Edit

Share via

Enhance operational efficiency

This article describes a common goal for Power Platform—enhancing operational efficiency. It follows a structured framework that includes defining clear objectives, measurable key results, and actionable initiatives. This article aims to guide you in creating your own vision for Power Platform adoption.

Vision

Enhancing operational efficiency is a common vision for Power Platform adoption because it directly impacts an organization’s ability to remain competitive and agile in a rapidly changing business environment. By streamlining processes, automating repetitive tasks, and optimizing resource allocation, Power Platform enables organizations to reduce costs, improve productivity, and accelerate time-to-market for new solutions. This focus on efficiency not only frees up valuable time for employees to engage in higher-value activities but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement and innovation. Enhancing operational efficiency through Power Platform helps organizations achieve their strategic goals, drive growth, and deliver better outcomes for their customers and stakeholders.

Objectives

Objectives are the key themes or focus areas that the strategy aims to achieve. They are broad, overarching goals that align with the organizational vision and priorities. Objectives provide direction and set the stage for the initiatives and key results. Objectives help ensure that everyone in the organization understands what the strategy aims to accomplish and why it's important.

Typical objectives for enhancing operational efficiency include:

  • Optimize business processes and align effective resourcing: Streamline business processes and ensure resources are allocated effectively to maximize efficiency and productivity.
  • Digitize manual processes and shift to value creation tasks: Automate manual processes to free up time for employees to focus on higher-value tasks.
  • Reduce time to market for Power Platform solutions: Accelerate the development and deployment of Power Platform applications and automations.
  • Reduce cost and effort to license, build, and deploy: Minimize the costs and efforts associated with licensing, building, and deploying Power Platform solutions.
  • Increase productivity for business and IT: Enhance the productivity of both business and IT teams through effective use of Power Platform.
  • Develop innovative solutions that increase productivity: Create innovative solutions that enhance productivity and contribute to the organization’s financial performance.
  • Break down silos, improve process efficiency, and achieve unification: Foster cross-functional collaboration to eliminate silos, improve process efficiency, and achieve organizational unification.

Measurable key results

Key results are specific, quantifiable outcomes that indicate progress towards achieving the strategic objectives. They provide clear benchmarks for success and help in tracking performance. Defining key results is necessary because they offer a way to measure the effectiveness of the initiatives and ensure that the objectives are met. Key results should be realistic, time-bound, and directly linked to the objectives.

Typical key results, aligned with some of the objectives, for enhancing operational efficiency are:

  • Optimize business processes and align effective resourcing:
    • Build more consistent and sustainable automation, preventing chaos, with a target of ___% reduction in process variability.
    • Ensure Power Platform capabilities are easy to discover, reuse solutions, and work faster, aiming for ___% increase in solution reuse.
    • Achieve ___% increase in automated processes year over year.
    • Reduce manual work by ___%.
    • Decrease effort and duration to execute a given process by ___ hours.
    • Reduce the number of IT hours per application by ___%.
  • Reduce cost and effort to license, build, and deploy:
    • Solve bigger technical problems with measurable savings, targeting a cost reduction of ___%.
    • Reduce redundant licensing on other platforms by ___.
    • Achieve a reduction in running costs by ___%.
  • Increase productivity for business and IT:
    • Increase productivity of IT team members, moving from idea to execution faster, with a target of ___% reduction in time to market.
    • Streamline risk platform and processes to enable quicker and more compliant development, aiming for ___% reduction in compliance-related delays.

Key initiatives

Initiatives are the specific actions or projects that need to be implemented to achieve the objectives. They outline what needs to be done in the immediate term, in the next year, and in the next three years. Initiatives provide a roadmap for action and ensure that there's a clear plan to reach the objectives. Initiatives should be actionable, prioritized, and aligned with the key results.

Typical initiatives, aligned with some of the objectives, for enhancing operational efficiency are:

  • Optimize business processes and align effective resourcing:
  • Digitize manual processes and shift to value creation tasks:
    • Identify and understand manual processes per team.
    • Automate routine support activities and request processes (for example, environment request form).
    • Create a Maker Portal, for example a SharePoint communication site, with onboarding collateral, development guidelines, self-guided learning, and success stories.
  • Reduce time to market for Power Platform solutions:
    • Develop automation and alerting for key assurance controls.
    • Implement a peer-review mechanism for popular citizen-developed apps.
  • Reduce cost and effort to license, build, and deploy:
    • Define license strategy, cost attribution, or chargeback (if applicable).
    • Establish a centralized app store for streamlined application deployment and access.
  • Increase productivity for business and IT:
    • Develop a project pre/postmortem process to ensure lessons learned are being actively applied.
    • Establish themes/trends to guide the development of reusable components/toolkits.
    • Create dashboards to monitor and analyze platform license consumption and usage.
    • Establish a method by which IT can proactively monitor for newly released platform capabilities.
  • Develop innovative solutions that increase productivity:
  • Break down silos, improve process efficiency, and achieve unification: