Temasek Polytechnic saves 20,000+ man-hours annually by empowering citizen developers with Power Platform

Temasek Polytechnic was established in 1990 and is a leading institution of higher learning in Singapore. It offers 36 full-time diploma courses and over 40 part-time programs across its six academic schools, serving 13,000 full-time students. Capitalizing on opportunities and harnessing new technology has helped the polytechnic establish a reputation for its academic programs, hands-on research, strong leadership, and company culture.

"At Temasek Polytechnic, we aim to equip all our students and staff with the latest digital skills, such as those related to artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, and automation,” shares Peter Lam, Principal & CEO at Temasek Polytechnic. “This will empower them with critical life skills to create, innovate, and make a meaningful impact in their workplace and society.” 

Paving the way for success in a digital world

To nurture citizen developers, Temasek Polytechnic sought to empower staff and students to build applications and solve real-world problems without relying on IT experts. “Normally, we’d need to brief software developers and go through a back-and-forth process because they might not be completely familiar with the business domain,” explains Dr. Eng Pin Kwang, Senior Director, Chief Data Officer, and Chief Information Officer at Temasek Polytechnic. “That’s why having citizen developers with a combination of industry knowledge and access to low-code, no-code tools can lead to faster development and more tailored applications.” 

By empowering citizen developers, the polytechnic hoped to capitalize on opportunities to streamline repetitive tasks, such as scheduling, generating reports, and gathering information. For example, signing up a student for overseas trips, which is a part of their curriculum, would require less effort with automation. Students had to submit several documents, and staff would manually verify details and email each student. “Imagine only having three or four administrators dealing with hundreds or thousands of student registrations—it can be quite challenging,” shares Dr. Eng. 

Another area Temasek Polytechnic aimed to enhance was communication with parents. To keep parents informed about upcoming student events or performances, staff would need to manually send timely notifications. “We saw an opportunity to automate this process, allowing notifications to be triggered automatically thus reducing the risk of errors or delays,” Dr. Eng explains. The polytechnic was looking for a solution that would empower staff to independently innovate and implement changes, ultimately driving overall efficiency.

Since the polytechnic relied on Power BI and Microsoft 365, choosing a solution in the Microsoft environment made the most sense. “We wanted a frictionless transition and a solution that users could learn and pick up very quickly,” says Serena Tai, Director, IT Services at Temasek Polytechnic. This led the institution to adopt the Microsoft Power Platform.  

A transformative adoption journey 

The polytechnic wanted to inspire widespread adoption of the Power Platform among its entire staff, including the teaching staff to integrate these tools into their lessons. “We wanted to equip everyone with the skills needed to create applications that require little to no coding skills as part of their digital competency,” shares Dr. Eng. 

Temasek Polytechnic faculty and administrators were introduced to the Power Platform through structured training sessions, workshops, and hands-on engagements. “We started by communicating our plans to the staff during sessions about upcoming trends, including low-code and no-code technologies,” recalls Serena. These sessions provided opportunities for employees to explore how low-code, no-code tools could be incorporated into their daily work. The polytechnic also organized further in-depth training sessions and events like The Art of Possible ideation workshop, which were venues where employees could identify potential use cases and develop solutions tailored to their needs.

To further solidify the practicality of Power Platform, Temasek Polytechnic organized hackathons for colleagues to work on real use cases. Here, participants could experiment with automating real-world processes and build functional apps.

Besides driving innovation, Temasek Polytechnic also had to ensure security was in place. It established a governance framework to support citizen developer-driven innovation. This includes using Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies to block high-risk actions and auto-claim policies to auto-assign licenses, as well as setting up controls in the production and sandbox environments. “It’s easy to start something, but sustaining it requires deliberate planning. Using Microsoft’s Center of Excellence solution offers better oversight over the entire Power Platform environment,” explains Serena.

From hackathon to real impact

Fostering employee innovation led to impactful solutions. At the hackathon, Nurzahiah Jumat, Lecturer at the Center for Life Skills, School of Humanities & Social Sciences at Temasek Polytechnic, built the winning app despite having no technical background. Instead of sending mass email announcements manually to students, the app sends personalized assignment reminders. “We’ve saved about 850 hours over the semester,” she says. “In one instance, I sent out 1,600 messages in just three days. Doing this without automation would have taken us about 11 days.”

Students responded even better than anticipated. “Sending one personalized reminder to nudge students to complete their e-learning activities increased the completion rate by 64%,” highlights Jumat. Since then, the automation has been expanded to a larger cohort across multiple subjects. 

Another solution handles student requests for editing and proofreading support. All requests now go through an automated system on Power Platform, removing the need for senior managers to manually review each request. 

Tan Cheng Khoon, a Senior Manager at the School of Engineering, had already built a QR code solution to replace manual attendance tracking when he attended the hackathon. “It was clear that if I had built the attendance app on Power Apps from the start, I could’ve developed it much faster and made it compatible across different devices quite easily,” he shares. 

As staff grew more comfortable with the Power Platform, new use cases emerged across departments. “Today, we have over 798,000 workflow runs on the Power Platform and have saved approximately 20,000 man-hours since launching a year ago,” highlights Dr. Eng. 

Empowering the next digital generation 

With the success of faculty and staff embracing the Power Platform, Temasek Polytechnic has since shifted gears to introduce codeless development capabilities to students. This includes introducing Microsoft Power Apps into the core curriculum. In the last month, over 5,000 students have used or created applications using Power Apps. 

To give students more practical experience, Temasek Polytechnic has begun exploring new opportunities with Microsoft Copilot Studio. “We had close to 100 students participating in a pilot of Microsoft Copilot Studio through their curriculum. They found the platform easier to use than many similar AI assistants and troubleshooting much simpler,” shares Serena.

The polytechnic is also the first in Singapore to introduce a specialist diploma in low-code app development for business into its academic portfolio as a continuous education programming option for adult learners. “By bringing in new technologies into the curriculum, we ensure that our students are trained in what the industry needs. It helps us achieve our mission of giving students the technical know-how and practical skills to boost their employability and set them up for success right out of the gate,” Dr. Eng explains. 

As digital tools evolve, Temasek Polytechnic remains committed to lifelong learning. In 2025, the polytechnic hopes to initiate a Community of Practice to provide structured support and foster best practices in low-code, no-code, and AI. It will also explore new tools and features such as the AI builder in the Power Platform in anticipation of even more developer-driven innovation. “Ensuring the availability of technology is important for our future. By making these resources readily available, we can educate and empower our staff and students to use them effectively,” concludes Serena. 

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