We know you come to the HCL-PowerObjects blog for information related to Microsoft Business Applications, including Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Our helpful hints, tips’n’tricks, and troubleshooting guidance are the engine of our blog, to be sure, but we occasionally stray from our bread and butter when we have good news to share. Today’s blogpost fits neatly in the “pat ourselves on the back” category. Please enjoy – and we promise to get back to the basics in our next post.

We are pleased to report that HCL-PowerObjects has won the “Technology Innovator of the Year” Award @ Computing Technology Product Awards 2020. We earned this recognition for our overall achievement in Power Platform, including the Sales Tool Belt application.

In Computing’s own words: “Innovation is key to success, and this award recognizes the company that has demonstrated high levels of original thought and action in the last 12 months. The organization may have built innovative IT systems or approached staffing in a new way. However they have innovated, their work will have resulted in measurable success.” Our nomination focused on innovation across several aspects of Power Platform but the featured story was the Sales Tool Belt.

The Power Apps-based PowerObjects Sales Tool Belt canvas app is a customizable solution that has been deployed in more than a dozen field service organizations across several verticals. Designed for salespeople who work in the field, the tool is built with Dynamics 365/CDS as the underlying system and connects with many external sources to surface information in real time. The capabilities and functionality of this application include:

• Shows list of current user’s opportunities, appointments, accounts, contacts, leads from Microsoft Dynamics 365 or any other source
• Ability to call and email contacts, and get driving directions from current location to customer’s address with a single click
• Shows appointments and accounts on a map in a 5, 10, 20, 50-mile radius from current location
• Use voice to text to add notes
• Mobile access to CRM records for more detail
• Scan business cards and create leads and contacts in Dynamics 365
• Analytics to gain insights into pipeline, opportunities, etc.
• "Advanced Find" to query opportunities
• Route optimization to find the shortest routes as well as quickly view customers that are nearby
• Chat bot integration to get answers to questions quickly
• Track mileage in Dynamics 365

Simply put, the Sales Tool Belt empowers users to spend less time dealing with administrative duties, paperwork, and manual processes and more time focused on the customer.

Computing’s “Technology Innovator of the Year Award” also recognized HCL-PowerObjects for facilitating several hackathons – innovative two-day workshops designed to build on Microsoft’s traditional App-in-a-Day program, as well as for innovation in terms of designing a curriculum that instructs organizations how to implement the Power Platform within a governance structure that empowers system administrators to balance business productivity with risk management and security.

Computing hosts the annual Technology Product Awards competition in an effort to recognize the very best of the UK's technology industry, from the most innovative and compelling products and vendors, through to the top use cases from end-user firms. In addition to taking home the most coveted award in the competition – Technology Innovator of the Year – HCL-PowerObjects was also named a Finalist in the “Product of the Year” category for PowerProperty, our Dynamics 365 accelerator for the property and housing industry.

Launched in 1973, Computing is the only UK-based website dedicated to helping IT leaders innovate and drive business growth.