What are Business Apps?
Organizations need to better align technology with their unique business processes. A business app is a solution created to enhance existing processes and services or adapt to emerging operational patterns. These applications can be created with no or low amounts of code by end users. These applications can be created quickly and easily and integrated with other systems. The goal of the business app is to empower process owners to combine data and processes to rapidly deliver a more tailored solution.
In the modern workplace, information workers have so many productivity tools and systems at their fingertips, often with overlapping capabilities, that navigating through them can decrease productivity. Our focus has evolved toward technologies that help organizations and individuals better manage the data they create, and the automated and intelligent experiences needed to navigate and share this data. Business apps help users achieve Microsoft’s vision of the modern workplace, enabling organizations and their end users to:
Make data-driven decisions
See all your data through a single pane of glass. Live Power BI dashboards and reports include visualizations and KPIs from your data in the cloud and on-premises, offering a consolidated view across your business, regardless of where your data lives.
Build intelligence into your apps
Make all your apps smarter when you collect and infuse all the data captured across your organization. Combine the capabilities of PowerApps, Flow combined with Power BI and deliver actionable insights. Deliver enterprise-grade security and controls.
Organizations today, require being always-on, always-available and always-online. Applications can utilize powerful secure services hosted by Microsoft, that are protected by enterprise-grade Security. Access to the
created business apps, its data and connected services are controlled by authentication services, along with security controls that can block and allow access. Security controls such as multi-factor authentication, geofencing access, to an application using conditional access controls for protection can be implemented easily.
Business apps today may require this level of security and with Microsoft’s expanding list of security features, you can be assured the protection is there. Business apps can be used to standardize a business process by using existing data and tools available without the need for complicated customizations or 3rd party tools. Whether you utilize an out-of-the-box business app, or whether you create your own systems of intelligence and action, business apps can help your organization more effectively connect and engage with existing data and people. Using Microsoft tools such as PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, Microsoft Forms, Power BI, and custom lists in SharePoint, along with legacy solutions such as InfoPath, SharePoint Designer, and Access Services, any type of business app can be imagined and created, empowering organizations to build apps that can provide a competitive edge as well as increase overall productivity. Business apps are created by the business, for the business. As such, the tooling is designed in a way that means your Power Users, Citizen Developers, Decision Makers, as well as Professional Software Architects and Developers can build sophisticated solutions easily. And with seamless Dynamics 365, Office 365, and Azure integration, along with connectors to more than 200 data sources, your business apps can change the way you and others work.
What you can do with Business Apps
Business apps allow an organization to join data, process, and people together in a more coherent way, helping people to spend less time navigating their technology and more time being productive and innovative.
“In a world that is increasingly becoming digital, the one need every business has is for more business process automation. In fact, it’s not just about accumulating more business applications; you want to be able to connect these business processes end-to-end, create these systems of intelligence, systems of action.”
Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO