A few weeks have passed since Avanade and Accenture won yet another selection of Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. Top billing will be our 18th win of the Global SI Partner of the Year award, but I wanted to specifically focus on the award that really made me proud - the Global 2023 Microsoft Low Code Application Development Partner of the Year award.

I live and breathe the Microsoft Power Platform, and I feel privileged to work with an incredible team of MVPs, FastTrack Architects and experts. It’s a hugely exciting time for the platform, particularly around Generative AI and new Copilot capabilities, but it’s the unrivalled knowledge and experience of our team that make it all real – bringing the best of the platform to clients, and creating real, tangible value for businesses around the world.

A great example is a leading global insurer we worked with, where we used a low code approach to cut the time it took them to open new investment accounts by 70% - from months to days. And that wasn’t the only headline for them either, we also reduced their costs by 20% and reduced the error rate in this complex process by 60%. It’s a great example of how the Power Platform can really create value for an organization and solve some of their biggest challenges.

We are passionate about helping our clients improve business with all aspects and components of the Power Platform. We help clients not only create new solutions and value, but also help fill in digital gaps and enhance current investments by making existing solutions and processes better with Power Platform.

What did Microsoft have to say?
In Microsoft’s write up of our win, they recognized that our integrated Power Platform solutions helped extend and modernize legacy systems, we created new applications to capitalize on growth opportunities, and combined a strong balance of technology and use adoption.

They also referenced how our industry experts work together with our technical teams to deliver relevant and impactful transformation, and that customers not only have an initial implementation success, but a road to further value as business needs evolve.

One other thing that really made me proud in this win, was the recognition of our efforts with customers to drive improvements in sustainability – something we at Avanade are passionate about, and something which we believe the Power Platform is fundamental to.

El Corte Ingles is a fantastic example – where we’ve used Power Apps to propel them to become Spain’s first distribution company to secure a ZeroWaste certification from AENOR. Avanade helped them reach this milestone by building a low-code solution on the Power Platform that registers and tracks 107K tons of waste from 110+ distribution centers.

The opportunities are endless, and the future is now
We believe that the Power Platform is key to business agility and efficiency for every part of an organization – automating processes, building Line of Business apps, quickly spinning up websites, creating intelligent chatbots and surfacing data. There’s so much an organization can take advantage of with the right guidance.

In terms of what the future holds, I believe the crossover between pro-code and low-code represents a significant opportunity for leading businesses. All organizations need software and applications, and should be considering how they can best take advantage of a Fusion development approach. The future of software development is a blend of low-code and pro-code. While low code platforms bring agility, they aren’t going to be suitable, on their own, for the entire range of complex components within enterprise applications. Fusion development teams bring business experts together with low-code and professional developers to accelerate modernization, and those who embrace this approach will enjoy the best of both worlds.

One final point to note around the future, that really is the right now: Power Platform Copilots and Generative AI. Some of the things possible today were almost unimaginable not that long ago. From telling a Copilot what you want a power app to do, to asking Copilot to add a form to a web page and summarize the content for you, the opportunities for incredible efficiency gains are truly endless.

It’s been an exciting year – and I’m in no doubt the coming 12 months will be just as exciting. With any luck, we’ll be celebrating even more award wins!

Contact us to see how we can help you solve your problems – perhaps we could win some awards together!