Build Better Apps with Power Apps Development in Austin
Sunflower Lab builds custom Power Apps for Austin businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets, paper forms, or a pilot app that never made it past one team. Projects typically ship in four to eight weeks, delivered by a US-based team with no offshore handoff. Every build ends with a written runbook, so the app is still maintainable after the person who requested it moves on.
Where Austin teams typically get stuck
Most companies we work with already have Power Apps included in their Microsoft 365 license. Our discovery session helps to get most out pf their pre-existing plan.
Shadow-IT app sprawl
Someone in ops built three or four Power Apps without IT involvement. They work, nobody documented them, and licensing costs are a mystery by the time finance asks.
The pilot that impressed leadership but never scaled
A single-team proof of concept gets a good demo, then stalls because nobody scoped the Dataverse structure or governance needed to roll it out company-wide.
Integration debt with a modern SaaS stack
Austin teams tend to run newer cloud tools (HubSpot, Workday, modern ERPs) alongside Microsoft 365. The Power App that only talks to SharePoint doesn't cover the rest of the stack.
No one owns Power Platform licensing
Per-app, per-user, premium connectors, Dataverse capacity.
Four things that separate a Power Automate program that lasts from one that gets shelved in six months
The tool itself is not the hard part. The four factors below are what actually decide whether your Power Automate program pays back for years or quietly falls apart the first time someone leaves the company. Every engagement we run puts each one in place before we hand over.
A governance body — someone owns the automation program
What it is. A named group — often just two or three people, one from IT and one from operations — that reviews every new flow request, kills flows nobody uses anymore, and decides what gets built next.
Why it matters. Without a named owner, flows sprawl. Requests pile up faster than they ship, priorities get set by whoever emails loudest, and the flow that broke six months ago is still sitting broken. A governance body is the one thing that turns "we use Power Automate" into "we run an automation program."
What to define upfront. Who signs off on new flows. How you rank priority when three teams want their process next. What your ROI threshold is — the number below which you politely say no. And who arbitrates when the queue is on fire and something has to give.
A centralized dashboard — one place to see every flow's health
What it is. A single Power BI (or equivalent) dashboard that shows every flow in the tenant — its last run, its success rate, its failure alerts, its named owner, and its measured payback against the process it replaced.
Why it matters. A business owner should not have to log into the maker portal to know whether their automation is working. When a flow silently fails at 2 a.m. Saturday, someone needs to see it before Monday morning — not two months later when an invoice is missing.
What to show on it. Last run and status. Rolling failure rate. Time saved vs. the baseline process. Cost consumed (Per-Flow, Per-User, or AI Builder credits) vs. the value delivered. Every flow's named owner and last-updated date.
Documented process — before, after, and what changed for people
What it is. A one-page write-up per flow that answers three questions: how the process worked before, how it works now, and what changed for the people involved — including who was trained on the new way and how the old work was retired.
Why it matters. This is what lets the automation survive turnover, audits, and the "why does this exist?" question a year later. It is also what lets a new team member fix the flow without hunting down the person who left in 2024.
What to capture. The as-is process on one page (steps, people, systems, exceptions). The to-be process on one page (trigger, conditions, actions, owner). The change-management notes — who was affected, what they had to stop doing, what training they got, and how you measured that the change stuck.
A prioritization framework — a written rule for what comes next
What it is. A method for ranking automation requests when there are more requests than there is capacity. Something as simple as scoring each request on impact, urgency, and effort — and picking the top three each quarter — beats picking by whoever asked last.
Why it matters. When every department wants their process automated, someone will choose. It should be a rule, not a favor. It should also cover the reverse case — when three flows break the same Monday morning, which one gets fixed first.
What to write down. The scoring you use for new requests. The tie-breaker when scores match. Who arbitrates. The ROI threshold below which the answer is no. And the incident rule: what "high severity" means and who is on call for it.
Note on fit: if your workflow is truly one-of-a-kind or requires deep hardware integration, a custom build may still win. For 90% of Houston ops workflows we see, Power Automate replaces the manual copy-paste directly — provided the four factors above are in place from day one.
What our Power Apps engagement covers
Every engagement covers three connected tracks: designing and building new apps, rescuing stalled or orphaned ones, and putting governance in place so the portfolio survives the next reorg. All three are delivered by the same team under one statement of work.
New Power Apps, built around the actual workflow
Canvas or model-driven, mobile-first.
- Model-driven apps for structured back-office data
- Canvas apps for mobile/field-adjacent use
- Power Automate flows for approvals and system-to-system syncs
- Integrations with SharePoint, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, and common SaaS platforms via custom connectors
Finishing what an internal team started
For apps stuck at 70% or inherited from someone who left.
- Audit of an existing canvas or model-driven app
- Refactor of the data model and Power Fx logic
- Rebuild of undocumented Power Automate flows
- A written runbook so it doesn't stall again
Governance for a growing app portfolio
Once you have more than a few apps.
- Ownership and DLP policy stop being optional
- SFL sets up environment strategy and a documented owner for each app before sprawl becomes a security question.
