Power Platform # Power Platform consulting that starts with the process Apps, workflow and process automation built on Power Apps and Power Automate, inside the Microsoft 365 environment you already own. We map the process before choosing the tool – and where Power Platform is the wrong answer, we say so. [ Talk through a process ](https://contentformula.com/discuss-a-project/) [ When we would say no ](#what-we-build) We also build SPFx and intranets, so we have no reason to make everything a Power App. In short What it covers Power Apps for business applications, Power Automate for workflow and process automation, Copilot Studio for agents, and the governance to keep it all manageable. How it starts With the process, not the platform. Requirements understood, workflow mapped and signed off before anything is built. Where it runs Inside your own tenant, on licensing you largely already hold. Scope ## What Power Platform consulting covers Most engagements involve two or three of these rather than all of them. - ### Power Apps Power Apps consulting and development for the processes that do not have an off-the-shelf answer - inspections, requests, approvals, asset and resource management. Built inside your tenant, on licensing you largely already hold. [What Power Apps can do](https://contentformula.com/what-is-powerapps-and-how-can-i-use-it/) ### Power Automate Power Automate consulting for workflow and process automation across Microsoft 365 and the systems around it. Onboarding, approvals, notifications, content review cycles, and the handoffs between functions that currently run on email. [How Power Automate fits the platform](https://contentformula.com/what-is-microsoft-power-platform/) ### Copilot Studio & agents Agents built over your own content and systems, so answers come from your material rather than the open web. Increasingly the most requested part of a Power Platform programme. [AI & search](https://contentformula.com/solutions/microsoft-copilot-consulting/) ### Governance Environment strategy, who can build what, and how a growing estate of apps and flows stays manageable rather than becoming a problem for your security team to unpick later. **Power BI & Power Pages** are part of the wider platform and we will name them where they are the right answer, but reporting platforms and external-facing portals are not where our work sits. If that is what you need, we would rather point you to someone who specialises in it. [ Ask us what fits ](https://contentformula.com/discuss-a-project/) Method ## How a Power Platform project runs Four stages. The first one is where most of the value is decided. Discovery 1 ### The process before the platform Stakeholders usually arrive with a long list of things they would like to automate and no agreed order. We work through the processes themselves - what actually happens, where it breaks, who is affected - and identify the ones where automation would change something rather than just move it. ** On larger programmes this is a digital workplace discovery in its own right. Design 2 ### Wireframed & signed off first We map the workflow, wireframe the interface and get sign-off before development starts. It sounds obvious and it is the stage most often skipped, which is why so many automation projects deliver something technically correct that nobody wanted. Development 3 ### Native first, and tested throughout Power Platform development follows the same rule as everything else we build: native first. We use Power Apps, Power Automate and SharePoint before reaching for custom code, so solutions stay maintainable and inside licensing you already hold. Dedicated QA runs through the build rather than as a phase at the end, followed by a structured UAT with a written test plan. Fixed price against an agreed scope - Contained builds typically run three to eight weeks - Bug fixes during UAT built into the project Adoption 4 ### Handed over, not held onto Because we build native wherever possible, much of what we deliver can be maintained by the people who own the process. A process owner adjusting their own flow. A key user managing the app their team depends on. That is deliberate, and it means less ongoing support is needed than a comparable custom build would demand. Where you do want it, our [SharePoint support services](https://contentformula.com/solutions/sharepoint-support-services/) cover what we have built. Where we differ ## When is Power Platform the wrong answer? A question worth asking a Power Platform consultancy, and a difficult one for a firm that only does Power Platform. Power Apps and Power Automate cover a great deal, and where they fit they are usually the right choice – the solution stays inside licensing you hold and inside a support model your own team can pick up. But they have limits, and building past them produces applications that fight the platform and become somebody’s problem eighteen months later. Three things push a requirement past low-code, and any one of them changes the answer. Trigger 1 SPFx ### The user experience has to be designed A tool used fifty times a day, or something that has to feel like part of the intranet rather than an application embedded