Understanding Power Platform and Dynamics 365: Why They Matter for Modern Enterprise Solutions

When it comes to digital transformation, few decisions are more critical than choosing the right tools to build your business systems. Whether you’re digitising claims, managing grants, engaging members, or streamlining casework, the technology stack you choose sets the foundation for how fast, flexible, and future ready your organisation can be.

At Superware, we specialise in building tailored enterprise applications using Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365. But for many of the organisations we work with, especially in the superannuation and public sectors, the difference between these two platforms isn’t always clear.

In this article, we’ll explain in plain terms what each platform does, how they relate to each other, and why they offer a powerful foundation for solving real world business challenges.

What is Microsoft Power Platform?

Let’s start with Power Platform.

Power Platform is Microsoft’s low-code suite designed to help organisations build custom business applications without starting from scratch. It includes tools like:

Power Apps: for building custom applications
Power Automate: for creating automated workflows
Power BI: for interactive data visualisation and reporting
Power Pages: for secure, external facing websites
Copilot and AI Builder: for adding intelligence to your applications

At its core, Power Platform enables organisations to move away from spreadsheets and disconnected tools, and toward structured, secure, scalable business apps. It allows you to build applications that are tightly integrated with your data, your users, and your business processes, without needing to invest in full custom development.

It’s used in three broad ways:

Personal productivity: For example, a single user building an app to track tasks.
Team productivity: A small app shared within a department to improve workflow.
Enterprise grade systems: Full scale applications built for hundreds or thousands of users, supported by IT and often developed with Microsoft partners.

At Superware, we typically work in this third category, building sophisticated enterprise systems on top of Power Platform to support large scale operations like complaints handling, grants management, and member engagement.

Why use Power Platform instead of custom development?

One common question we hear is: why not just build a custom application from scratch?

In theory, a custom built app gives you total control. But in practice, it comes with major downsides. You need to handle everything from authentication and security, to data management, to integrations, to user experience. Every feature you want; auditing, reporting, role based access, has to be built and maintained manually.

That’s expensive, time consuming, and hard to scale.

Power Platform, by contrast, gives you a secure, enterprise ready foundation out of the box. You don’t have to worry about infrastructure. You can build quickly using Microsoft’s tools, and you benefit from the ongoing investment Microsoft makes in its ecosystem,especially around AI, automation, and compliance.

In short: it’s the best of both worlds. You get the speed and structure of a platform, with the flexibility to build exactly what your organisation needs.

What about Dynamics 365?

This is where some confusion arises.

Dynamics 365 is not a single product, it’s a family of applications, some of which are built on top of Power Platform.

Microsoft uses Dynamics 365 as the brand name for a range of business apps designed for functions like:

Sales
Marketing
Customer service
Project service
Field service

These are pre-built Power Platform applications designed to help teams get started quickly with common business needs. You still get the flexibility and extensibility of Power Platform, but with a head start as Microsoft has already built out much of the functionality for you.

For example, Dynamics 365 for Customer Service includes case management, service queues, dashboards, and automation, all of which can be further customised to suit your needs.

In this way, Power Platform is the engine, and Dynamics 365 apps are the cars, fully built and ready to drive, but still open to tuning and modification.

The ERP exception: Business Central and Finance & Operations

It’s important to note that not all Dynamics 365 apps are built on Power Platform.

Microsoft’s ERP systems such as Business Central, Finance, and Supply Chain Management are branded under Dynamics 365 but are not built on Power Platform. These applications are more traditional enterprise resource planning tools, and while they can be integrated with Power Platform, they don’t share the same foundation.

This is an important distinction, especially when designing integrated systems that span both customer facing and back office functions.

Why Superware builds on this stack

At Superware, we’ve chosen to specialise in building solutions using Power Platform and Dynamics 365 because they offer a unique combination of flexibility, control, and enterprise readiness.

For many of our clients, especially in highly regulated environments like superannuation or government, this matters.

Power Platform enables us to deliver:

Tailored solutions: Every client is different. With Power Platform, we can build systems that fit around your people and processes, not the other way around.
Robust governance: Applications run within your Microsoft tenant, giving you full control over security, permissions, and data residency.
Scalable architecture: Whether it’s a five person team or a system used by thousands, Power Platform scales with you.
Rapid development: We can move faster than traditional custom development while maintaining enterprise quality.
Built in extensibility: As your needs evolve, so can your systems. You’re not locked into a rigid off the shelf product.

We also use Microsoft’s Dataverse, the underlying data platform that powers both Power Platform and Dynamics 365, which makes managing, securing, and analysing structured data far more seamless than legacy systems.

Best of breed vs best platform

One of the most compelling reasons to build on Power Platform is extensibility.

Many of the niche SaaS tools in the market, like SmartyGrants for grants management, for example, are good at one thing. They solve a specific problem well, but only within the boundaries of that product.

When clients come to us using tools like this, they often hit a wall. They can’t adapt to the system. They can’t connect it to other parts of their business. They end up duplicating effort or relying on brittle workarounds.

By contrast, a Power Platform solution, such as our Award grants management system, can be extended to handle a wide range of related needs. Reimbursements, financial assessments, stakeholder management, analytics, whatever your process, the platform can support it.

This platform first approach allows your technology to grow with your organisation, not constrain it.

One platform, many possibilities

If you’ve ever struggled to find a system that fits your organisation perfectly, Power Platform and Dynamics 365 might be the answer you’ve been looking for. They offer a flexible, future proof way to design systems that are built around your needs.

By combining the structure of a world class enterprise platform with the freedom to customise, organisations can reduce complexity, eliminate silos, and deliver better service, faster.

At Superware, we’re proud to help public sector and financial services organisations do just that. So, if you’re exploring options for complaints handling, grants management, CRM, or digital engagement, we’d love to show you what’s possible.