- Licensing review — Per-App vs Per-User vs Pay-as-you-go for your actual usage
- Team training on Central time and a written maintenance runbook
What Power Apps actually replaces
Most Houston operations teams do not compare Power Apps to another low-code platform. They compare it to the thing they use today — a shared Excel file, a paper form, a standalone SaaS product, or a custom .NET application from a previous vendor. Here is how those four choices trade off.
| Power Apps (built with Sunflower Lab) | Shared Excel file | Paper form / email | Standalone vertical SaaS | Custom .NET build | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time to first working version | 4–8 weeks | Same day | Same day | 6–12 weeks to configure | 6–12 months |
| Works on a phone in the field | Yes, offline-capable | Painful on mobile | Only if someone types it back | Usually yes | Depends on the build |
| One source of truth | Yes — in Dataverse or your SQL / SharePoint layer | No — every export drifts | No — data lives in filing cabinets | Yes, but isolated from your stack | Yes, if built right |
| Integrates with SharePoint, D365, SQL, IFS Oracle, Sage 300 | Native connectors | Copy-paste only | Manual re-entry | Extra integration project | Custom-coded each time |
| Ongoing cost model | Included in M365 / Per-App or Per-User license | Free — hidden cost is labor | Free — hidden cost is labor | Per-seat SaaS bill, forever | Retainer for maintenance |
| Who owns the app in 12 months? | Named internal owner + documented handover | Whoever last saved it | Nobody | The vendor's roadmap | The dev shop that built it |
| Governance, DLP, audit trail | Included | None | None | Depends on the vendor | Only if you paid for it |
| Best fit | A 100–1,000-person M365 organization with a workflow that involves the field | A one-person process | A team without smartphones | A commodity workflow with no customization | A workflow with no Microsoft-native equivalent |
Note on fit: if your workflow is truly one-of-a-kind or requires deep hardware integration, a custom build may still win. For 90% of Houston ops workflows we see, Power Apps replaces the spreadsheet or paper form directly.
Typical 4 to 8 week timeline
Every engagement follows the same four phases. Actual duration depends on the number of screens, the systems being integrated, and whether we are starting fresh or rescuing an existing app.
Discovery
A 30-minute call followed by a 3-day workflow walkthrough — the current Excel file, the paper form, the SharePoint site, the systems it touches. A written scope is provided at the end of week one.
Design & prototype
A clickable canvas or model-driven prototype in your tenant, wired to real Dataverse or SharePoint data. Your ops team clicks through it before we build the rest.
Build & integrate
Screens, forms, Power Fx logic, offline caching, Power Automate approval flows, and connectors to SharePoint, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, IFS Oracle, or your ERP of record.
Training & handover
Live training for admins and end users, a written runbook, environment and DLP setup, and 30 days of post-launch support. Monthly retainer available for ongoing maintenance.
Selected Power Apps engagements
Three recent Power Apps engagements across manufacturing, field operations, and healthcare technology. Each began with fragmented spreadsheets or paper and ended with a governed app portfolio that operators actually use.
AMOT Controls — Personal Time Off Power App
AMOT's (Houston, TX 77064) HR team was managing leave requests through email and a shared spreadsheet, with no visibility for managers and no audit trail for HR. Scope of work: a canvas Power App for employees to submit PTO requests, a Power Automate approval flow to route requests to the correct manager, and a SharePoint back-end that HR can query for balances and reporting.
United Utility — 20+ Power Apps across 7 divisions
United Utility (4403 Sanctuary Trails Dr, Spring, TX) ran electrical-construction field operations on disconnected Excel files and SharePoint workarounds, with union payroll calculated manually and no real-time leadership visibility. Scope of work: 20+ Power Apps (Daily Field Reports, Chester and Roster timesheets with a custom payroll logic engine, equipment allocation, employee and equipment transfers, work-order upload and QAQC), 14+ Power BI reports, Power Automate flows, and integration with Sage 300 and Microsoft Teams.
IONM Provider — Case-capture workflow across clinical systems
Case data, physician records, and billing information were spread across Cadwell, Revedy, HubSpot, and payer platforms, with technicians re-entering the same information into three systems for every case. Scope of work: a model-driven Power App as the single case-capture surface for technicians, with Power Automate bots pulling case files and technician records, syncing HubSpot to eliminate duplicate entry, and posting back to Cadwell and Revedy for coding and case updates.
Connect Pediatrics — Real-Time Labor & Margin Visibility
Connect Pediatrics (1005 Congress Ave, Austin), a multi-branch pediatric practice, had no patient-level visibility into revenue, payroll cost, labor percentage, staffing percentage, or overtime exposure — leaving margin risk buried in manual reports. Sunflower Lab built a Power BI dashboard on SharePoint with branch-, patient-, and clinician-level views, plus automatic outlier detection for high labor percentage, excessive overtime, and understaffing.
Certified Microsoft Solutions Partner
Sunflower Lab holds Microsoft Solutions Partner status for Power Apps, Power Automate, and SharePoint. This designation requires audited technical delivery, application-lifecycle discipline, and client-outcome standards defined by Microsoft.
Frequently asked questions
Request a Power Apps consultation
Schedule a 30-minute call to walk through the workflow you want to move off Excel or paper. You will receive a written scope tailored to your environment and a fixed-price estimate within three business days.
