UK Distribution Firm Replaces Legacy Access Database with Power Platform

The firm ran its entire order and delivery operation on a single Access database that had grown well beyond its safe limits. The file regularly hit the 2GB ceiling and corrupted almost every week, locking out the operations team for hours at a time. Only one person understood the tangled web of macros and queries behind it, creating a serious key-person risk. Because the database lived on a shared drive, drivers and depot staff had no way to access live delivery information away from a desk, and concurrent editing routinely produced clashing records. Reporting meant exporting to Excel by hand, so management decisions were always made on data that was at least a week old.

We rebuilt the system on Microsoft Dataverse and a Power Apps canvas app, replacing the Access file entirely. All historic order, customer, and delivery data was migrated into a properly relational Dataverse model with validation and referential integrity built in. Depot staff use a model-driven app for order entry and scheduling, while drivers use a mobile canvas app for proof of delivery, photo capture, and live status updates. Power Automate handles delivery notifications, exception alerts, and daily reconciliation that once happened by hand. Power BI dashboards, refreshed automatically, gave managers their first real-time view of on-time delivery performance and depot throughput.