Powering a new era of smart operations: How CATRION fuels growth with Microsoft Power Platform | Microsoft Customer Stories
How does a leading catering and hospitality provider scale operations without watching costs climb? This customer story shows how CATRION adopted Microsoft Power Platform to automate manual processes, streamline core functions, and empower business units to build and manage self-service applications. The result: stronger operational efficiency, a culture of innovation, and teams driving continuous improvement across the organization. Read the story to learn from CATRION's experience with Power Platform.
How did CATRION use Microsoft Power Platform to scale without adding cost?
CATRION used Microsoft Power Platform as the backbone of a broader digital transformation strategy that started in 2020.
The company’s goal was to **rebalance revenue to a 50/50 split between aviation and non‑aviation by 2026**, without a matching increase in overhead. To do this, the IT team focused on low‑code tools that business users could adopt quickly:
- Power Apps for custom business apps: Internal teams built **more than a dozen applications** covering procurement, finance, HR, operations, health and safety, travel, and light CRM. Development cycles dropped from **weeks to hours**, which helped the business respond faster to new requirements.
- Power Automate for workflow automation: Manual, repetitive processes—such as supplier evaluations, invoice validation, and travel approvals—were automated end‑to‑end, cutting processing times and reducing errors.
- Power BI for decision support: Real‑time dashboards were introduced in areas like HR recruitment to highlight bottlenecks and improve planning.
Instead of relying heavily on external vendors, CATRION invested in **training business users** to build and manage their own solutions. This shift reimagined IT from a support function into a **core enabler of business growth**, allowing the company to scale operations, improve efficiency, and foster a culture of continuous improvement—without a proportional increase in cost or headcount.
What business processes did CATRION automate, and what impact did it see?
CATRION systematically targeted processes that were **repetitive, high‑volume, and prone to delays**, then automated them using Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, and Azure AI.
1. Procurement and supplier evaluation
- Replaced paper‑based food and supplier evaluations with a Power Apps solution.
- Standardized scoring for pricing, service quality, delivery performance, and compliance.
- Impact: Consolidation of test results dropped from **three–four days to almost immediate**, while eliminating printed forms and reducing paper use.
2. Finance and credit control
- Automated reconciliation and customer communication using Power Automate RPA.
- Built automations for Expected Credit Loss (ECL) and aging reports by aggregating ERP and receivables data and applying internal risk classifications.
- Impact: Tasks that took **days of manual effort** are now completed in **a few clicks**, with a repeatable, auditable workflow that reduces human error and speeds up reporting.
- Invoice validation now uses Azure AI Vision to read PDFs and scanned images, match them to purchase orders, and update the ERP.
- Impact: For trained invoice formats, processing time dropped from **about three minutes per invoice to under one minute**, cutting review time by roughly **two‑thirds** and improving accuracy.
3. HR and talent management
- Built a centralized Talent Hub using SharePoint, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI.
- Automated interview scheduling, medical evaluations, permit issuance, and badge provisioning.
- Impact: Significant reduction in administrative overhead and a unified, intelligent platform to manage the entire employee lifecycle, with real‑time insights into recruitment metrics and process bottlenecks.
4. Operations, travel, and customer management
- Travel Order app: Automates travel requests, approvals, ticket issuance, and per diem processing, integrated with the company’s travel agency.
- Lightweight CRM: Consolidates customer complaints from email, calls, guest experience, and on‑site reps into a single app.
- Impact: Fewer bottlenecks in travel approvals and faster, more visible handling of customer feedback, strengthening client trust.
5. Audit, inspection, and compliance
- Standardize PRO: A Power Apps solution that digitizes inspection workflows, checklists, reporting, and monitoring.
- Includes auto‑generated PDF reports, scheduled reminders, centralized dashboards, and role‑based access.
- Impact: Improved consistency and accountability in inspections, reduced paperwork, faster response to issues, and better visibility into non‑compliance hotspots and resolution rates.
Across these areas, the common outcomes were **faster cycle times, fewer manual errors, better data visibility, and a more seamless employee experience**, all built on a scalable low‑code foundation.
How is CATRION combining Power Platform with AI for the next stage of automation?
CATRION is moving from basic process automation toward **AI‑enabled, autonomous operations** by layering Microsoft AI services on top of its Power Platform foundation.
Current AI initiatives
- AI Bot Agents with Copilot Studio and Azure AI Services: Internal bots in Microsoft Teams answer policy questions and guide users through workflows, reducing the load on support teams.
- Policy chatbot with Copilot Studio and Azure OpenAI: Makes policy documents easily searchable and accessible directly in Teams.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot pilots: Used to summarize reports, generate insights, and support productivity across different roles.
Target future capabilities
- Deploy intelligent agents that can not only assist but also act across finance, HR, and procurement.
- Examples include auto‑initiating travel requests, validating documents, and triggering Power Automate workflows without manual intervention.
- Combine AI Agents with existing automations to create more autonomous, end‑to‑end processes that accelerate decision‑making.
Strategically, CATRION is using AI to **reimagine how work gets done**: IT and business teams co‑design solutions, business users are trained to own and extend automations, and AI is embedded where it can add speed, accuracy, or better decision support. This approach positions IT not just as a service provider, but as a **core enabler of growth** as the company expands beyond aviation into new markets.

Powering a new era of smart operations: How CATRION fuels growth with Microsoft Power Platform | Microsoft Customer Stories
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