Microsoft MVP | Power Platform & Dynamics 365 CRM Technical Consultant
Practical answers to the questions I hear most often about Power Platform, Dynamics 365 CRM, and working together. If your question is not here, just ask me directly.
It depends on the shape of your project. Consulting companies are a good fit for large, multi-workstream programmes where you need a bench of people and formal project management. An independent consultant makes more sense when you want senior, hands-on expertise without the overhead, one person who understands your business process end to end and builds the solution directly. For most single-process automations, a Power Apps solution, or a focused Dynamics 365 CRM rollout, an experienced independent consultant is usually faster and more cost-effective. Whichever route you choose, ask to see similar solutions they have delivered before.
A focused app that digitises a single process, an approval workflow, an inspection form, a request tracker, typically takes two to six weeks from requirements to go-live. More complex apps with multiple user roles, integrations, and reporting usually land in the two-to-three-month range. The biggest factor is rarely the build itself; it is how quickly requirements are clarified and how available your team is for feedback and testing. A well-run project starts small, gets a working version in front of real users early, and improves from there.
A typical implementation moves through discovery, configuration, data migration, testing, and adoption. Discovery is where the real value happens, mapping how your sales or service teams actually work before touching the system. Configuration covers tables, forms, business process flows, security roles, and automation. Data migration brings your existing customer records across cleanly. Then user testing, training, and go-live support. The mistake I see most often is treating CRM as an IT project rather than a business change project. The technology is the easy part; adoption is where implementations succeed or fail.
Yes, this is one of the most common and highest-value uses of Power Automate. Anything currently approved through forwarded emails, spreadsheets, or verbal sign-offs can be turned into a structured flow: a request comes in, the right approver is notified in Teams or Outlook, their decision is recorded, and every step is logged automatically. That last part matters more than people expect, you get a full audit trail showing who approved what and when. Payment approvals, leave requests, purchase orders, and document sign-offs are all well-suited to this. I have written a step-by-step example for finance teams.
Copilot Studio is Microsoft's platform for building custom AI agents and copilots. In practice, organisations use it to build assistants that answer employee questions from internal knowledge , HR policies, IT how-tos, onboarding guides, or customer-facing agents that handle common queries on a website. Because it connects to the rest of the Power Platform and Dynamics 365, an agent can do more than answer questions: it can look up a case, create a record, or kick off an approval flow. It works best when pointed at a well-defined set of questions and reliable source content.
Send me an email describing the process you want to improve, what happens today, where it hurts, and roughly how many people are involved. You do not need a formal brief or technical specification; a few honest paragraphs are enough. From there we have a short call to work out whether the problem is a good fit for Power Platform.