Business Applications & Insights

Part II: Low-code application development and getting the best from the Power Platform

Following on from the previous post on the discussion surrounding low-code vs pro-code development approaches, this post focuses more specifically on the low-code development approach.

Iain Ashworth Headshot

Iain Ashworth

|

Managing Director

Posted on: April 22, 2025

|

Last updated: January 9, 2026

|

15 min read

Iain Ashworth Headshot

Iain Ashworth

|

Managing Director

Posted on: April 22, 2025

|

Last updated: January 9, 2026

Read time: 15 minutes

Summary:

  • Low-code development uses visual tools to speed up app creation, enabling both technical and non-technical users to build solutions quickly.

  • Microsoft Power Platform offers a leading low-code suite: Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Pages.

  • Key benefits include rapid development, lower costs, easy integration, and empowering users to create apps without deep coding skills.

  • Considerations: complex customisation, scalability, performance limits, and governance challenges require careful planning to avoid app sprawl and compliance issues.

  • Best practice: establish governance, monitor usage, define a strategy, train users, and leverage Microsoft’s Center of Excellence.

What is Low-code application development? 

Low-code is an application development approach that emphasises visual development tools, such as drag-and-drop interfaces and visual workflow logic, to enable faster and more efficient creation of applications. It is particularly useful for business users and developers to collaborate and rapidly build applications that meet business needs. This approach automates aspects of the development process and makes it more accessible, allowing business users with little formal coding experience to build applications.

Low-code development is typically better suited to well defined, functionally predictable projects, where ongoing maintenance needs to be minimised. Low-code developments are great for replacing legacy applications, paper-based or data driven processes.

The Microsoft Power Platform for low-code development

The Microsoft Power Platform is a low-code solution that enables business teams to build applications, automate workflows, analyse data, and create data-driven websites with minimal coding effort.  

It includes: 

  • 1

    Power Apps for app development

  • 2

    Power Automate for workflow automation

  • 3

    Power BI for analytics

  • 4

    Power Pages for data-driven websites

What are the advantages of low-code application development with the Power Platform? 

Low-code application frameworks have many advantages, such as increased productivity, rapid development, simplified visual interfaces, and cost savings. It enables both technical and non-technical users to build applications quickly, reducing the time spent on writing and testing new features and components. 

Key benefits of Power Platform include: 

  • Rapid development – Create applications quickly using visual tools and prebuilt components.
  • Ease of integration – access to many prebuilt connectors to third-party services.
  • AI integration – Microsoft Copilot is embedded across Powers Apps, AI Builder to integrate AI models, and AI powered data analytics and governance.
  • Lower development costs – Reduced reliance on custom coding.
  • Empowered business users – Citizen developers enabled to create apps without deep coding expertise.
  • Increased productivity – Enhanced efficiency within development and business teams.

  • Reduced testing requirements – Prebuilt components help minimise testing efforts.

Sounds great, right? Well yes, low–code solutions can provide lots of value, quickly and affordably.  However, there are some points you should consider before committing to a low–code project or technology strategy. 

What are the considerations of low-code application development? 

  • Precision requirements and customisation – While Power Apps can address many business needs, applications requiring highly specific or complex functionality may need additional custom development. Early-stage discovery and design should assess whether Power Platform is the right fit.

  • Cost of operation and scalability – Depending on the size and growth of the userbase, and the way you approach licensing, costs can add-up for licences and increasing data storage. Carefully planning the likely usage and data growth of the system can help forecasting future costs of operation and avoid unforeseen surprises.
  • Performance – The more complex an application becomes and the more data it uses, the more likely you are to reach performance constraints. With low code platforms it can be more difficult to overcome these constraints compared to custom solutions.
  • Governance and best-practice – The adoption of citizen development can lead to a sprawl of unmanaged apps and ungoverned data silos, which can and be a risk to compliance and security.

The good news is that there is plenty of guidance, practices and tools that can help avoid these pitfalls and get the best out of the Power Platform.   

How to get the best from Power Platform? 

1. Start with good governance

  • Identify who can create, share and administer apps in your environment, setting appropriate permissions and roles.
  • Separate your development, test and production environments to control the lifecycle of apps in development and in use.
  • Use Data Loss Prevention to control how sensitive information is accessed and used in the Power Platform.

2. Avoid unmanaged apps and app sprawl 

  • Implement an approval process to register new apps and identify those that are potentially supporting critical business processes.
  • Use the in-build monitoring tools like Power Platform Admin Center to assess usage and identify redundant apps.
  • Raise awareness of existing solutions to encourage re-use of ideas and best practice before creating more apps.

3. Take a strategic approach to development 

  • Define a low-code strategy with clear examples and guidance for when to use Power Apps, Power Automate etc.
  • Maintain IT involvement to ensure successful integration with other system and security.

4. Train users and share best practice 

  • You want your citizen and professional developers building apps that are fit for purpose, secure and maintainable. It’s important that developers of all skill levels get structured training on best practice and security.
  • Encourage user groups and forums to share knowledge and ideas, ideally with a network of champions to foster innovation and celebrate success. Champions can be skilled employees from across departments who can provide local support, assist citizen developers, and advocate for Power Platform adoption.

This sounds like a lot to think about for a framework that is so accessible to start working with, but Microsoft provide a toolkit that helps you establish all these practices and drive the success of your low–code strategy. 

What is the Power Platform Center of Excellence? 

The Power Platform Center of Excellence supports both the business and users with best practices, governance, and resources to build secure and scalable apps and to promote innovation and collaboration. 

  • Provides users with training, templates, and best practices.
  • Ensures security with governance, data protection, and compliance.
  • Promotes knowledge sharing and innovation.
  • Provides a central point of contact for questions and guidance.
  • Tracks app usage, performance, and impact.
  • Drives growth through continuous updates to best practices and governance.

Setting up a Power Platform Center of Excellence can be daunting if you are new to the platform, but you don’t have to do this on your own.    

Microsoft Partners like Intelogy, can help you design, implement, and maintain your Center of Excellence to meet your business objectives while remaining secure and compliant. 

Next steps

If need help to get off on the right foot with the Power Platform strategy, get in touch! 

The next post in this series, we will look at the advantages and considerations for custom development (pro–code) and when it can be the right approach for your app development. We will also discuss how low–code and pro–code can work together to deliver an effective app strategy that optimises costs, scalability and security.

Read the next post in the series here:

Part III: Pro-code in focus

In our previous post, we explored low-code development and how the Microsoft Power Platform enables rapid, accessible app creation. Now, we turn our attention to the other end of the development spectrum — custom software development, also known as pro-code.

By |May 23rd, 2025 |

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Last updated 9 Jan 2026

About the Author: Iain Ashworth

Iain Ashworth
Iain is Managing Director at Intelogy. Starting as a developer of websites and apps, he then transitioned to more operational roles, accumulating 20+ years of experience in the strategy and management of technology services. As Managing Director, he leads and supports our exceptional teams, transforming our clients' work with Microsoft 365.

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