Successful implementation and adoption of Power Platform (Central Government - Defra UK)

Power Platform Product Manager Emma Shaw (Defra Group UK) & Power Platform & Dynamics Adoption Specialist Janet Robb talk through how Defra Group have adopted low code tools Power Apps & Automate, enabling both projects & business developers to utilise the tools & expedite digital transformation across the group.
This session will cover how they moved from a position of application & automation sprawl to building & implementing an adaptive governance model, streamlining delivery on the platform & ensuring business value. During this journey they incorporated senior sponsorship & business advocates through the organisation leading to a successful launch of Power Apps & Automate to over 35,000 users.

"Uncovering Hidden Adoption Challenges and How to Overcome Them"

Power Platform empowers individuals at the core of any organisation to take control of their process automation, making them the best candidates to solve their own problems. However, despite having the licenses to build & innovate, many organisations fail to fully embrace this potential. Why is that?

Despite efforts, Power Platform often remains siloed within the IT department & fails to reach other departments. Even after more than seven years of power platform, many organisations still face challenges with adoption.

Participants will have the opportunity to hear from Janet Robb, a leader in adoption within the IT industry. Janet has extensive experience working with both private & public sector organisations, collaborating with Microsoft & partner organisations. She has witnessed firsthand the common mistakes, assumptions, & failure points that hinder successful adoption.

Join Janet to uncover the often-overlooked aspects of the enablement journey. She will emphasise the importance of generating genuine desire across all areas of the organisation & the critical role of reinforcement practices, which are frequently neglected.

Janet's approach is straightforward & practical, providing clear steps to guide your enablement journey & sharing tips along the way. She will demonstrate how investing in enablement can significantly boost adoption rates at minimal cost, delivering substantial benefits in return.

Where will your App will fail and will you even know.

In a conversation with an app developer, I inquired about their criteria for determining the success of their application. The developer mentioned that they would rely on usage statistics. However, I pointed out that this only indicates that the app has been opened, which is not a comprehensive measure of success. For instance, I once tuned into a football channel, watched for a few minutes, and then lost interest. By merely looking at the stats, one might mistakenly conclude that the broadcast was successful.

True success is achieved when three key factors are met: Adoption, Proficiency, and Utilisation. It is the users who ultimately define success by leveraging the app to achieve the benefits it was designed to provide.

In my presentation, I will guide you through the common failure points that are often overlooked but are crucial for ensuring the true success of an application and these go further than designing a good UI

The Silent Shift: What AI Is Changing in Your Organisation That Nobody Has Noticed Yet

We’re living through change bigger than the Industrial Revolution. Organisations are rolling out AI and new tools at speed, and most measure success by whether people are using them. But adoption that sticks isn’t about usage. It’s about the quality of that use, and what’s happening to people behind the scenes.

Change management specialist Janet Robb will show you what’s happening in your own rollouts that you haven’t spotted yet. She’ll paint a picture you’ll recognise, stop you in your tracks, and help you turn what you see into a strategy. Years on the front line have taught her that the simplest approach is usually the one that wins.

You’ll leave with practical triggers to build adoption that sticks, rather than repeating the same mistakes. And yes, Janet will reveal the one word more dangerous than a cyber attack. You’ll just have to come along to find out.

Because every time we hand work to technology, something quietly shifts. What are we losing? What are we gaining? How are people feeling about it? Most organisations aren’t asking, and won’t notice until the effects show up in wellbeing, mental health and reputation.

First public delivery 45–60 minutes (flexible to fit )
Target audience / level
This is for everyone. It's aimed at anyone in an organisation starting to use AI, and at organisations that are foreseeing or actively planning an AI rollout, from individual contributors through to leadership.
No prior technical knowledge required.

Notes for organisers — why this talk exists
This talk exists because Janet has watched organisation after organisation rush to adopt AI without asking the questions that actually matter: why does this organisation need it, who will it actually affect, what change does it really require, and what will its impact , good and bad be? AI is a very likely necessity for most organisations, and Janet agrees it probably is — but not without caution. This session is a deliberate pause button: an invitation for attendees to stop and think before they roll out, rather than adopt AI simply because everyone else is. It surfaces the pitfalls that get missed in the rush — pitfalls that affect people as much as they affect the organisation.