults and implements solutions for global organizations as a full time Power Platform Solution Architect. “Don’t let titles define you. Just because you’re in a non-tech position doesn’t mean you can’t learn low-code. Find your people. Go to a place where you can geek out about the stuff that you’re working on.” Learn more: story | presentation

Chris is a pro-dev at Western States Caterpillar Equipment Company who has truly embraced low-code as a core component of his software development toolkit. With over twenty years of experience building full stack software solutions, Chris now uses “low-code with pro-dev extensibility” to build mobile Power Apps solutions. He works in close partnership as a ‘fusion team’ with his end users – sales and support staff in the field – to rapidly create and iterate on these solutions. The apps connect to their internal systems and third-party APIs, and are used every day by field staff to manage rental returns, connect with customers, and more. “We love where Microsoft is going with ‘low code meets pro dev’.” Learn more: story | presentation and demo

Samit Saini was a security guard at London Heathrow Airport who enjoyed tinkering with technology like Excel and VBA. When he got access to Power Apps, he used it to digitize paper-based processes at Heathrow such as providing translations for common questions asked by international passengers, performing customer experience audits, and supporting passengers with reduced mobility. He transitioned into a permanent role on the IT team, established a CoE, and has been training others and building a community of citizen developers across a wide set of departments. “With Power Apps, it doesn’t matter what your skill levels are. It doesn’t matter what your background is. This will help you open up your mind to new things. It gives you that sense of belief that you can learn anything.” Learn more: story | video

Bella Chih-Ning is an Senior Information Systems and Analytics Manager at a non-profit, Partners in Health (PIH), based in Boston. She was familiar with SQL and analytics tools but had no experience with application development. After attending a local Power Platform App in a Day training, she learned how to build apps and flows and digitized their gift review process. The app is used by gift officers to manage the donation process and Power BI reports to gain rich insights. Bella and her team also use Power Automate to automate travel approvals, manage COVID-19 tracing, and export audit data for wider use. “With Power Automate, we can streamline processes and make data actionable to ultimately enhance decision making and advance PIH’s effort to serve patients and support our community.” Learn more: story (Power Apps) | story (Power Automate) | presentation

Jim is a Web and Collaboration Services Manager at Hexion, a global manufacturer of specialty chemicals and performance materials. His team adopted Power Automate and Power Apps starting in 2018. They have over eighty flows running in production for scenarios such as contractor onboarding, user requests for a Microsoft Teams or Office 365 Group, user access to the Dynamics platform, and more. They continue to move additional workloads into Dataverse with Power Apps as the front-end. “Microsoft Power Platform and AI Builder components allowed us to quickly deliver an innovative and well-integrated solution within our Dynamics 365 platform for our marketing and sales business partners. The platform is a game-changer in this new world of rapid app delivery.” Learn more: story

Tijn leads a fusion team of seasoned code-first developers and business specialists at Blackmores Group. They’ve built elegant and sophisticated Dynamics 365 and Power Platform solutions that are used to run core business processes for sales, operations, vendor management, employee coaching, and more. Their solutions integrate various technologies, such as embedding Power BI and PCF controls into model-driven apps to enrich the user experience and integration with Azure services. Tijn has truly embraced the breadth of pro dev capabilities in Power Platform. “The great thing about Microsoft Power Platform is the wide variety of tools we can use—from no code to pro code.” Learn more: story | presentation

Jeff is a Manager of Process and Operations Improvement at Patterson Companies. He pioneered the use of Power BI to track and highlight sales statistics, order requests, and more. From here his usage of the Power Platform evolved into developing four core Power Apps that provide access to 22 of the most common internal approval processes. These apps are used by sales and customer service roles to reduce time consuming tasks – they’ve helped save an hour a day of a CSR’s time and enabled 20% increase in sales without requiring additional staffing. “When we started these apps, all of these things were tribal or siloed knowledge on how to do it properly. We now have 200-plus daily logins across the four primary apps. We’ve got almost 800 users, and a tremendous amount of activity—61,000 transactions in the last 18 months. We just tracked our one hundred thousandth login.” Learn more: story

