29.06.2022 | Every year, Microsoft rewards its local partners for their successful work with Partner of the Year awards. In Finland, Efima was recognized as the Microsoft Partner of the Year for Power Platform. "Efima has successfully complemented its customers' financial management and ERP solutions with Power Platform and Azure in an innovative way", Microsoft argues.
Efima understood the possibilities of low-code development
Power Platform is Microsoft's low-code development platform that enables companies to create their own business solutions faster and more easily compared to traditional software development. "When Microsoft Power Platform was launched in the late 2010s, we immediately understood the potential of low-code tools for Efima's business and our customers", Kai Lyytinen, head of Efima's ERP business, recalls. "We have trusted in and offered cloud-based solutions since our foundation, and we realized that Power Platform would allow us to significantly reduce the need for customization of cloud solutions. Cloud platforms are updated frequently, and customizations significantly slow down the version upgrades. Low-code tools have allowed us to build agile applications to meet our customers' exact needs and integrate them into their cloud platform – without the need to customize the cloud platform itself."
Excited about the possibilities of Power Platform, Efima was among the first partners to bring Microsoft Power Platform to Finland. The company also organized first App in a Day training events for its Finnish customers interested in low-code tools. "Our courage to embrace new technology paid off – as evidenced by the recognition we received from Microsoft and by our own statistics", Lyytinen says. Over the past year, the number of staff in Efima's Power Platform team has doubled, and Efima currently serves more than 2,000 end users of more than 50 different Power Platform solutions in Finland.
Strong focus on financial management and ERP
Efima's specific field is designing and implementing Power Platform technology in financial management and ERP – supporting the company's field of expertise and other offering. "As the leading Dynamics 365 partner in Finland, a significant portion of our Power Platform solutions ensure and enhance processes in Microsoft's ERP solution, and most of our Dynamics 365 customers have extended their business platform with Power Platform applications and Power BI reporting solutions developed by us. While a lot of automation has been built into the off-the-shelf software, there are still significant automation opportunities and customer-specific efficiency needs that remain in Dynamics 365." Lyytinen names Invoicing App as one example of Power Platform solutions created by Efima. Invoicing App ensures that invoice data is correct, validated and that the accounting is correct before being booked to Dynamics 365 Finance.
"In addition to providing us with new tools to enhance our customers' Dynamics 365 solutions, Microsoft’s low-code tools have also opened up completely new opportunities for us to build custom solutions for other financial management and business process needs", Lyytinen adds. "For example, for Mehiläinen, we developed a Power Platform based Inventory App in a matter of weeks. Compared to manually filling out Excels like Mehiläinen used to do, Inventory App is a powerful tool for managing the inventory counting process."
Success has required learning new things
Janne Hirva, Senior Business Manager overseeing Efima’s Power Platform business, expresses his gratitude for the recognition to both Efima's experts and customers: "While four years ago Power Platform was still an unknown opportunity for all of us, today Efima employs a growing number of Power Platform developers. The sincere interest of both our experts and our customers in the new technology and the desire to learn and create even smoother business processes has led Efima and our Power Platform business to this point", Hirva says.
Efima's investments in Power Platform expertise will continue to bear fruit in the future, Hirva and Lyytinen believe. Efima trusts in "appicifation" and the growth of low-code development: "Just as in consumer market, work will increasingly be done through different applications designed specific user groups. Microsoft has estimated that over the next five years there will be a need to develop more than 500 million new business applications. The need for low-code development is further increased by the shortage of professional developers: with low-code tools, business users can become application developers. In the future more and more development projects will be carried out using Power Platform", Hirva describes.
According to Lyytinen and Hirva, Efima will continue on its chosen path: new needs for Power Platform solutions are continuously identified together with Efima’s customers. In addition to custom solutions, Efima plans to offer its most general-purpose implementations as ready-made products. "With ready-made solutions, we can make the deployment of Power Platform solutions even more agile and help Efima's best practices to spread to the market", Lyytinen says, and hints "to stay tuned for Efima's upcoming product launches."
More information
Efima, Business Director Kai Lyytinen
kai.lyytinen@efima.com, +358 40 830 1217
Efima, Senior Business Manager Janne Hirva
janne.hirva@efima.com, +358 40 044 4386
