Appian to Power Platform Migration

The Customer Support Business Group (CSBG) focuses significant attention on delivering solutions that meet customers’ technical requirements as well as productivity needs during the equipment lifecycle. As the business grew there is a need for an automated source-based report and slotting request/change notifications/audits for all aspects of technology upgrade scheduling at remote factory sites. The company adopted Power Apps and Power BI to simplify and standardize tools for its MSPM (Master Scheduler Program Manager).

Problem

Previously, the application was built on the Appian Platform with several challenges.

Creating new slot requests for Factory Upgrade was a tedious process
Managing security roles was time-consuming with a lot of manual activity
Appian Process Apps were loading data from CRM through BAPI connection which is inefficient

To address this issue, the customer has evaluated many software solutions. After intense evaluation, Power Platform is identified as a new Cloud App migration and Process Automation platform.

The Before State

The customer needed an integrated system with end-to-end Remote Factory Upgrade scheduling needs, including:

Allowing Accounts/MSPM/MSPMPG to view all the tasks assigned to them
Allowing the accounts team to create new slot requests for Remote Factory Upgrade
Historical report of all the slot requests submitted for an upgrade
KPI report to keep track of processing times
A detailed forecast report by Remote Factory

KPI Partners Solution

The customer partnered with KPI Partners – A Gold Competency member of the Microsoft Partner Network. The customer now uses the app to manage more than 500 users and 15 Remote Factory Sites. KPI Partners has developed the application with a rich set of capabilities including:

Develop and launch a No/Low-Code App using In-Built/Custom templates
Use both Canvas and Model-Driven scenarios to build apps specific to certain roles and tasks
Generate an immersive application, that is tailor-made to solve individual business problems and can run on any device
Leverage SAP connector to integrate CRM data
Proposed and implemented a new design for authorization to handle 70 types of user role mapping
Azure Active directory is used for user authentication in Power Platform
Enable multiple rows of data editing to mimic the Excel-like behavior for the cells that have the format string

Project After State

The customer has benefited from RFUS APP in several ways:

By using the highly customized app, the company has digitally transformed to operating in the cloud
Efficiency has vastly improved with Accounts and MSPM teams having complete visibility and control of Remote factory schedules
RFUS is now directly authenticating using Azure AD instead of a new user account in Appian User DB
A direct tool is provided for User Management as well as new customer addition within the App screen to manage seamless User addition/changes
The Task History tracking feature, provided as a value add, helps the customer track all user activities