Power Automate Power Apps

Power Apps in 2026: still the same problem

Oliver Lysø

April 7, 2026

It always starts the same way

A system gets built. People are enthusiastic. Then it slowly fades back to Excel and email.

Andreas and Oliver agreed: this rarely comes down to the technology. It comes down to adoption, and adoption comes down to user experience. When an interface is clunky, people find workarounds. And the workaround is almost always email or a spreadsheet.

Satya Nadella has repeatedly made the point that AI only creates value if it actually changes how people work, not just if it's available. BCG found in 2025 that only 5% of companies fully realise the value from their digitalisation investments. The other 95%? They have the tools. They're just not using them well enough.

Sound familiar?

Three questions worth asking yourself

Is your team actually using the systems you've set up? Not in theory, in practice. If people consistently reach for Excel or email instead of the internal tool, that's a signal. Not about the people, but about the solution.

What are you paying for that you barely use? Most organisations on Microsoft 365 are sitting on Power Platform without knowing what it can actually do. Functionality that's already paid for, but never put to use.

Do you have third-party tools solving something Power Apps could handle? There are a lot of expensive specialist systems out there that do one thing, and could be replaced by a well-built Power App, inside the ecosystem you already have, with security and integrations in place from day one.

What we see with our customers

Three patterns come up repeatedly when internal tools fail:

The solution was built around the tool, not the work. People have to adapt to the system, not the other way around.

Nobody took ownership after launch. Without an internal owner, the system dies quietly. People stop reporting problems and start working around them.

The data foundation was never good enough. AI and automation amplify what already exists, messy data produces messy results.

What has changed

Power Apps has made a real leap with Code Apps. You can now build with React, work in Visual Studio Code, and still get everything the Microsoft platform gives you. Dataverse, security, roles, integrations.

That means we're no longer locked to the standard component library. We can build solutions that are genuinely good to use, not just functional. The interface that used to be the reason people avoided the system is no longer an excuse.

For Maritime & Merchant Bank, we built a project management solution designed around how the team actually works. For Flematec, we automated the quoting process, incoming emails are automatically turned into quotes in Tripletex and their production system. No manual transfer. No double entry.

In both cases, we started with the process, not the technology.

Maybe the problem isn't that you're missing tools

Maybe it's that the tools you already have never got a proper chance.

A well-built Power App can replace three separate systems and a pile of spreadsheets, using infrastructure you're already paying for. And unlike a new third-party system, you get security, compliance, and integrations out of the box.

The question isn't whether the technology is good enough. The question is whether the solution is good enough that people will actually use it.

Wondering what you could actually get out of Power Platform? Let's have a conversation, no strings attached.

Get in touch

Read Andreas's version of the conversation on the SmplCo blog.

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