Business Apps: Good reasons to start using them now

The digital transformation has been on companies’ agendas for many years already. But it has taken modern solutions such as the collaboration tool Microsoft Teams to make them realize that other applications and business processes must be digitized even more - a process that is made more efficient with the right strategy, platform and adoption.

What was often discussed as a scenario for the future had to be implemented within a matter of weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic: home office, digital workplace, flexible business processes - to name just a few. In particular, the rapid introduction of modern collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams became a must-have for video conferences and off-site collaboration. 

Now that these solutions have been in use for about six months, more companies see the growing discrepancy between modern applications and their current processes. They notice that “media breaks” are more painful than before. To continue digitizing their business processes, they require digital signatures, remote access to applications, rapid and customized reporting, mobile apps and avoiding double licenses for Microsoft 365 and legacy systems.

This results in an enormous increase in demand for modern applications. The big question is: How can IT departments cope with the growing work burden while also ensuring that these applications are rolled out quickly, securely and in a way that can be managed? To this end, companies need three building blocks: 

Microsoft Teams, which is already used by many companies, offers the ideal platform for many requirements. It is easy to roll out, and it can be used as an intuitive collaboration tool. Moreover, it also has the potential to become a comprehensive platform for modern digital business apps. Since it is used in the Microsoft 365 environment and is hosted by Microsoft, it offers a secure enclave and also guarantees data protection according to the European standards, so that companies are not required to assign a lot of technical resources to this area. 

The platform can be used to roll out not just the Teams app itself, but also in-house development applications. For example, users can use their collaboration applications in one interface, and they can also use tabs to jump to business apps without leaving Teams - e.g. for creating vacation requests or managing projects. And everything that runs on the PC also works in the browser or smartphone.

At first glance, these announcements appear to be only small and inconspicuous improvements. But taken together, they promote the co-creation of business applications, and they make it easier to make them available to employees. 

But even in the new app world, not everything that glitters is gold. Companies should pay attention to a few stumbling blocks. For example, the IT department must guarantee a high level of security and data governance. To this end, it can deactivate external connectors in the Power Platform as required, so that employees are not able to incorporate insecure Twitter feeds, or so that internal information or business secrets is not leaked to the outside.

The number of environments that are established for this purpose can pose another challenge. While their number can easily be limited in the Power Platform, every team in Microsoft Teams (which requires dedicated functions) receives its own independent environment. This configuration cannot be changed at this time, and it creates a lot of extra work for management and governance.

In addition, the current upper limit of 25,000 members per team in Microsoft Teams can represent a limitation for large corporation. There is no option for setting up rooms that can be used jointly by all employees, e.g. for general information or for virtual employee plenary meetings. Accordingly, it is also important to consider the scalability of the solutions for future requirements.

Anyone wishing to benefit from the advantages offered by an integrated platform, a comprehensive app and data strategy as well as co-creation should first conduct an analysis of the present situation. The analysis must address the following questions:  

• How many / which applications require action to be taken?
• How many critical applications are currently in use?
• What is the estimated number of unknown applications in the departments?
• How can the many applications be managed efficiently?
• What measures have been implemented to prevent uncontrolled growth? 
• How easy is it really to prepare apps and reports?
• What are the requirements re: integration of data (silos)?
• Who is responsible for which data?
• How are the employees included in the change process?
• What types of rights should be given to the departments and power users?

The second step involves developing the application strategy before the platform is selected. This raises the question of whether Teams, Power Platform or Azure would be the ideal platform. The options for co-creation must also be considered in this context, particularly the available and appropriate collaboration tools.

In the last step, the new solutions are introduced and the business processes are digitized. Here, companies must figure out how the conversion can be achieved as smoothly as possible. This requires a proof-of-concept at the technical level, and comprehensive change management at the organizational level.