Envision and uncover high-value Power Platform use cases

Investing in the Power Platform takes time and resources. Identifying areas where the platform enhances efficiency, reduces costs, and improves decision-making helps organizations use the technology to its full potential. High-value use cases often involve automating repetitive tasks, providing real-time data insights, and streamlining processes, which collectively boost employee productivity and job satisfaction.

Solution envisioning workshops are an effective way to uncover high-value use cases by bringing stakeholders together to collaboratively explore opportunities and define solutions. This article guides you through organizing these workshops and the activities involved in identifying and refining high-value use cases.

Organize solution envisioning workshops

This section provides an approach to organizing solution envisioning workshops.

1. Define objectives and scope: Clearly define the goals of the workshop. Are you trying to improve a specific process, explore opportunities to use newer technologies, or enhance the customer experience? Define the scope of the workshop including the business areas to address and the expected outcomes.
2. Identify and invite stakeholders: Identify key stakeholders based on the workshop's objectives. This group includes business leaders, IT professionals, and end users. Such a diverse group provides a comprehensive view of the organization's needs. Depending on the scope, target a specific department or the entire organization to gather a wide range of insights and perspectives.
3. Invitation and communication: Send invitations well in advance, clearly stating the purpose, agenda, and expected outcomes of the workshop.
4. Prepare workshop materials: Provide participants with relevant background information, such as existing high-value Power Platform solutions in your organization. Prepare templates for brainstorming, prioritization, and documentation. Tools like whiteboards, sticky notes, and Microsoft Whiteboard can facilitate the process.
5. Select a facilitator: Designate someone to lead and manage the workshop. This person is responsible for explaining the rules, setting time limits, guiding participants through each stage, and facilitating discussions.

Identify high-value use cases

First, identify use cases by asking workshop participants to prepare an elevator pitch of their idea. Depending on the number of attendees, you might want to split them into groups before this activity. The goal of the elevator pitch activity is to identify a specific problem within the organization that a Power Platform solution can solve and to develop a compelling pitch for the idea.

Prepare a template that prompts workshop participants to:

1. Name their idea: Start by naming the idea. A memorable name captures attention and makes the pitch engaging.
2. Identify an important process: Think about an important process within the organization. Explain the process and why it's important. This exercise sets the context for the idea and emphasizes the significance of the problem being solved.
3. Highlight the challenges: Identify the challenges associated with this process. Are there steps where human errors frequently occur? Are there inconsistencies that affect efficiency? Clearly outline these difficulties to emphasize the need for an autonomous solution.
4. Envision the solution: Imagine a Power Platform solution that solves the challenging aspects of the process. Describe what the solution does and how it works. Does it use flows to automate error-prone processes? Does an app facilitate accessing data from anywhere? This section should provide a clear picture of the proposed solution.
5. Explain the benefits: Highlight the benefits of implementing the solution. Consider factors such as time saved, cost reductions, and improved accuracy. Also think about other areas within the organization that might benefit from similar automation.

Example pitch

To help you get started, here's an example pitch that illustrates the process:

1. Idea name: Smart Expense Tracker
2. Important process: Managing expense reports ensures that employees are reimbursed for business-related expenses and helps maintain accurate financial records. However, the current manual process is time-consuming and error-prone.
3. Challenges:
   • Manual data entry: Employees manually enter expenses into spreadsheets, which often causes errors and inconsistencies.
   • Approval delays: The approval process is slow, as managers need to review and approve each report individually.
   • Lack of visibility: Finance teams struggle to get real-time insights into expense data, making it difficult to manage budgets effectively.
4. Solution:
   • Automated cloud flows: The Smart Expense Tracker uses Power Automate cloud flows to automate the entire expense reporting process. Employees submit their expenses through a user-friendly app, which automatically categorizes and validates the entries.
   • Power App app: The app provides a seamless interface for employees to upload receipts, and an AI Builder model extracts the relevant data, saving employees from manually entering expense details. The app also lets employees track the status of their reports. Managers receive automated notifications for approvals, and finance teams access real-time dashboards to monitor expenses.
5. Benefits:
   • Time savings: Automating the expense reporting process reduces the time employees spend on data entry and managers spend on approvals.
   • Improved accuracy: Automated validation checks minimize errors and inconsistencies in expense reports.
   • Enhanced visibility: Real-time dashboards provide finance teams with up-to-date insights into expense data, enabling better budget management.
   • Scalability: The solution can be easily scaled to other departments or processes, such as travel requests or procurement approvals, further enhancing organizational efficiency.

Pitch use cases

Once workshop attendees have identified potential use cases, the next step is to have them pitch their ideas to the group and refine them through collaborative activities. Each attendee presents their use case, detailing the problem, proposed solution, and potential impact. The group provides feedback, asks questions, and suggests improvements. To move the best ideas forward, attendees vote on each other's ideas, and the most voted ideas proceed to the next activity. This process not only thoroughly vets and develops the use cases but also promotes cross-education among team members. Attendees share expertise and learn new skills, ensuring the use cases are robust, feasible, and aligned with the workshop's goals.

Refine use cases

Next, divide attendees into small groups. Each group evaluates the pitched ideas based on stakeholders, objectives, challenges, and outcomes.

The goal of this activity is to:

• Align on the most critical stakeholders and objectives.
• Identify and mitigate key challenges.
• Define success metrics through outcomes.

Prepare and distribute printouts of the example list of stakeholders, objectives, challenges, and outcomes. Provide markers, sticky notes, and templates for documenting discussions.

Groups pick items from the list and discuss the relevance of each item to the use case, considering the following categories:

• Objectives:
  • Primary: Objectives that are essential for the success of the use case.
  • Secondary: Objectives that are important but not critical.
• Stakeholders:
  • Critical: Stakeholders who have a significant impact on the success of the use case.
  • Influential: Stakeholders who can affect the use case but aren't as critical.
• Challenges:
  • High Impact: Challenges that could significantly hinder the success of the use case.
  • Manageable: Challenges that can be addressed with relative ease.
• Outcomes:
  • Essential: Outcomes that are necessary for the success of the use case.
  • Beneficial: Outcomes that add value but aren't essential.

Groups assign an importance level to each item based on their discussion, and document the assigned importance levels and the rationale behind each decision.

The expected outcome of this activity is to understand the most important stakeholders and objectives for the use case, identify key challenges and their potential impact, and to start to define concrete success metrics through well-defined outcomes. These outcomes provide a clear path to measure the success of the proposed solutions.

To help you get started, here's a list of sample stakeholders, objectives, challenges, and outcomes. Refine this list based on your objectives, and make sure it's available to attendees, such as via printouts on the day.

Present your idea

At the end of the workshop, each group presents its solution ideas and considerations to the entire workshop. Encourage constructive feedback and discussion to further refine the solutions.

Next step

Plan and execute hackathons to take the next steps and turn ideas into solutions.

Related information

The articles in Planning a Power Apps project show you how to convert an idea into a fully working application by using Power Apps.

The articles in Planning a Power Automate project help you plan and design an automation project.

The Copilot Studio implementation guide provides a framework to do a 360-degree review of your Copilot Studio project. Through probing questions, it highlights potential risks and gaps, aims to align the project with the product roadmap, and shares guidance, best practices, and reference architecture examples.