Plus Malaysia Berhad streamlines internal processes with Microsoft Power Platform

Founded in 1986, PLUS Malaysia Berhad (PMB) is one of the most recognized brands in the country. It operates and maintains 1,130 kilometers of highways stretching from Jitra, Kedah in the north to Singapore in the south and on the east coast. Its leaders understand that delivering safe and comfortable journeys to citizens requires the company to operate seamlessly. To facilitate this, PMB decided to implement Power Platform integrated with Microsoft 365, which has enabled employees to respond quickly to changing business needs and collaborate more to provide the best service to customers.

Shifting gears to the cloud

In the past, PMB struggled with legacy applications that took too long to develop and required specialist programming skills. In addition, the company relied on manual processes and paper forms because it didn’t have a system to consolidate data. “We needed a better way to translate business requirements into digital applications and forms without being programming experts,” begins Jamaliah Binti Hasan, Head of Productivity and Digitalization at PLUS.

Mobility was also an issue, as employees were tied to their physical workspace. “If you use a client-server, you need to go to the office or get a virtual private network (VPN) to access your documents and applications,” Hasan confirms. To solve these concerns, her team decided to pursue an enterprise shift from manual to digital business processes with Microsoft solutions.

The company started using Microsoft SharePoint in 2012 and gradually embraced more tools. “We first used SharePoint to develop an internal portal. Back then, it was still a web-based version,” explains Hasan. “From there, we moved on to Outlook. After that, we started adding more products under Microsoft 365 in the cloud.” While some employees were initially hesitant to adopt cloud applications, they were glad to be equipped for remote work when COVID-19 restrictions began. “During lockdowns, how could you organize a meeting without the cloud? So everyone had to start using Microsoft Teams,” says Hasan. “Now, all employees appreciate Microsoft 365 especially when working with shared documents—they can do their job anywhere, anytime.”

Solving challenges independently

Looking to solve more business problems efficiently, Hasan’s team resolved to adopt Microsoft’s Power Platform, comprising Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI. “Power Platform is a new approach to software development and implementation. Traditionally, we had to rely on a technical partner—now, we have much greater independence,” describes Kang Yew Jin, Chief Technology Officer at PLUS.

To get started with the solution, PMB and Microsoft ran a three-day Power Lab Hackathon, which introduced a new, agile way of working. “Microsoft provided a designated support engineer who helped us through the process,” says Hasan. “From three use cases, we educated and empowered our staff to build their solutions for these common business issues.”

All the three applications developed enabled PMB to perform some key operations online and in real-time. The first application developed by employees tracks lane closures when subcontractors do maintenance work. The second solution monitors and manages the movement of spare parts by technicians. The third app improves operational efficiency by reconciling and tracking toll refund requests.

In 2021, the company held 3 Sessions of Power Lab with a total of 9 use cases successfully developed and implemented. By making apps independently, PMB has reduced the time needed to create a minimum viable product (MVP). It used to take three to six months using a traditional software development lifecycle; now, it only takes a fraction of the time. “We usually get two weeks to stabilize the MVP,” Hasan explains. “Then, we have a showcase where Microsoft and PMB provide two panel judges each. We rate the solutions, and all participants receive a gift to reward their meaningful efforts.” Through the events, the company identified citizen developers who can roll out low code apps for various business functions. “The digital competency of the people involved in the hackathon has improved significantly,” says Hasan.

PMB also empowers in-house Power Platform champions to facilitate improvement and digitization. These people are non-technical employees well-versed in the Power App solution, who support their colleagues in implementations. “In 2021, our champions’ teams developed more than 25 applications on top of those created in the Power Lab. This initiative is not a one-off event but something we can replicate and scale to gain the most impact,” says Hasan. “By reducing the need to use professional developers to create business apps, we have made considerable cost savings.”

Lower costs, higher impact

The Power Platform workflows are integrated with other Microsoft products in one ecosystem, which eases access to data. “Managing different tools is time-consuming and requires good technical skills,” explains Vincent Leo Boon Hua, Head of Digital Initiative Studio at PLUS. “But Microsoft 365 is an end-to-end solution. You can organize meetings and chat in Teams, send emails via Outlook, and collaborate on documents, all on one platform.”

PMB has experienced valuable cost and time savings since the new solution. The company embraces the Microsoft technology in phases, adapting to the new way of working. It can now generate reports with Power BI in about five instead of 30 minutes, while the estimated cycle time has been reduced by 3,203 hours annually since 2020. In addition, replacing printed copies with digital documents has generated savings in printing cost and further savings on reduced paper consumption. “We have about 300 processes and manual forms to improve and convert into digital format in Power Apps,” says Leo. “We want to build more complex applications. I believe we can open our apps to external parties using Microsoft 365 as an online platform to fill in the forms and get information. This way, we’ll be able to collaborate more efficiently and share information with just a few clicks.”

PMB is proud to have successfully managed a wide-scale use of Power Platform despite not having any prior experience. Leo says, “This transformation is a process of continuous improvement. The way to approach it is to be agile—we do the delivery in phases, observe the outcomes, collect user feedback, and proceed. We believe the small steps are what’s important in giving us the best chance of success in serving the needs of all our customers.”