Insights

Transitioning from spreadsheets to Microsoft Power Apps and the Microsoft Dataverse can significantly enhance your data management capabilities, streamline processes, and improve efficiency.

But what are the problems with traditional spreadsheets and the alternatives?

In this article, we briefly explain the Microsoft Dataverse and Power Apps and how we use them to help organisations break free from the common headaches associated with Excel spreadsheets.

What are the problems with spreadsheets?

This is a valid question, and there is nothing inherently wrong with Excel spreadsheets. Most organisations use them in one way or another. However, there is a time and place to use spreadsheets.

The problems begin when organisations allow spreadsheets to grow beyond their intended original purpose into something much more complex. For example, if someone skilled in Excel develops several formulae or processes within their department’s spreadsheets, it might initially be helpful to solve problems or streamline a process. However, if that person leaves the business, and the team has become dependent on that spreadsheet being maintained and updated correctly, it can cause major headaches when something breaks or needs to be changed.

When you have this scenario in departmental silos, you quickly find that spreadsheet use within organisations has become unwieldy and unmanageable, which can lead to a lot of manual effort and time to coordinate between teams.

Reporting is also extremely difficult, as the data isn’t captured or maintained consistently between spreadsheets, creating huge inefficiencies in organisations.

This type of data is typically what we call “unstructured data”.

Adding structure to your data with the Microsoft Dataverse

At the core of Microsoft’s business applications ecosystem is an underlying database layer called the Microsoft Dataverse. The Microsoft Power Platform (which includes Microsoft Power Apps) then sits over the Dataverse to provide the “business logic” layer.

The Dataverse is basically a SQL database that lives in the cloud on Microsoft Azure, but it is extremely powerful for organisations that use it.

Rather than keeping data in separate spreadsheets, organisations can store all their data in a single centralised repository. The Dataverse gives consistency and structure to previously unstructured data.

Because the Dataverse is a relational database, it has a lot of power downstream. By that, we mean you can run reports against all your data or create integrations that leverage your data for use with other business systems.

Doing this with Excel spreadsheets would be extremely difficult, especially where information is captured in different formats, without links between the spreadsheets.

Using Power Apps to interact with your data

While it might seem simple enough to move your data into a database like the Microsoft Dataverse, you then need a way for your users to interact with the data.

This is where Microsoft Power Apps comes in.

Power Apps is a suite of tools that allow organisations to build their own business apps with minimal coding. We’ve explained what Power Apps are in a recent article, but in a nutshell, a Power App is simply an app that allows users to interact with data stored in the Dataverse.

You can create different types of apps tailored to your specific organisational requirements, helping streamline previously cumbersome manual tasks and processes, replacing the need to update and report on spreadsheets.

The benefits of Power Apps vs spreadsheets

Customisable User Interfaces

From simple forms for data entry to more complex applications for managing business processes, Power Apps enables you to create custom user interfaces that are intuitive, user-friendly, and tailored to your specific needs.

Data Capture and Management

Power Apps provides a structured approach to capturing and managing data, ensuring your data is consistent, accurate, and easily accessible. By maintaining a single data source, you can combat the problems of duplicate data, inaccurate data entry, inconsistent naming and much more.

Automated Workflows

Microsoft Power Automate, another component of the Power Platform, allows you to create automated workflows that streamline your processes. This can include tasks such as data validation, notifications, approvals, and more. By automating these tasks, you can reduce manual effort and ensure consistency and accuracy in your processes.

Scalability

As businesses evolve and their data management needs change with time, it’s important to have systems that can scale with this. The beauty of a cloud-based solution, such as the Dataverse and Power Apps, is that you can simply add new data in a structured format, integrate with other systems, and scale or down your storage as required – with the ability to build apps that support your latest processes and requirements.

Security and governance

By keeping your data in the Dataverse and Power Apps, you also benefit from all the fantastic security and governance capabilities that Microsoft build into their solutions. For example, leveraging conditional access, multi-factor authentication and user permissions etc. This is a stark improvement on spreadsheets, which are inherently insecure, easy to corrupt and difficult to govern.

Reporting

A common challenge we see within organisations is the manual collation of separate spreadsheets across departments to enable reporting. This is time consuming and often error-prone. The ability of the Dataverse and Power Apps to enable dynamic reporting, is a significant benefit, streamlining reporting processes and increasing accuracy.

Integration

Power Apps integrate seamlessly with other Microsoft services like Teams, SharePoint, and Power BI or you can use thousands of connectors to integrate with a huge range of 3rd party data sources. These integrations ensures that your data can be surfaced and leveraged across different platforms, enhancing collaboration, productivity and accuracy.