App factory approach proves value of low code + AI

As a Microsoft partner that focuses on digital transformation of business operations, insights, and productivity in industries like healthcare, retail, and mining, Velrada views Microsoft Power Platform as a critical toolset for enabling rapid business impact. Velrada’s Power Platform practice has seen 35 percent year-on-year growth of monthly active users for Power Apps and a 300 percent increase in Power Automate deployments over the past year, much of which was driven by its App Factory methodology that provides fast delivery of agile, low-code solutions to tackle customer challenges. “Unlike traditional development that can take a minimum of 12 weeks to create an app, our App Factory team can build an initial production pilot within one to two weeks,” said Matthew Pontel, Microsoft Cross-Platform Director at Velrada.

The App & Agent Factory approach includes everything from design to support to governance, following the Well-Architected Framework (WAF) outlined by the Microsoft Power CAT team to ensure that solutions are implemented consistently and support well-defined use cases with measurable business objectives. “We’re able to show CIOs both the monetary and non-monetary impact of every low-code solution they’ve built over the last 12 months. So when it comes to renewal time, there is clear ROI for Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Pages, or Copilot agent projects,” said Pontel.

Velrada also dedicates solution architects and development resources to helping customers foster adoption throughout their organizations, including AI Transformation workshops for identifying new use case scenarios, and documentation for internal champions to evangelize the low-code opportunity. “We don’t want to just build an app or agent, we want to sell a platform and build adoption of that platform. That is our strategy when it comes to Power Platform – and it’s becoming our motto when it comes to using it for AI-powered solutions too,” said Pontel.

Leveraging Power Platform + AI to monitor 250 field sites

One example of the incredible impact that Velrada can deliver through low code and AI-powered solutions is with Vision AI in the Field. This solution was developed by Velrada for a global energy development customer that was facing the challenge of maintaining critical infrastructure across 250 facilities. The company was spending millions of dollars annually to send out inspection crews – who would often arrive too late to identify issues or prevent equipment downtime. To address this, they designed a solution for 24/7 remote monitoring of 3,500+ assets using an initial 300 cameras mounted on gimbels that offer 360-degree visibility. The high-quality cameras provide extremely clear visibility of equipment, taking pictures every few hours to help the company identify issues quickly. However, without an army of people to monitor the overwhelming number of incoming images, it would still take too long to find and resolve problems.

The customer turned to Velrada, who built a Power Platform solution to address this challenge. Power Apps was used to create a user interface for administrators and supervisors to interact with cameras, AI analysis of images received, and configuration. Microsoft Dataverse was used to manage prompts and outputs from the solution. AI agents built in Azure AI Foundry examine each image for any changes and tailor its analysis using location, camera, and equipment details to improve its accuracy. Multiple prompts are applied to each image, such as ‘does anything look broken,’ ‘do you detect fire,’ and ‘does the wiring look undisturbed,’ to determine if there are any possible issues. If anomalies are detected, an alert is sent to a supervisor, who can use the Power App to investigate by drilling into specific image details. Through integration with Mapstaskr, supervisors can also see amber and red alerts pop up on a map view of all deployed cameras.

“This solution is using a multi-modal LLM to process more than 7,500 images a day with AI and automatically alert supervisors to issues – something that we calculated would take dozens of full-time workers to cover over a 24-hour period,” said Pontel. “Most importantly, the AI solution provides very accurate information so supervisors can make data-driven decisions on when and where crews need to be deployed – giving them time to intervene before the issue causes significant downtime.”

Velrada has additionally used Microsoft Copilot Studio and AI Builder to create an agent that allows supervisors to generate a seven-day summary report for any camera or piece of equipment, helping them proactively track activities and identify important trends or patterns. This report can be generated in seconds, and supervisors can also use natural language to ask the agent questions about any camera or image if they need further details. “We’ve used Power Apps, Dataverse, Power Automate, Azure AI Foundry, Copilot Studio, AI Builder, and Power BI to put together an incredibly sophisticated system that will save millions of dollars a year and reduce downtime,” said Pontel. “The combination of these technologies is providing unprecedented visibility and control over a critical business process.”

“AI is our biggest growth opportunity”

Working with customers across its core industries is helping Velrada bring to life the real-world benefits of Power Platform and Copilot Studio. “We see AI as our biggest growth opportunity, and interest in Power Platform has increased because AI needs to be available in the application layer,” said Pontel. “AI has transformed the way that we think about our low-code business.”

Another advantage of AI is Velrada’s ability to recruit and retain talent. “Our consultants and developers are excited to be able to say they are working with AI. People want to work for the Microsoft partner that is doing real things with these cutting-edge technologies,” said Pontel. “We’re just at the start, and we’re excited to see what’s to come.”

“We see AI as our biggest growth opportunity, and interest in Power Platform has increased because AI needs to be available in the application layer.”

— Matthew Pontel, Microsoft Cross-Platform Director, Velrada

“We don’t want to just build an app or agent, we want to sell a platform and build adoption of that platform. That is our strategy when it comes to Power Platform – and it’s becoming our motto when it comes to using it for AI-powered solutions too.”

— Matthew Pontel, Microsoft Cross-Platform Director, Velrada

Velrada helps customers embrace AI-powered low-code innovation