inside one Trigger 2 SQL database, with SPFx over it ### The data is genuinely relational Multiple related tables, referential integrity, joins, volume. SharePoint lists are flat with lookups, and past a point the workarounds become the problem Trigger 3 Azure components ### There is real processing to do High compute or intensive processing. Power Automate is built for orchestration, and at volume its run limits stop being a technicality Trigger 4 Power Apps & Power Automate ### None of the three Inside licensing you already hold, and maintainable by your own team In practice most builds that cross one of these lines end up as a mix of SPFx and Azure, with Power Platform still doing the parts it does well. We can say this plainly because we build the alternatives. Our SPFx and intranet work means we are not choosing between Power Platform and losing the project, which is a materially different position from a practice that only does one of them. A recent example, without naming the client. A global pharmaceutical company came to us wanting an application to manage invoice approvals. It did not need custom development: the answer was a Power App for data entry and reporting, a SharePoint list holding the records, and Power Automate running two stages of approval – including a form suppliers could submit through from outside the organisation. Native throughout, inside licensing they already held, and maintainable by their own finance team. #### Where the line actually falls The thresholds, the escalation path into Azure, and what we do when a requirement sits on the boundary. [ SharePoint development services ](https://contentformula.com/solutions/sharepoint-development-services/) Keeping it manageable ## Power Platform governance Sold, implemented and advised on as a service in its own right – including on estates we did not build. Power Platform is easy to start with, and that is both its strength and the reason it goes wrong. A year in, an organisation that enabled it enthusiastically can be running a few hundred apps and flows that nobody catalogued, built by people who have since moved on, with no clear view of what would break if any of them stopped. Governance is a service in its own right for us, not a caveat attached to a build. We advise on it, we implement it, and we take it on as a standalone engagement** – including for estates somebody else built. It is not only us saying it matters. Gartner’s forecast for low-code development technologies puts the market at 58.2 billion dollars by 2029, and lists a growing focus on governance alongside agentic AI and citizen development as the things driving that growth ([Gartner, Forecast Analysis: Low-Code Development Technologies, Worldwide](https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/7146430)). ### Advice on an estate you already have Where Power Platform is already in use and nobody is confident about what exists. An assessment of what is running, who owns it, what is exposed and what would break, with a recommendation on what to do about it. ### Implementation Where you know what you want in place and need it set up properly - environments, policies, conventions, catalogue and review cycle - rather than assembled from documentation over the course of a year. ### Designed into a build On projects we deliver, governance is part of the design rather than something added at handover. It is the reason our work can be maintained by your own team without becoming a liability. Process automation ## The processes that come up most often Onboarding and leavers, approvals and requests, content review cycles, and the line-of-business processes specific to how you work – inspections, contract creation at volume, case handling. Process automation is rarely about the exotic ones. Boundaries ## What we do not do We work alongside your IT team and your existing partners, not instead of them. ### Ours - Power Apps & Power Automate design & build - Process discovery, mapping & prioritisation - Copilot Studio & agent development - Integration with Microsoft 365 & line-of-business systems - UX, wireframing & information architecture - Handover so your own team can maintain what we build ### Not ours - Power BI reporting platforms & analytics practices - Power Pages external-facing portals - Dynamics 365 & CRM implementation - Licensing procurement & optimisation - Developers or consultants by the day **On dataverse** A reasonable fit for straightforward builds. Our experience is that a requirement which has genuinely outgrown SharePoint lists warrants the full step to SQL rather than an intermediate one, so in practice we go from lists to SQL. Proof ## Twenty years inside Microsoft 365 Two things worth separating: whether the platform is a safe choice, and whether we are the right people to build on it. The first is settled and not our claim to make – Microsoft reports more than 56 million monthly active Power Platform users, and was placed a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms ([Microsoft, August 2025](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/blog/power-apps/microsoft-recognized-as-a-leader-in-the-2025-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-enterprise-low-code-application-platforms/)). The