Build Bespoke Business Apps with Power Platform & SharePoint

Microsoft’s Power Platform has come a long way since its early days. What started as a handy way to tweak forms and automate emails is now a seriously powerful toolkit for building custom business applications, without needing a team of full-time developers or a six-figure budget.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen Power Apps evolve into a real contender for building everything from lightweight internal tools to enterprise-grade solutions. In fact, we’ve built many (more to come on that). Whether you’re replacing spreadsheet-based processes, digitising paper forms, or building data-rich apps that connect across systems, there’s a flavour of Power Platform to suit.

Let’s break it down.

Not All Power Apps Are Created Equal

There’s more than one way to build a Power App - and the approach you choose depends on your needs, your data, and how far you want to go.

1. The SharePoint-Form Upgrade

If you’ve got a SharePoint list, you can customise its form with Power Apps and turn a simple list into a basic business tool. Want a conditional dropdown? Inline editing? A better user experience? Done.

2. SharePoint-Backed Standalone Apps

Take it up a notch by using multiple SharePoint lists like a mini database. With some planning, you can create relationships between lists, enforce rules, and design a standalone app that feels like a proper system.

3. Dataverse for Teams

Want more control over your data without leaving the Microsoft ecosystem? Dataverse for Teams gives you a relational database inside Teams, along with richer app-building capabilities and better security.

4. Full Dataverse or Azure SQL

Now we’re talking. When you need serious scale, complex relationships, custom logic, and integrations, Dataverse (outside Teams) or Azure SQL unlocks the full potential. This is where things get grown-up, and often where the most impactful apps are built.

Real-World Examples We’ve Seen

Some of the most useful business apps we’ve worked with (or built ourselves) include:

• A Curriculum Management Platform for a London university, built to handle complex academic structures and approvals over 3 year development cycles

• A Financial Audit Management System used by a central government body to track and report on hundreds of audits annually

• A Supplier Estimation Tool for a construction and engineering firm that generates quotes based on live data and very complex financial estimation business rules

• A Project Requisition Request App that digitises the entire requisition process for an engineering firm: from request and approval through to receipt - replacing a slow, error-prone, paper-based process

• An Engineering Quality Assurance Application that tracks build progress, ‘as-built’ construction data and outputs complex QA reports to meet contractual obligations

These are robust, long-lived apps with real business value, not just forms and buttons.

You Don’t Have to Settle for Spreadsheets Anymore

These apps don’t disappear into a black box. They’re living tools that can evolve with your needs. Want to tweak a form? Update a flow? Add a new report? It doesn’t always mean going back to the dev team.

With the right governance, business power users can update logic in Power Automate, make UI changes in Power Apps, and run custom reports in Power BI, without opening tickets every time.

And just to prove the point: yes, you can even build Power Apps on top of Excel. We’re not saying you should - it’s a bit like building a treehouse on a trampoline - but in a pinch, for something small and scrappy? It works. Just don’t run your entire business on it.

You can start small. Then scale. And because everything lives in your Microsoft 365 stack, you’re building on a platform that’s secure, supported, and already trusted.

So, Where Should You Start?

The best advice? Start with the problem, not the tech. What’s clunky, manual, or causing frustration? From there, you can match the app to the need, pick the right data approach, and build something that’s both useful and future-proof.

Power Platform doesn’t just offer one way to build apps, it gives you a whole menu. And once you get started, you might be surprised how far you can go.