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Power Platform: The Toolbox That Maximizes Your D365 Investment

Power Platform: The Toolbox That Maximizes Your D365 Investment Table of Contents Power Platform: The Toolbox That Maximizes Your D365 Investment Microsoft Power Platform isn’t just an add-on to Dynamics 365—it’s the toolbox that enables your business teams to continuously expand the return on investment of D365. While D365 provides the structure, automation, and data integrity needed for enterprise operations, Power Platform equips your people with the ability to extend, refine, and optimize processes over time.    By leveraging Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Pages, organizations can move beyond standard ERP functionality and unlock new ways to drive efficiency, improve decision-making, and enhance customer and supplier engagement.    But the challenge isn’t just having the right tools—it’s knowing where to apply them to drive the most business impact.  The Transformation Journey Has Just Begun Going live on D365 was a major milestone, but it’s not the finish line—it’s the starting point for continuous improvement and innovation. The best-run organizations don’t just operate their ERP as-is; they use it as a foundation for continued business transformation.    At Ascent Innovations, we help organizations identify the most valuable opportunities for process improvement, automation, and analytics—ensuring that Power Platform is used strategically to maximize business impact.  Our approach ensures that: Every investment in Power Platform delivers measurable business value  Your business teams are equipped with the tools and knowledge to optimize execution  The transformation journey remains active, uncovering more opportunities for efficiency and growth  Your D365 ROI is just the beginning—there’s much more opportunity yet to be realized.  Agile ROI: Small, High-Impact Improvements That Drive Continuous Modernization Our Agile ROI methodology focuses on delivering high-value, incremental improvements that create a self-funding cycle for broader transformation.  Phase 1: Identify Opportunities for Improvement Every modernization journey starts by asking the right questions. We work closely with your business teams to uncover areas where manual or non-integrated processes slow things down, customer interactions could be improved, or timely and trust reporting is not available for critical decisions. The goal is to identify high-impact opportunities where Power Platform can deliver immediate value. By linking each opportunity to a tangible business outcome, we ensure that every enhancement has a clear purpose and measurable ROI.    Where can automation replace manual work and accelerate workflows?  What customer or vendor interactions would benefit from a self-service portal?  Which business processes could improve with heightened visibility into performance?  What business impact would these capabilities produce?  Phase 2: Implement Targeted Power Platform Enhancements to Deliver Immediate ROI Once opportunities are identified, we deploy focused Power Platform solutions that deliver results fast. Whether it’s a Power BI dashboard that transforms visibility, a Power App that simplifies approvals, or Power Automate flows that eliminate repetitive tasks—each enhancement is designed to solve a specific pain point. The result is faster workflows, better insights, and real business value in weeks—not months.    Power BI creates real-time dashboards and analytics to enhance process monitoring and management.  Power Automate eliminates manual workflows, ensuring seamless data flow across teams.  Power Apps empowers teams to build custom applications that accelerate execution and streamline approvals.  Power Pages & Portals improve external collaboration, enabling secure self-service access for customers and suppliers.  Phase 3: Train and Develop Your People While Measuring Business Impact Technology alone doesn’t transform a business—people do. That’s why we embed training and hands-on learning into every phase of the journey. As teams engage directly with Power Platform tools, they build confidence and capability, gaining a deeper understanding of how to optimize their processes. This not only supports adoption but also lays the foundation for a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.    Power Platform not only enhances processes—it develops your team’s ability to work and collaborate in new ways.  Employees gain hands-on experience in how modern applications and automation improve workflows, fostering a culture of continuous improvement.  By actively participating in Power Platform enhancements, teams build an informed perspective on how to drive further innovation, preparing them for future transformation initiatives.  Phase 4: Build the Case for Ongoing Digital Modernization With real results in hand—faster processes, fewer errors, better decisions—you now have the proof needed to expand the transformation. We help you measure and communicate the business impact in terms that resonate with leadership and stakeholders. The cycle repeats—with every phase delivering value and unlocking new potential for growth.    Increased operational efficiency, reduced errors, and faster decision-making.  Higher employee productivity and reduced IT burden.  Real-world proof points that captivate executive and equity owner support for further investment—demonstrating that small, strategic improvements lead to larger transformation success.  Unlock the Full Potential of Your D365 System With Power Platform, you can take your D365 environment to the next level, ensuring your investment keeps delivering measurable business impact. At Ascent Innovations, we specialize in helping organizations extend the value of D365 with Power Platform, enabling business-driven improvements that generate immediate ROI while laying the foundation for long-term success.    Want to accelerate the business impact of your D365 investment? Let’s talk about how Power Platform can take your operations from efficient to exceptional.  About the Author John Bruhnke is Managing Director at Ascent. He has 25 years of management consulting experience focused on system implementation and, for the last 7 years, modern analytics in the manufacturing industry. He collaborates with executive and management teams to drive alignment on strategic goals and develop a collective vision for modernization that balances both immediate business needs and long-term strategy.    Author: John Bruhnke Managing Director Icon-linkedin Latest Posts You might also like:

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Power Platform Overview

Power Platform Overview Table of Contents Power Platform Overview Microsoft Power Platform is a collection of low to no code tools that help businesses build apps, automate workflows, integrate systems seamlessly and analyze data. It empowers employees to become self-sufficient and in-house developers to meet some basic critical gaps and tasks.   The platform can connect to Azure and hundreds of other apps with built-in connectors, and integrates with vast majority of other systems.   Please checkout an overview of this powerful tool. https://www.ascent365.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Microsoft-Power-Platform.mp4 Author: Sohena Hafiz President Icon-linkedin Latest Posts You might also like:

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Power Platform: Not an Afterthought for D365 Planning

Power Platform: Not an Afterthought for D365 Planning Table of Contents Power Platform: Not an Afterthought for D365 Planning A successful Microsoft Dynamics 365 implementation isn’t just about configuring the ERP—it’s about laying the foundation for future innovation. Many organizations and vendors focus solely on getting D365 live, only to run into post go-live roadblocks with analytics or portals due to process and data gaps that weren’t considered during planning.   This is why the Power Platform must be factored into the planning of your future-state D365 environment from the start. It’s not an add-on or an afterthought—it’s an integral part of how your organization will extend, optimize, and evolve D365 to maximize long-term impact, both in the near and long term. Future-Proofing Your D365 Environment A proper D365 implementation is designed around business processes, data architecture, reporting, and integration. As Wayne Getsky famously stated, he plays to where the puck will be, not where it is. This means that Power Platform should be included in your roadmap to ensure that the system you go live with can support future-state needs: Planning for enterprise-wide analytics ensures Power BI reporting will be built on a solid data architecture designed to support the demands of AI. Define how your organization wants to communicate and collaborate via portals with customers, vendors, and partners. By designing D365 with Power Platform in mind, you ensure that the D365 ecosystem will meet the needs of the organization day one but also support the demands of future business growth, innovation, and transformation. We Plan for the Future, Even When It’s Hard to See If Power Platform isn’t considered early in the process, companies often run into roadblocks after go-live, realizing that their analytics and automation aspirations require rework, costly customizations, or process redesigns.   We don’t need to define detailed requirements upfront, but during our planning process, we ask the right questions to account for future-state needs—even those that may be hard for your team to envision today. By helping leadership think beyond the constraints of their current processes, we guide them in imagining how the company could operate without barriers, leveraging automation, analytics, and seamless system interactions.   By integrating Power Platform into your future-state D365 strategy, we eliminate obstacles before they arise—allowing your business to focus on growth and continuous improvement instead of running into walls after go-live. D365 + Power Platform = A System That Evolves With Your Business D365 is more than just an ERP or CRM system—it’s a foundation for business transformation. But without Power Platform embedded into your strategy from the start, you risk creating a system that needs workarounds instead of one that enables continuous improvement.   At Ascent Innovations, we don’t just implement D365—we design future-ready solutions that ensure your analytics, automation, and process optimization efforts are fully supported from day one.   Want to ensure your D365 investment delivers long-term impact? Let’s talk about how Power Platform can help you build a system that scales with your business. About the Author John Bruhnke has 20 years of leadership in management consulting, specializing in ERP and analytics modernization with experience leading 15 modern analytics enterprise roadmaps in manufacturing and CPG. He collaborates with executive and management teams to drive alignment on strategic goals and develop a collective vision for modernization that balances both immediate business needs and long-term strategy. John Bruhnke Managing Director Icon-linkedin Latest Posts You might also like:

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Unlocking Business Agility: How the Power Platform Empowers Business Users

