Before even opening the Power Apps Maker Portal, you should have a good understanding of what your client or user needs. Properly defining the problem is a necessity of good problem solving. What do we want our app to do? Are we replacing or automating an analog process? Do we need to automate steps in our current process that cause backlogs? Do we need to create mobile capacity? Do we need to account for hundreds of lines of data, or tens of thousands of lines of data?

Avoid the temptation to replace the steps of a legacy process with an app when there’s so much more you can accomplish with Power Apps. Where off-the-shelf software might help you streamline or solve business solutions, it rarely helps you solve all your business problems, and sometimes this causes you to update or alter your processes to match the software. For most organizations, this isn’t ideal because of the cost or time it takes to update those business processes.

The great news is, by using Power Apps to build your solution, you don’t have to worry about unsupported business solutions. Why? With Power Apps, you can build a custom solution tailored to the exact needs of your business requirements.

Often when building an app, you’re tempted to recreate the piece of paper or legacy software-driven process exactly. If you challenge the existing process and ask what the business needs to do, rather than what the piece of paper or old software let you do, you open the way to better, more efficient processes. For example, maybe on the paper process, the user had to type notes about what they see. Would it be better instead to just take a picture? This type of thinking leads to better apps and better outcomes.