Introducing the business value toolkit

The ability to measure and communicate the value of solutions developed within the Power Platform is crucial, particularly for organizations with hundreds or even thousands of apps and flows.

Often, the impact of a Power App or Cloud Flow extends beyond metrics like cost savings or time reduction. Accurately measuring and acknowledging the value of solutions is essential, not just for return on investment, but also for celebrating the efforts of citizen developers.

Recognizing this challenge we have been working on something called the 'Business Value Toolkit' - a powerful, AI-driven set of tools and samples designed to help you capture, assess and communicate the value of your Power Platform solutions.

Measuring value is hard

In developing the Business Value Toolkit, we spoke with many customers about their struggles in understanding the value of the applications and solutions they build. Here are some recurring challenges we found:

Where do we start?

When organizations manage hundreds, thousands of even tens of thousands of apps and flows, determining where to start can be overwhelming. With limited resources and busy teams, finding time to even begin measuring value can seem like an insurmountable task.

Varied definitions of value

The concept of value varies greatly depending on who you ask! A finance team member might have a different perspective compared to someone in IT, Sales, HR, etc. This diversity makes it challenging to define and measure value consistently across an organization.

Communicating value

Even if you could measure value, figuring out how and where to communicate this data is another hurdle. Effective communication of value is crucial for ensuring that all stakeholders understand and appreciate the impact of their work.

What is the Business Value Toolkit?

Its a set of sample apps and flows that can inspire you and your organization into measuring and communicating value. At its core is the ability to define your organizational structure and document the strategic objectives and goals that each part of your organization has (the business value admin app). It provides two approaches to assessing value, based on the type of asset:

• broadly used apps
• cloud flows designed for personal productivity

Broadly used apps (e.g. apps built and used by teams, departments or projects) are often built by citizen developers. We understood that in these apps, we often have a great story to share internally. This approach (capturing the story behind the app) is one of the key elements in the 'business value capture app' - this helps the citizen developer share their story by following a five-stage storytelling framework. How this process works is explained in greater detail below.

Cloud flows designed for personal productivity: Often these save individuals, or small groups of users a few minutes or hours a day/ week. We capture this time saving data by using adaptive cards sent through teams chat. These minutes, often overlooked add up, sometimes to thousands of hours of time saved across an organization.

User initiated assessments of existing apps

The Business Value Toolkit leverages generative AI to craft and enhance a story by capturing the challenges faced, solutions implemented, obstacles that were overcome and the immediate impact of the innovations.

The AI component enhances this narrative into compelling stories that are easily shared across the organization via SharePoint. The toolkit handles most of the work, leaving only minor edits (adding images, screenshots, etc) to the article before publishing.

The benefits of this approach are evident. On average, organizations create 3 - 4 success stories per year. With the Business Value Toolkit, a success story is generated per assessment. We have observed customers transitioning from scarcity to a healthy pipeline of stories that can be used to drive adoption and celebrate the amazing work of employees across the organization.

Using AI to analyze strategic alignment and impact

Beyond storytelling, the Business Value Toolkit utilizes generative AI to evaluate each app's contribution towards the company's larger goals. This not only quantifies the tangible benefits but also highlights the often-overlooked contributions to strategic goals, offering a clearer picture and broader view of each apps complete value to your organization.

Quantifying value with the value calculator

A key feature of the value assessment process is the value calculator, empowering organizations to tangibly quantify the impact of their solution. Leveraging the concept of the 'average cost of things', the calculator facilitates the input of specific metrics aligned with strategic objectives. For instance, it allows app owners to delineate key performance indicators, such as the number of invoices processed per hour, both before and after implementing the app. By capturing these metrics, the calculator paints an accurate and granular picture of value, deriving the tangible benefits from solution deployment.

Bringing it all together, the value card

The process of assessing an existing app uncovers value that previously may have been overlooked. One way of presenting this data is in 'value cards'. These are representations highlighting the key elements of value. Value cards can be displayed in SharePoint along with the story behind the app.

The data collected can be further refined through various channels, including the creation of Power BI dashboards and alternative formats such as Viva Engage posts, email newsletters, blog articles and Teams messages. These formats allow organizations to share insights and success stories in multiple ways, maximizing their reach and applicability to multiple audiences.

Proposals and ideas

While our focus has primarily been on assessing the value of existing solutions, it’s also essential to evaluate the potential impact of new ideas and proposals. As organizations complete assessments and see the evolving value of the Power Platform, they should also consider how to assess new ideas effectively.

The toolkit extends its capabilities to evaluate proposed ideas as well. Users can assess the potential impact of new ideas on strategic objectives and goals. Additionally, the toolkit includes a feature that checks for similar ideas or apps by comparing them across two dimensions: audience and proposed features. This similarity-comparison helps ensure that new proposals are unique and avoids duplicating existing solutions.

Customization and flexibility

Understanding that no two organizations are the same, the toolkit is designed to be fully customizable. It can be easily adapted and updated to meet the needs of any business, regardless of size or industry. This ensures that all organizations can tailor the toolkit to their specific requirements.

Conclusion

We want to thank our customers Keteney Conti , Stephen Myers , Baramee Thummatewin , Melinda Morales , Phil Childs and Charlie B. who have been instrumental in collaboration in the development of this toolkit. Their patience, collaboration and invaluable feedback have been crucial in refining these features. Also, a thanks to our close colleague Pete Puustinen for helping with SharePoint integration, and Jenefer Monroe for helping everywhere and being awesome!

Finally, learn more about the toolkit and access here