Columnist
Graeme Donnell Head of Partnerships and Innovation at Telefónica Tech UK&I
Click Less, Do More… A New Wave of Tools in Technology G
raeme Donnell is head of Partnerships and Innovation at Telefónica Tech UK&I, with over 14 years of experience in Dynamics 365 consulting and extensive knowledge and skills in CRM and database management, configuration and installation. A client once said to me, “That’s great, but can it be done any faster?”. As a senior IT consultant at the time, my initial response was “we should be grateful it already does it in less than 30 seconds”. But 30 seconds is a lifetime in technology, and we’ve all experienced that frustrating experience where a screen loads for too long, or a button doesn’t appear in time. In technology in 2025, agility is everything. The ability for our solutions to adapt to user preference, respond quickly to input, and streamline the process we are carrying out isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore, it’s a necessity of any solution, both big and small. In my humble opinion, the meaning of the term “digital transformation” has changed. Historically, it was associated with big, expensive, long-term IT projects. But for a few years now there’s been a quiet revolution bubbling under the surface, presenting a much more comprehensible and accessible way of doing things. Enter the Power Platform from Microsoft. To help explain my argument, let’s assume that every organisation, no matter the industry, is powered by people and processes, which, for the most part, is 100% true. However, these people and processes are often weighed down by ageing tools, disparate applications, spreadsheets created
by someone who doesn’t work there anymore, and lots of manual steps that eat into time and enthusiasm. It’s this space where this new wave of tools, like Microsoft’s Power Platform, is starting to make a real difference. For example, Telefónica Tech leverages Power Platform to enable businesses to streamline operations, strengthen datadriven decision making, and enhance digital transformation. WHAT EXACTLY IS THE POWER PLATFORM? Think of the Power Platform as a builder’s van. In that van, the builder has a raft of tools and equipment for a whole range of different jobs and use cases. In a very similar way, the Power Platform is an organisation’s “builder’s van” which can be used as a toolkit for building simple business applications and automation without needing to know how to write complex code. The objective here isn’t about replacing in-house IT teams or assuming every long-standing solution can be rebuilt in a better way. The goal is to provide the people who are closest to our business processes with the tools they need to make things work better. THINKING BEFORE TECHNOLOGY What I have witnessed in the technology space over recent years is that people are changing how they think about solving problems at work. I no longer hear the phrases: “Well, we’ve always done it like that”, or “we were told it would take six months to build something, so we did nothing”. With this new wave of “low code/no code” tools at our disposal, users can
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prototype something in a day, build something in a week, and test and release within a month. When I have seen this practised well, organisations have then created a culture of curiosity and continuous improvement where staff feel involved in the solving of problems and have ownership over the processes and applications that they’re part of. The opportunity is massive for our customers to improve their processes with automation. When you enable teams of people to automate the boring stuff and create tools that make their lives easier, you don’t just get efficiency, you get better teams; you get a better organisation. LOOKING AHEAD The future of work isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing things in a better way, with less blockers, fewer bottlenecks, and more efficiency. The Microsoft Power Platform isn’t the silver bullet for every single business process or challenge, but I haven’t engaged with an organisation where I haven’t seen several use cases where it wouldn’t make an impact on the user experience. In a world where speed, agility, and personalised tools show no sign of slowing down, solutions built on platforms such as the Power Platform are going to become more and more common. This is not just a trend. I’ve been witnessing this shift in the day to day of my career, and we are hurtling towards a more human-focused workplace. One app, one workflow, one idea at a time.