How to Build a Business App That Actually Makes a Difference

Probably the simplest advice we can give is: Don’t start with something you’ve created before. Whilst it’s tempting to ‘tweak’ a previous app; you’ll almost certainly end up compromising on the user experience, or functionality, to save time. At the outset, start with a ‘blank piece of paper’ to make sure that you don’t bring any pre-conceived ideas, or compromises to the final app.

Don’t build an app based on what you think it should do. ‘Create’ an app based upon two things: What you’re trying to achieve, and how real people will interact with the app. Ask a simple question of each potential user: “If this app could make your job (life) easier, what one thing would it do to help?

It’s not complicated. Define the relationship between key ‘entities’. For example: ‘Customers’ place orders; ‘Orders’ contain multiple ‘Order Lines’; order lines relate to a ‘Product’

It might sound counter-intuitive, given that it’s all about the end-user; but creating a logical data structure will allow you better to understand the relationship between key entities. Our approach is to use the step above to build a data structure that maps the entities, their relationships; and the transactional elements that build a history of how the ‘entities’ that represent their histories.

It’s important to get real data into the app as soon as possible. This avoids two main issues: performance at scale; and real reference data sets. It’s very easy to build an app based upon its performance with a few dozen test records; and non-representative data fields. If you leave the real-world testing until just before user testing; you’re likely to get quite a few surprises.

With your data structure in place; think about how your end-users will interact with the data. In Step 2 above, they told you what they do. Make the user interface complement the way they work, rather than making them work the way the app wants. The aim of the app is to help them to achieve their goals as seamlessly as possible. The app interface should present them with the information that they need to accomplish the relevant stage of the task, and provide clear next steps.

Microsoft Power Platform provides a range of tools to allow the right blend of technologies to be used to meet your business needs, and the various use cases that an end-to-end business app solution will present. For example: Power Apps Power Apps provides the primary interface through which your users interact with your business data. It provides a flexible, low-code, development environment that allows you to create rich user interfaces that help users to find the data they need, and to allow your business processes to be embedded into the interface’s functionality. Power Pages In contrast to Power Apps, which is intended primarily for use by Microsoft 365 subscription users; we use Power Pages to create highly secure, public facing, interface for use by external users. Power Pages combines a simple user interface design tool, with the ability to go ‘old school’ and use Visual Studio Code (or your own preferred code tools), to build enterprise grade web sites that connect securely to your data. Copilot Studio Formerly Power Virtual Agents; Copilot Studio incorporates Microsoft’s Copilot generative AI technology with a rich set of authoring tools to allow virtual agents to be created. These agents are able access prescribed knowledge sources including website content, data tables, and SharePoint document libraries; and to use generative AI to provide an amazing user experience using text or audio. Additionally, virtual agents can create subject matter experts that can form ‘virtual colleagues’ in your Microsoft 365 environment. Power Automate Power Automate acts behind the scenes to allow you to implement Business Process Automation. Through numerous connections to both your Microsoft 365 environment, and a huge variety of third-party web resources; powerful logic flows can be created to complete business automation tasks. Power Automate is also frequently used in combination with the three user interface tools described above to provide consistent business process logic to be called from the user interface.

Your app’s data doesn’t drive your app; it can provide insights and intelligence into how your business is performing. Whilst you can provide summaries of your data within your Power App or Power Pages interface; the real power of your data can be unleashed using Microsoft Power BI. Power BI allows you to create intelligent dashboards that allow users to interact and interrogate your business data to provide deep insights into the underlying figures and statistics that your business app is using, and has created.

Don’t just hold a project meeting at the outset and turn up later with the ‘finished product’. App development is a collaboration between the developer and the end-users. Show them the early prototypes; ask them if that’s what they wanted, tweak, evolve, and refine; avoid surprises to ensure adoption.

Take a Deep Breath. As the app evolves, the end-users are going to have new ideas. They’re going to realise that the app is more than just a replacement for what they are currently doing. As they see that a well developed app is able to deliver based upon the initial brief; they’re going to ask “could it also do this?” This is, perhaps, the biggest challenge. On the one hand, it’s great that they have seen the potential of the app; on the other, ‘mission creep’ will set in very quickly. It’s really important at this stage to manage the process to avoid delays in delivering the original project.