This article was originally written by Avanade alum Ed Bobrin.

Microsoft Business Applications Summit (MBAS) 2019 is in the books! During the event there were some compelling new enterprise capabilities announced for Microsoft Power BI and Dynamics 365.  And I was particularly excited about the launch of Avanade’s new “Future Ready. Now.” campaign, which focuses helping clients break-through digital transformation fatigue and get to the ROI from digital transformation efforts. 

We recognize that many of our clients are experiencing digital transformation fatigue (our research cites that 43% are experiencing digital transformation fatigue today), but the promise of significant business impact from transformation remains great – upwards of 17%. To truly be ready for what comes next and to make it happen for your organization, we recommend a focus on the infusion of intelligence across three dimensions – efficiencies, experiences and innovation. Key tenets to consider along the journey include:

• Create a living strategy that considers talent and skills
• Build operational efficiencies
• Invest in both customer and employee experiences
• Create continual innovation

MBAS highlights include intelligence-driven AI visualizations 
How does this tie back to the learnings from the Summit? Many of the new capabilities introduced for Power BI and Dynamics 365 speak to the infusion of intelligence, operational efficiency and improved employee experience. Personally, a few of the Microsoft Power Platform highlights that stood out included new AI visualizations like the revamped decomposition tree, which will be a huge asset for root-cause analysis across many dimensions of the business.  

The addition of native AI/cognitive services in PowerApps will really make it easy to transform traditional paper processes with intelligence built in (see recent case study on our client Anticimex). From an enterprise information management point of view, the ability to promote and certify, and then share datasets in Power BI and support a full end-to-end view of data lineage across workspaces is huge. These advancements enable truly governed self-service and improve insight, accelerate decision-making and, in turn, deliver more value.

As one of Avanade’s data and AI leaders, I focus on Analytics Experience and I lead our Community of Practice in the area. A primary area we address is how our clients can derive real business value and a high-quality experience from tools like Power BI. Our approach to helping clients drive transformational data and AI capability is to focus on value-driven outcomes that are enabled by a design-led process. This makes it possible to identify and prioritize high-impact use cases that can help deliver compelling customer and employee experiences.  

Power On capabilities are key to improving the employee experience
Earlier this year one of our community members identified a new capability set from a firm that is quickly becoming an important part of our technology ecosystem: Power On BI. The company has created some innovative tools for Power BI that support a variety of new use cases that can be realized directly in the context of an analytical business process. Power On’s Visual Planner and Table editor together allow for complex forecasting and budgeting scenarios and other custom scenarios where writing back changes in real time is important. 

Visual Planner removes the need for business users to jump from one tool to the next to execute on a common business practice like updating a forecast. Imagine getting all the insight you need to make a decision on the adjustment to a sales forecast or a hiring plan and being able to make those updates immediately in the same context.

Each day we uncover more use cases for Visual Planner that not only improve the employee experience, but also bring about a new level of operating efficiency, while providing additional value to our clients by leveraging their investment made in the BI platform. Avanade is excited to be able to deliver Power On’s custom visual tools like Visual Planner to our clients. This truly aligns with our vision of Future Ready. Now. and is one example of how we can help our clients on their digital transformation journey.

Learn more about Avanade’s capabilities that leverage data and AI together.