Unlocking Business Agility: How the Power Platform Empowers Business Users Table of Contents Empower Business Teams to Build Custom Apps Back in the mid-80’s, my mom brought an electric drip coffee maker up to our cabin in Minnesota. Before that, my family would use the mid-century kitchen staple: the stovetop percolator. Without getting into the details, making a decent cup of coffee in a percolator is time-consuming and requires monitoring.  Even then, the chances of burning the coffee, or making it too weak or too strong are high. An electric drip coffee maker is a huge improvement. Add coffee, add water and turn it on. Done.   My grandfather was skeptical, but he decided to try it. Then, one morning, at 5:00, he woke up my mom to say the coffee maker wasn’t working. He forgot to plug it in. However, after a little bit of training he got the hang of it and, wouldn’t you know it, he was a fan. The coffee maker removed several steps from the process, automated the brewing and created consistent results.   So why am I sharing this story about coffee makers? For years, we stuck with the same process to make coffee with varying degrees of success. Then, a new product came around to simplify the process and improve consistency. From a business operations perspective, that’s where Microsoft’s Power Platform steps in. With Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Pages, business users get the power (pun intended) to create custom applications, automate tedious tasks, analyze real-time data, and engage with customers—all with minimal coding.   This means teams can solve their own problems faster while IT focuses on keeping systems running smoothly. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. While these tools put power in business users’ hands, IT and partners can play a crucial role in getting the first apps into production. The Challenge: Slow, Inefficient Business Processes It starts as a one-off. Some says, “Let’s just put together a quick spreadsheet so we can track the data.” Before you know it, there’s 7 versions with different initials, numbers and “-FINAL” in the file name. Endless spreadsheets, clunky email approvals, and manual data entry slow everything down. Traditional software development takes too long, and by the time IT gets around to building what you need, your business needs have already changed.   What’s the fix? Give teams a way to quickly build custom applications, automate workflows, analyze data, and collaborate seamlessly without being stuck in IT’s backlog. The Solution: The Power Platform Microsoft’s Power Platform is a suite of four interconnected tools designed to help organizations digitally transform their operations: Power Apps lets business users create custom applications with little to no coding, integrating seamlessly with tools like Excel, SharePoint, and Dynamics 365. Power Automate takes the grunt work out of daily operations by automating repetitive tasks, ensuring smooth data flow across applications. Power BI delivers powerful business intelligence and analytics, so teams can track KPIs, monitor trends, and make data-driven decisions. Power Pages helps build secure external portals where suppliers, customers, and partners can access business data and services without complex IT intervention. Real-World Use Cases: How Supply Chain Teams Benefits Supplier Coordination & Purchase Order Approvals The Problem: Slow supplier responses and approval delays. The Fix: A Power Apps supplier portal to centralize communication, Power Automate workflows to speed up approvals, and Power BI reports to track supplier performance. The Impact: Faster decision-making, stronger supplier relationships, and fewer bottlenecks. Supplier & Customer Portals for Shipment Coordination The Problem: Disconnected communication between suppliers, customers, and logistics teams leads to shipment delays and confusion. The Fix: A Power Pages supplier and customer portal where stakeholders can track shipments, submit inquiries, and receive automated updates. Power Automate sends real-time alerts, while Power BI provides visibility into shipment performance. The Impact: Fewer delays, smoother coordination, and happier customers. Real-Time Logistics Monitoring The Problem: No clear visibility into shipment status. The Fix: A Power Apps logistics dashboard that pulls real-time shipment data, Power Automate alerts for delays, Power BI analytics for tracking performance, and Power Pages for customer and supplier inquiries. The Impact: Proactive supply chain management reduced operational risks, and better logistics performance. Building Your First Apps—A Little Help Goes a Long Way Getting started with Power Platform doesn’t mean teams need to figure it all out alone. IT and partners can help by: Building Your First Apps – Partners can collaborate with business teams to design and launch their first apps, solving immediate problems while teaching best practices. Training & Upskilling – Hands-on, real-world learning is invaluable, but structured training ensures long-term success. Next Steps: Transform Your Business with Power Platform The Power Platform is changing the way companies innovate, collaborate, and operate. By equipping business users with low-code development tools, automation capabilities, advanced analytics, and secure portals, companies can move faster and stay ahead—without waiting on IT to solve every challenge.   Ready to put Power Platform to work in your business? Let’s talk about how you can start automating, analyzing, and optimizing today! About the Author Matthew Newcomb is a seasoned and certified Microsoft Dynamics AX and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management Functional Consultant, specializing in Advanced Warehousing and Production. His extensive experience in Dynamics 365 planning and implementation projects informs his approach to enhancing Dynamics 365 environments with the Power Platform. By leveraging tools such as Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI, Matthew enables businesses to automate processes, build custom applications, and gain deeper insights into their operations, thereby driving efficiency and innovation. Matthew Newcomb Microsoft Dynamics 365 consultant Icon-linkedin Latest Posts You might also like: