National Wireless Carrier Saves $4M with Initiative Management App

The Challenge

A major US wireless carrier serving over 100 million customers faced a significant operational challenge: managing the complex approval and execution of go-to-market initiatives across the enterprise. These initiatives included device promotions, service offers, marketing campaigns, and operational changes that required coordination across multiple departments.

The existing process was manual, error-prone, and time-consuming. Team members, project leads, and executives struggled with:

• Lack of visibility into initiative status and approval workflows
• Manual data entry leading to a 7% error rate
• Slow processing times that delayed time-to-market
• Difficulty scaling to accommodate business growth
• No centralized system for tracking and reporting

The Solution

The company's development team built "Orbit" - a comprehensive initiative management system using Microsoft Power Platform. The solution leverages multiple Power Platform components working together seamlessly:

The Orbit app provides a unified platform where team members can submit new initiatives, project leads can manage approvals, and executives can maintain visibility across all go-to-market activities. Key features include:

• Automated Approval Workflows: Power Automate handles complex multi-stage approvals, routing requests to the right stakeholders automatically
• Real-time Dashboards: Power BI provides executives with instant visibility into initiative status, bottlenecks, and performance metrics
• Teams Integration: Notifications and approvals flow directly into Microsoft Teams for faster response times
• Centralized Data: Dataverse stores all initiative data, creating a single source of truth

Scaling Through Acquisition

The true test of the platform came during a major acquisition. The company needed to integrate the acquired company's legacy back-end systems with Orbit - a challenge that could have taken months with traditional development.

Using Power Automate's robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities, the team quickly built desktop flows that bridged the gap between systems. This allowed both organizations to operate as one while legacy system migration continued in the background.

The Results

Since launching in production, the Orbit app has delivered transformational results:

Key Takeaways

• Start with High-Impact Processes: Focus on processes that are manual, error-prone, and business-critical for maximum ROI
• Design for Scale: Building on Dataverse and Power Platform allows the solution to grow with business needs
• Leverage the Full Platform: Combining Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI creates comprehensive solutions
• Plan for Integration: RPA capabilities provide flexibility to integrate with legacy systems during transitions
• Measure Everything: Built-in analytics help demonstrate value and identify optimization opportunities

Technology Stack

• Power Apps: Canvas apps for end-user submissions, model-driven apps for administration
• Power Automate: Cloud flows for approvals and notifications, desktop flows for RPA integration
• Power BI: Executive dashboards and operational reporting
• Dataverse: Centralized data storage with enterprise security
• Microsoft Teams: Collaboration and notification hub