In 2018, Sancho Harker worked as a helpdesk analyst at Pinnacle Group. He was passionate about finding creative ways to optimize processes with a belief that there was always a better way to do something. Inspired by champions who came before him, Sancho used online documentation to learn Power Platform and soon became a one-man app making machine. He built over twenty digital solutions that span health and safety audits, centralizing profit center listings, managing innovation ideas from employees, and more. He is now a consultant at ANS Group in the UK. “With the Power Platform, every day I face a new exciting challenge. I enjoy going to work and solving problems. It’s given me an opportunity to a different career trajectory that I would have never been able to have before.” Learn more: story | presentation at Scottish Summit

Keith went from multimedia geek to bus operator to Power Apps developer to full-time consultant on the Power Platform. At Arriva UK he used Power Apps, Power Automate and Dataverse to automate management of quality processes and respond to issues. Management and staff could stay more connected and continually improve the quality of their operations thanks to the apps and flows built by Keith. Keith’s passion for digital inclusion and helping others led him, along with a few members of the community, to start the #PowerAddicts movement with the motto – ‘We rise by uplifting others’. Keith is now a Solutions Specialist at HSO and continues to play an active role in the Power Platform community. “Power Apps is a tool that democratizes technology, one where the cost of quality apps, processes, and data are in the hands of those that need it, not just those who can afford it.” Learn more: video | story | presentation

Ludovic is a digital transformation leader at SNCF who has been leading the efforts to adopt rapid digital transformation with low-code and expand Power Platform adoption to all 165,000 employees. Under his leadership, SNCF has put in place robust governance processes, a community of thousands of makers from various business units, and a well-structured internal training program, which collectively has resulted in hundreds of Power Platform solutions at the company. “We want to create synergy among groups—including our IT, Digital School, and business units—to let them work in a different way. The fact that we are a large organization meant that we needed to put in place governance and monitoring, giving us a broad view of the adoption of the Microsoft Power Platform.” Learn more: story | video | case study

Martin Lee, who got nicknamed the “App Man” by his colleagues, was a dispatcher who learned Power Apps and built over 50 apps within the span of a year for a variety of use cases involving field technicians, call center agents and executive conferences. He won innovation awards while in his role at Autoglass and now continues to build solutions as a full-time Microsoft certified Power Platform consultant at itelligent-i. “What I like about Power Apps is the depth of functionality, and how really easy it is to use. I can build simple apps in less than a day, and it also connects seamlessly with Microsoft infrastructure.” Learn more: story | Inspire keynote video | case study video

At Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank in terms of assets, Vanessa Welgemoed was on the team that modified the company’s app-building process. They put in a process to elicit ideas from departments that needed apps. Those who shared these ideas were also invited to learn how to build the apps themselves, so there weren’t reliant on central IT teams for all automation. With this implementation in place, Standard Bank collectively created over 400 Power Apps solutions spread across almost every department in the company. “We sat with the business and within 24 hours we were able to produce the first app and we deployed it within the first week. This truly shows Power Apps can transform the way we do business.” Learn more: story | presentation | case study

At G&J Pepsi, the largest family-owned bottler for Pepsi-Cola products, Eric McKinney was on the IT team managing the company’s migration to the cloud and rolling out services such as Office 365 and Skype. He substituted a paper-based store audit process with Power Apps. With real-time reporting, the company was able to respond much more quickly to issues and reduce errors. On top of that, he used rich Power BI reports to derive insights over the aggregated data such as their top in-store competitors on a per-region basis. Eric went on to build several more solutions and taught others how to build apps and automation. He is now Enterprise Infrastructure Director with a team that leads innovation, cloud platforms, support and cybersecurity and G&J Pepsi’s adoption of Dynamics 365. “When you build these raw, fresh ideas, without the need to manage an underlying core infrastructure, that’s incredible. That’s really empowering as an IT person.” Learn more: story | video | presentation