Centrica leverages Power Apps to ensure its solutions are futureproof

“We’d got to a crossroads where, if we really wanted to move it on, we were going to need to make some changes,” reports Roy Young, Global Head of Office 365 at Centrica.

A growing number of successful apps developed by users

In 2018, with a vision of becoming a digital organisation powered by citizen developers, Centrica rolled out Microsoft Power Platform across its business together with a governance model to guide development. By November 2019, the business had around 300 apps across its estate and a Centre of Excellence was established which would advise on, coordinate and support app development.

“We’ve really embraced this technology in Centrica. We’ve made an effort to be on the front foot and use the latest technology first, rather than waiting for it to be embedded and then acting,” says James Boswell, Director, Design and Engineering at Centrica. “It was a conscious risk but it’s worked really well – it’s giving us some great benefits and rewards and we’re well on the way to ensuring all our employees are digital employees.” 

The scope of app development has been varied. Many apps are designed to automate routine processes. Others are enabling new processes that solve long-running business challenges. Some of the apps are used as proof-of-concept work; making it easy to get a simple solution up and running quickly to see whether a bigger investment in technology is warranted.

Interestingly, Centrica has also used Power Apps to help cut dependencies on legacy apps. Roy Young explains, “We had some solutions built on things like Nintex that we needed to get out of data centres to conclude a big data-centre exit project. Using the Microsoft Power Platform, we’ve been able to recreate those apps – something we weren’t sure we were going to be able to do. That’s going to help us with that big data centre exit piece, so that’s really good.”

“We are seeing a lot more business-led development now,” continues Roy Young, “but we can do more. Our ambition is really high.”

Leading the way in finance automation

From February 2018, Nishant Jain has been tasked with leading app development for the finance team. He says, “In Finance, the perception has changed from being a team that was too slow to change and doesn’t use technology very much to now having developed a reputation in the business that we can deliver applications.”

This change in perception has been down to the way the finance team has embraced the tools of Microsoft Power Platform with Nishant Jain’s encouragement.

“I would never consider myself technical. I couldn’t develop something in Javascript or have a conversation with a full stack developer,” Nishant Jain enthuses, “but you don’t want to require those skills to solve every business problem. And that’s what Microsoft Power Platform gives us.”

Simple apps deliver rapid return on investment

One simple but transformative app developed has been the Bord Gais Tax Timetable App. Coordinating tax returns for three different tax regimes had been difficult when reliant on emails and the initiative of individuals. Within two months, the team developed an app which delivers automated reminders and processes, delivering big time savings and ensuring all returns are filed properly and on time, thereby avoiding fines and risk.

By proving the concept with simple but effective apps like this, the finance automation team has been able to move on to increasingly ambitious projects. One of the most important projects for the finance team at the moment is “single source” – using Power BI to pull together finance data from multiple sources, so that every member of the team can self-serve and build their own reports.

“We now have the tools available to us so we can make a difference,” says Nishant Jain. “We have an approach that can deliver for all.” 

Hitting a crossroads

Between 2019 and 2021, use of Microsoft Power Platform grew from around 300 apps to the more than 1,000 apps used across the Centrica estate today. Having begun its Microsoft Power Platform journey using the licencing included within its Microsoft 365 subscription and Microsoft SharePoint, Centrica realised that the business had arrived at another strategic decision point.

“We realised we’d hit a bit of a crossroads,” says Roy Young. “We could see that the business was using Microsoft Power Apps to great effect. They were building solutions to problems – which is what we wanted them to do. But we could also see that there were some future limitations to that in terms of using Microsoft SharePoint as the data source and not being able to connect to other business applications.”

Choosing a platform for scaling up success

“We had dismissed some use cases because we didn’t want to use Microsoft SharePoint as a backend to them,” explains Roy Young. In particular, enterprise-wide app rollouts were being held back. Centrica didn’t want technology constraints to impede its citizen developer ambitions.

One option was to invest in Microsoft’s secure and cloud-based storage option: Microsoft Dataverse. It is especially useful when the integration of data from multiple sources into a common store would enable an easier app-building experience. The data can then be used in Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agents along with data that’s already available in Dataverse from Dynamics 365 applications. 

Building new enterprise-wide apps

Having built the business case through the end of 2020, the Centrica team invested in Microsoft Dataverse in spring 2021. With a wish list of apps to roll out on an enterprise-wide basis, the team quickly brought the first few into production.