second is a matter of who we have done this for. Organisations we have built for ![Janssen logo] ![Severn Trent logo] ![L&G logo] ![Astellas logo] ![Aurora Group logo] ![TTEC logo] ![Janssen logo] ![Severn Trent logo] ![L&G logo] ![Astellas logo] ![Aurora Group logo] ![TTEC logo] "The answer is usually that the decision has less to do with technology than with the shape of the problem. Power Platform is the right call when a process is well understood but badly served: a form, an approval chain, some reporting, and a business team who know the process better than we ever will. That was exactly the situation at Janssen, where the finance team needed to standardise invoice submission through to payment. A Power App front end over a SharePoint list, with Power Automate handling the approvals, got them a working tool quickly and, just as importantly, one they could keep shaping themselves as real feedback came in. That is one of the values of Power Apps alongside harnessing citizen development in your organisation: not only that it is necessarily cheaper, but that ownership stays close to the people doing the work. AI has widened that lane considerably, because Copilot and agents now let non-developers build and refine things that would have needed us three years ago, and a lot of intelligence can be added declaratively rather than written from scratch." "But the signs that you have outgrown low-code are consistent, and we watch for them from day one: heavy transaction volumes or large data sets, complex integrations with systems outside Microsoft 365, bespoke user experience requirements the platform will fight you on, strict performance or regulatory demands, or logic so intricate that maintaining it in a canvas app becomes its own risk. When those appear, custom development is not the expensive option, it is the cheaper one over five years. The mistake we see most often is not choosing wrong at the outset, it is failing to notice when a successful Power App has quietly become a business-critical system that deserves to be built properly." ![Joe Perry] Joe Perry Technical Director ## Bring us a process, not a product Tell us what is not working and we will tell you whether Power Platform is the right answer for it. Sometimes the honest recommendation is to fix the process before automating it, which is a shorter conversation and a cheaper one. [ Talk through a process ](https://contentformula.com/discuss-a-project/) Or [ start with a discovery ](https://contentformula.com/solutions/digital-workplace-discovery/) Common questions ## SharePoint development, answered ### What is Power Platform consulting? Power Platform consulting helps organisations build custom applications, automate workflows and connect systems using Microsoft’s low-code tools, most commonly Power Apps and Power Automate. A consultancy will typically map the current processes, design and build the solution, set up the security and governance around it, and train the people who will keep it running. The work sits inside an organisation’s existing Microsoft 365 environment and largely inside licensing it already holds, which is a substantial part of why it is chosen over standalone software. A contained build – one process, one application – typically runs three to eight weeks. ### Do we already have the licences we need? Often, largely, yes. Microsoft 365 includes Power Apps and Power Automate capability for use within Microsoft 365 data, which covers a great many internal processes. Premium licensing becomes relevant when a solution needs premium connectors, Dataverse, or certain kinds of external data access. We will tell you which side of that line a requirement falls on before you commit to it, because finding out afterwards is an unpleasant conversation. We do not sell or resell licences, so we have no interest in the answer either way. ### Will Power Platform handle our requirement, or do we need custom development? Sometimes it will and sometimes it will not, and which of three limits you are hitting decides it – the diagram above shows where each line falls and what sits on the other side. The part worth checking with any Power Platform consultancy is whether they can build what is on the other side. We can, which is why the recommendation is not shaped by what we would rather sell you. A practice that only does Power Platform has one answer available to it. ### What happens to Power Automate flows when the person who built them leaves? They keep running until something changes, and then nobody knows who owns them. This is the most common reason organisations end up needing help with an estate they built themselves, and it is a Power Platform governance question rather than a technical one. Flows and apps need named owners, documentation and a review cycle, and the practical test is whether anyone can currently answer what would break if a given flow stopped. If the answer is no, that is worth solving before anything else is added. We take governance on as a standalone engagement for exactly this situation, including on estates we did not build. 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