How IKEA Boosted Retail Sales with Low‑Code Power Platform Apps

Low‑code development is being adopted across industries worldwide, expanding its scenarios and roles. This case study describes its application in the retail sector, focusing on an agile customer service management solution for IKEA Sweden.

Pain Points and Challenges

The sales team needed answers to questions such as why customers did not purchase kitchen furniture, which B2B prospects were growing, and the market size of B2B customers. Existing tools relied on custom spreadsheets to track appointments, leads, projects, and procurement, resulting in fragmented, unstructured data that could not be viewed in real time.

Key issues included:

Complex purchase processes requiring up to four months of manual work.

Three hours daily spent on appointment scheduling and management.

Lack of coordinated communication with customers, leading to sales loss.

Insufficient mobility for field sales teams.

No aggregated data for revenue calculation and forecasting.

Poor reporting capabilities.

Data stored only in Excel, lacking functional security.

Additionally, the IT team lacked resources to build custom code solutions, and the SaaS approach required a degree of customization and future extensibility.

Implemented Solutions

The solution was co‑created by IKEA’s sales team, partner Capgemini, and Microsoft architecture experts, following a typical low‑code team model where business users collaborate with qualified Power Platform partners and Microsoft architects for governance, security, and performance guidance.

Four model‑driven Power Apps were built:

Kitchen App – Used in stores to view customer reservations, coordinate staff, and schedule meetings. It leverages Dynamics 365 Field Service, Power Automate for meeting duration tracking, Azure Functions and Logic Apps for SMS notifications, and Dynamics 365 workflows for email.

Co‑Worker App – Enables store sales experts to start/end customer meetings, record notes, update revenue details, and view sales progress. It integrates third‑party kitchen design and order‑management tools via Azure Functions that sync data to Microsoft Dataverse.

B2B App – A model‑driven app built on Dynamics 365 Sales to provide a unified view of B2B customers, track sales pipelines, and support continuous communication.

Customer Support Center App – Allows support staff to manage appointments digitally, increasing active users from 6 to 20 and improving efficiency and customer relationship management.

Key screenshots illustrate the task board, data views, and app interfaces.

Benefits Achieved

Automated system for tracking appointments, re‑appointments, and end‑to‑end sales flow.

Reduced time spent on resource planning, data collection, and consolidation.

Centralized customer data for long‑term management.

Increased sales through better B2B pipeline visibility.

Training time for new sales reps cut to one‑third in some areas.

Improved revenue forecasting with consolidated data.

More granular analytics on sales, forecasts, employee performance, and customer retention.

Positive ROI expected within one year.

Targeted focus on high‑intent customers, boosting conversion rates.

Solution Summary

The four apps together optimize the sales process, as shown in the system architecture diagram.

Implementation Considerations

Team Composition

Capgemini handled development and deployment, while IKEA’s sales team co‑planned processes, and Microsoft architects provided best‑practice guidance.

Tool Adoption

Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement was chosen for CRM, with model‑driven Power Apps for customization. Power Automate was used for automation across all projects.

Data Source Management

Microsoft Dataverse served as the central database, ensuring data security and cross‑team visibility. Data was sourced from the IKEA website, third‑party systems, and Dynamics 365, using custom connectors and Azure Functions where needed.

Azure Integration

Azure Functions and APIs complemented the low‑code platform for complex data integration and business logic beyond the 20% capability of low‑code alone.