“We do have a number of enterprise-wide apps now running on Microsoft Power Platform,” reports James Boswell. “One of them is our Flex First app. At Centrica, we are offering flexible ways to return after the pandemic. The Flex First app helps by enabling staff to return with as few barriers as possible. We did look at other providers to buy an app, but it made a lot more sense and it was a lot cheaper to use Microsoft Power Apps to do this. Staff can view visual floor plans, book a desk, follow health and safety rules, activate door control, book meeting rooms and use audio visual equipment with Microsoft Teams meeting rooms.”

“Our early success convinced us we wanted to fully invest in the Microsoft Power Platform so we could achieve the full value of the platform and launch an App to this many thousands of users,” explains Roy Young: “This was one of the apps that really made us go down the Microsoft Dataverse route.”

A myriad of different use cases 

Other use cases include projects that require integration with the SAP finance systems used at Centrica. Roy Young explains, “We’d seen a few use cases from the business where they wanted to connect to third-party tooling, such as SAP. It’s been almost organic really how people have started to understand what Microsoft Power Platform can do and then think about how they could use it within their part of the business. Previously, it would have been costly to do that integration for a single app. Now we aren’t operating within those constraints.”

One such app is being used by field service engineers running maintenance checks at terminals. Instead of using clipboards and paper and then rekeying data when they get back to the office, the engineers are building a app that will enable them to key the data directly into SAP.

Nishant Jain says the finance team’s horizons are also expanding. He is pleased with how their Microsoft Power Platform work has now been futureproofed. 

He explains, “We didn’t want to realise ‘hang on – we can’t scale any more’. But we don’t want to have to go off building apps from scratch on Microsoft Azure either. Microsoft Dataverse gives us that middle ground. It’s enterprise grade, it’s robust, it’s secure, it’s reliable. But, technically, it’s not that complicated. We don’t need to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds just to get the resources on the project. Microsoft Dataverse just bridges that gap.”

Microsoft Power Apps clinics help to share knowledge

One of the important lessons learnt by the Centrica team has been the need to share knowledge and best practice throughout the organisation to fully empower citizen developers. To this end, the centre of excellence began running Microsoft Power Apps clinics on Microsoft Teams from early 2021. 

“Anyone can turn up to learn about Microsoft Power Apps and the Microsoft Power Platform. It gives them an opportunity to ask questions and problem solve,” says Roy Young. “We’ve worked very closely with Microsoft on this. At the start of each session, we have a guest speaker from Microsoft who runs a ‘show and tell’ about a particular subject, followed by a Q&A. Those resources are then available online to access later. We’ve now built a great set of resources.”

What’s more, an active community has built around these sessions over the course of the year. This has spawned one of the latest apps undertaken by the Centrica team: an app that matches Centrica volunteers with people from the Trussell Trust charity.

Roy Young says, “It’s been an experiment for us, but it is a real citizen development programme to develop that app. We’ve got people from all over the business working together. Some are working on the development work, some on the UI, some acting as scrum masters to manage the project. It’s all being done by people who came to the clinics and volunteered. And it will be a huge help to the Trussell Trust.”

Ensuring best practice through the centre of excellence and close partnership with Microsoft

Until 2020, the centre of excellence had focused on putting the right governance in place and offering advice. Keeping this up to date and ensuring guidance stays current with the technologies is an important – and ongoing – focus.

Now, the centre of excellence has added three full-time developers to its number in order to help deliver the enterprise-wide apps the business needs.  

“Being able to speak directly to Microsoft and access all the resources we have available to understand best practice or point us in the right direction to solve a problem is really valuable,” adds Roy Young. 

The future portfolio of work

For the finance team, the next few years will be focused on automating as much of the routine work as possible. Incremental changes that have a big impact, rather than big projects, are now the order of the day.

“One of the main things we have on the agenda is how to get more people to start to do this on their own,” says Nishant Jain. “I’m from a finance background and I’ve been converted, so I want to make sure other people are too.”

It’s a goal and a passion shared by the rest of the Centrica team.

“Where we’ve opened up this capability, we’ve seen a big rise in the number of use cases that people approach us about,” agrees Roy Young, “so we now need to understand how to manage that. I’d like to push the business to really take up the use of these tools. There’s still a place for us to develop solutions centrally, but the real value will be gained by the business leading this and we can get community development going.”

James Boswell concurs, “We want our users to use these tools, it should be common practice. The other day I sat across the desk from someone in procurement and they were using Power Apps to automate some invoice approval processes. They were just doing it all off their own bat – so we have pockets of value being delivered all over the place. We want to see even more of it.”