Telecom operator A1 Hrvatska builds sustainable work culture with Microsoft Power Platform

A1 Hrvatska, one of the leading telecom operators in Croatia, strives to provide the best service to its two million customers. “We believe in empowering our employees and customers with digital solutions to make processes simpler and more convenient,” says Ivan Skender, the Senior Director of Business Transformation, Human Resources and Corporate Communications at A1 Hrvatska.

Making employee onboarding easier

One of the key processes for A1 Hrvatska is onboarding new employees. “When you arrive at a new company, you’d want to have a person who will help you in the first few days in the company, to familiarize you with the company and team easily,” says Dennis Ramulic, Senior Automation and Analytics Specialist at A1 Hrvatska.

It used to take about 70 minutes to prepare all the tasks for a new employee, and it was hard for employees to understand at which stage of the onboarding they were at a given time. A1 Hrvatska needed to make the process more efficient for everyone. “We saw this process as a perfect candidate to demonstrate what Microsoft Power Platform offers.”

The company streamlined the time-consuming onboarding process with Microsoft Power Apps. It developed an application which automated tasks and provided tools for new employees—scheduling, reminders, tasks, and useful information in one place and available on multiple devices. “We’ve reduced the time it takes for each employee to prepare the onboarding tasks and materials from 70 minutes to a mere five minutes. Our employees now have full visibility over the entire onboarding process, which makes it much easier to collaborate remotely,” says Ivan Skender, Senior Director of Business Transformation, Human Resources and Corporate Communications at A1 Hrvatska.

Democratizing automation

Despite the fact that most of his team members lack any developer background, Ramulić and his team are able to continue developing functional apps with the no-code platform. “After our first successful project, we built an internal community to further use the Power Platform capabilities, especially Power App for automation and Power BI to visualize the data. We have already built about five or six different apps that are being used in the company,” mentions Ramulic.

One such app helps with employee evaluations. Before using the Power Apps, business partners would have to send a separate spreadsheet to every single manager. That was more than 200 emails flying around. “Now managers can just fill in the information in the app, and the business partners have full visibility without having to look through a mountain of emails,” explains Ramulic. The team now also has an educational portal designed to give full visibility to managers, enabling them to approve courses for the employees and see their outcomes.

A1 Hrvatska also automated ticket classification and routing for its technical support team. “By plugging in a simple script to Azure’s Machine Learning studio, the team could make an 81 percent accurate routing prediction. We successfully freed up more than 70 work hours per month,” says Skender.

Driving more digital change

This is just the start for A1 Hrvatska. “We keep following what’s going on the market, what Microsoft is doing—especially regarding Power Platform, all the new features, services and so on. We want to be able to fully utilize its capabilities,” says Ramulic.

“We started without knowing anything about Power Platform so I’m really proud of what we’ve created. The no-code initiative will only grow larger once companies understand what can be built,” concludes Ramulic.