Microsoft Power Platform is not just for the big guns

Gayan Perera, 25 April 2019

The Microsoft Power Platform is an amazing set of tools that can help businesses serve their customers smarter, faster and better. However, most of the marketing and messaging around the Power Platform is geared toward big companies. Almost all the case studies are from companies such as Heathrow Airport, Virgin Atlantic, French National Railway and Banks. If you’re a little not-for-profit organisation like a church, at first glace you may decide this is not for you… in fact it’s the exact opposite! Let me share a little story.

My wife is a  trustee of a small Church and when the Church was 40 or so members, it was easy enough for her to blast out the end of year donation tax receipts within couple of hours. When the Church grew to about 100, it would take her a whole Saturday, then when it reached 200 it took her a whole weekend, as it grew beyond 400 it took couple of people a whole weekend…

Typically, these not-for-profits run very lean on operating expenses that aren’t related to helping people and communities. Especially IT, left alone and forgotten with raw man power being used to carry out most of the administration.

This is where the Microsoft Power Platform can really help. If you’re a big airline or a small Church like ours, the same technology, used in a smart way can really help! That is saving two people a weekend every year!

In a matter of hours, we knocked up a simple Flow that read an Excel file which was extracted from the accounting software, looped through each row, merged the name and amount into a word document, turned that document into a PDF, stored it inside SharePoint and emailed the donation receipt as an attachment.