"For organisations like SSE that are looking to replace legacy Excel-based processes, Microsoft Power Platform offers much more advanced functionality, greater flexibility, and better security, enabling users to complete business processes with ease, on any device and in any location."
Sector
Utility
Users
4,000+
Solutions
Microsoft Power Platform
SSE is a leading energy company, developing, building and operating electricity infrastructure and businesses across the UK and Ireland. Its portfolio includes wind, hydro, hydrogen, solar and related energy products. With over 13,000 employees and supporting over 42,000 jobs, SSE utilises Microsoft 365 and Power Platform to support its productivity and operational needs.
Silversands, now part of the Chess Group, has been working with SSE on Power Platform projects since 2020.
The Challenge
Similarly to most companies, SSE has a requirement to manage expenses accrued by its workforce. To date, this has been handled using a complex spreadsheet with calculated fields and macros. An employee filled in the spreadsheet and emailed it to their manager or other approver before it was sent to the payroll department for action.
A key issue with the spreadsheet was that it could only be filled on a Windows device, but many field operatives are only issued with tablets and mobile devices. Consequently, at times, these employees had to make special arrangements to go into an office to complete their expense claims. In addition, a spreadsheet-based process lacks desirable functionality like workflows, notifications, progress tracking and audit history.
Post-pandemic, SSE has made digitisation of its operations and processes a core strategic goal. Therefore, the expense claim process was identified as a primary target for digitisation because it would clearly provide many operational and user benefits, especially as it would improve the experience for users across the entire organisation.
One of the solutions that SSE has invested in to support its digital strategy is Microsoft Power Platform, a process and automation solution that is ideal for digitising processes like expense claims. As SSE’s primary Power Platform partner, we were asked to develop this transformational application
"Our partnership with SSE is built on a foundation of trust and proven results over several years. Having developed many Microsoft Power Platform applications together over this time, our ability to come to together to deliver powerful and effective business solutions is well recognised. We were delighted to be asked to develop the org-wide expenses app."
Mike Tansey, Account and Marketing Director, Silversands
The Solution
Naturally, the first part of any project is to understand what the customer’s requirements are and, in this case, we needed to understand the process, calculations and actions of an expenses claim. To support this, SSE produced a high-level requirements document that detailed all the functions and features that were required or desired. We also reviewed the expenses spreadsheet to understand its macros and calculations, and we discussed the process and the requirements with the SSE team – Rohan Nicol, Payroll Performance Manager; Colette MacLeod, Project Manager; and Charlie Bailey-Wicks, Senior DevOps Engineer.
At this point, we also agreed to run the project aligned with SSE’s desired approach – a flexible, ‘Agile-lite’ methodology that promoted a development focus with less time spent talking, planning and managing.
To close the initial phase of the project, we produced a high-level design document, which allowed SSE to understand and agree on what we were planning to deliver, albeit with the flexibility to add and change things within reason and budget. This was defined as Phase 1 of the project, essentially a minimum viable product to get a solution in use as quickly as possible.
The design for the application encompassed several components:
- A canvas app to run on mobile devices to allow claim entry and approval
- A canvas app to run on desktops and laptops also to allow claim entry and approval, as well as Payroll team admin & management functions
- A model-driven app to host variables such as mileage rates, read-only management information, and audit history
- Power Automate flows to enable controlling workflows, process automations and notifications
- Dataverse for the data storage
To raise an expense claim, for mileage or non-mileage activities, an employee will enter the details primarily into the mobile app (the desktop app also has the same functionality), take a photo of the related receipts, select an approver and submit for approval. A Power Automate workflow will notify the approver and then they will accept or deny the claim within the mobile or desktop apps, at which point it will be sent on to the payroll team or returned to the claimant for revision.
The desktop app also provides additional management functionality enabled for the payroll team through role-based access control, defining what functions each user has access to. For example, while the approver can only approve or reject a claim, the payroll team can make changes, override approvals and add additional information to the claim.
Throughout the development phase, our senior Power Platform Consultant, David Hughes, worked closely and collaboratively with the SSE team to fine tune the solution and to ensure that we delivered exactly what SSE was looking for.
On completion of the development phase, and once the SSE team had tested and was happy with the app, it was trialled with a number of office-based and field users who gave very good feedback. The app was then rolled out to the wider business community alongside adoption comms and training materials developed by SSE’s internal teams.
David Hughes, Senior Power Platform Consultant, Silversands
Following the successful delivery of Phase 1, the SSE team took feedback from the users and combined this with the functionality that had been held in the backlog to create the requirements for Phase 2. These enhancements included delegated approvers, claim retraction, the ability for users to generate PDF outputs and mileage reports for their own records, some additional reporting, and the option for reviewers to check for duplicate claims.
"Our confidence and trust in Dave were built quickly thanks to his huge amount of expertise and in-depth understanding of our requirements. This allowed us to work more collaboratively, having the certainty to trust Dave’s steer on how we could use Power Platform to meet our needs. That relationship was key to the success of this project."
Rohan Nicol, Payroll Performance Manager, SSE
The Result
The release of this application has been transformational in improving SSE’s expenses process. An awkward, inflexible and insecure Excel spreadsheet has been replaced by a solution that gives admins, approvers and, most importantly, users a better way to create, approve and manage the expenses process. The benefits include:
- Expenses claims can be filled in anywhere, and on any device – no more requirement to come into the office to make a claim
- Receipt photos are much easier to attach to a claim, utilising the integrated camera functions available when expense claims are made on a mobile device
- Users and approvers can create and approve claims on mobile or desktop/laptop devices
- The approval process is rules-based and can be delegated
- The security of the data within the app is more tightly controlled than was possible with the Excel spreadsheet
- An audit history of all activity, approvals, changes and so on is now available
- Workflows enable claims to be automatically and seamlessly routed between employees, approvers and admins, a process that previously involved the claims spreadsheet being emailed between people
- Various in-app functions such as input validation, lookup tables, in-field calculations and centralised variable management simplify the claim creation process and remove input errors that are typical of spreadsheet-based forms
- Automated email notifications enable approvers to be alerted about a waiting claim and employees can be notified of claim progress, all activities that previously required manual actions
- Management reporting is much more advanced than was previously available PDF outputs and mileage reports give employees a much better way of tracking and managing their own records
Ultimately, by implementing the Power Platform expense claims solution, the process is much easier, more manageable, more efficient and a more effective way to create, approve and track expenses claims. This flagship application fits perfectly into SSE’s digital-first operating model and, perhaps most importantly, has resulted in a significant improvement in employee satisfaction.
SSE was delighted not only with the results of this project, but also with the way that our team worked flexibly with the SSE team to ensure that we delivered a solution that not only matched the organisation’s requirements, but which was on time and under budget.
"Having worked on many projects with third parties, I found Silversands to be so productive, reactive and approachable, which helped to contribute to a really solid feeling of respect and capability. The project went so smoothly that stakeholder engagement was easy. The success of the project is testament to the preparation and communication throughout."
Colette MacLeod, Project Manager, SSE
