PowerApps for Asset Orders for Managed Services

24 Mar 2022

The Client

An ANZ based Managed Services Provider catering to large IT Customers

The Need

The client has been servicing several companies and managing their hardware supply requirements. They had been using Service now for their order management via a ticketing system. However, with growing complexity, custom reporting and customizations desired, it was strategically planned to design a custom solution that caters to their needs.

Challenge

The client had email-based tickets that were received by customers which involved a lot of manual processing for each order item as a single order could have several line items to be processed which was desired to be automated in some fashion. Additionally, the client had a complex workflow from order approval, order management, managing the inventory, warehousing, invoice generation, shipping, dispatch request, and decommissioning which involved several stakeholders responsible for each part of their supply chain including a delivery person on their mobile phones.

Strategy

Star Knowledge having understood the complex requirements, defined a solution workflow for capturing the use cases and ensured all stakeholder components are defined. The solution was architected on PowerApps with Dataverse as the backend data store. Our solution teams worked across different stakeholder groups to capture each step in detail to match the inputs and the expected outputs of the system which included a web-based interface and mobile-focused interface for different roles.

There were several roles in the system including – Admin, Finance Dept, Installer, Scheduler, Configuration Manager, Warehouse Manager, COFC, Delivery.

The system was designed to support automated data parsing from emails, create orders, send out reports, reminders around inventory management, and data at each stage for users associated with the stage along with email notifications.

Outcomes

• A complete Asset Ordering and Management solution that allowed the customer to automate several business processes that took a lot of tedious effort.
• Automated notifications, reminders, invoice generation, order placement allowed the client to increase their focus on growing business.
• Easy to generate asset, warehouse, inventory, and order-related reports.
• Approval workflows were included for order placement, invoice generation, and decommissioning.
• Mobile based interface for users such as delivery personnel who could update the status on their phones and web-based for back-office team.

Technology Used

• PowerApps
• Dataverse
• JavaScript/ HTML
• DataFlows
• Excel Connectors

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