From Complexity to Creativity: User-Centric Design at the Heart of Warner Bros. Discovery’s Transformation

In early 2025, media and entertainment giant Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) decided to rapidly expand Microsoft’s Power Platform across its global enterprise, where brands such as CNN, HBO and Discovery Channel attract millions of viewers worldwide. WBD invested in tens of thousands of Microsoft app licenses for employees, which gave it a chance to accelerate low-code innovation by enabling each business unit to custom-build apps utilising Power Apps, Power Automate and Copilot Studio. However, as well as creating opportunities this move also raised the threat of inconsistencies and security risks, so maintaining robust governance was another vital factor in the scale-up. Silicon Reef rose to the challenge, bridging the gap between people and technology. 

The Challenges

Numerous WBD processes at that time – from email to spreadsheets and various digital tools – were still manual and/or fragmented. Critical workflows that were partly managed manually in Excel or SharePoint, for example, were often delayed and certain tasks were being duplicated. In addition, much of its data was siloed inside different departments or systems, which hindered decision-making and proved an obstacle to productivity.

At the same time as “making it easy for people to build digital products”, as WBD described it, fostering citizen-app innovation necessitated a scalable framework without security or governance issues.

As part of its global plan, the organisation collaborated with Silicon Reef and Microsoft to address these challenges to scale Power Platform adoption, engage its employee developers, put governance guardrails in place, and deliver measurable ROI.

The Solution

WBD chose us as a trusted partner to establish a Microsoft Power Platform Centre of Excellence (CoE), which would enable the entertainment group to scale innovation, streamline its operations and standardise processes, all on a globally governed platform.

Creators of world-class digital environments that boost the employee experience, we brought its unparalleled expertise to this project, prioritising Microsoft and enterprise architecture best practice. Believing that every person in an organisation contributes to its success, its first task was to gain an understanding of WBD’s employees and what they needed to truly thrive. Its people-first approach to design created a balanced, high-energy transformation force within WBD.

The team got to work installing and configuring Microsoft’s CoE Starter Kit, a set of tools and analytics devised to support and monitor the Power Platform environment that WBD envisaged – with the challenge of incorporating more than 30,000 licensed employees. Providing a central inventory of Power Automate flows, Power Apps, Copilot studio agents and more, with dashboards to track usage, the toolkit allowed WBD to monitor every app build and ensure that its developers adhered to the rules.

A robust governance framework was another priority for the new Power Platform, to establish the environment strategy, security roles and data-loss prevention. With the CoE, Silicon Reef ensured that new apps would not jeopardise the environment, no matter how many thousands were ultimately built.

Once deployed, the Power Platform CoE started to modernise and smooth out operational efficiency across WBD brands, while also ensuring transparency and scalability. And the real transformation came not only from the technology, but rather from what the enterprise architecture and human-centric design enabled people at WBD to do, regardless of what team they worked in or how separate from technology their day-to-day job seemed to be.

Take the 5,000-7,000 monthly hair and makeup appointments that WBD was handling, for example, for its on-air anchors, presenters and guests. Powdering faces and blow-drying hair might not seem like a job for digital automation, but it represented a huge and constant workflow challenge that was managed for WBD by our deployment of Power Apps. Using the apps as easily as they might send a text message meant that the on-air talent could instantly check, update or repeat appointments on their mobiles in any free moments during a show when they were not on camera. They could also review past appointments to identify preferred stylists or makeup artists and book them for future dates.

As well as streamlining WBD’s appointments, the app automatically kept financial records up to date and clean, and created an easy process for hair and makeup artists, who primarily used mobile devices, to request inventory items as needed. It also implemented appointment splitting, through Power Automate flows, so that bookings were accurately divided between stylists and types of service.

In WBD’s sports division, TNT Sports, the technological requirement was to streamline data sharing and communication across its broadcasts, rather than relying on emails and shared documents.

The solution was to build a sports dashboard app in conjunction with WBD, creating a single repository for data about the studio and equipment being used for an NFL or NHL broadcast. Having replaced an existing dashboard that comprised multiple processes and formats on separate spreadsheets, this more consistent tool made collaboration between teams and vendors faster, transparent and more natural.

What happens at the end of a WBD production is just as important as the smooth running of a live sports broadcast or how well-groomed a TV show anchor looks on screen. The organisation was using time-consuming manual post-wrap checklists for both HBO and Warner Bros Studios. This process captured the broad-ranging data essential for wrapping up every production: crew names, bank details, final costs sheets, any outstanding insurance claims, and much more. Silicon Reef introduced a Power App that streamlined operations for every task in the post-wrap phase, eliminating many hours of checks carried out separately on projects for both brands.

Impact & Results

The CoE has empowered WBD teams to innovate faster, work smarter, and embrace a culture of innovation.

With our people-first approach, all internal and external parties in the TNT Sports broadcast teams – from leaders and producers to vendors and freelancers – could access and edit the requisite data. It was now more easily accessible as a single source of accurate, up-to-date information. The result was an estimated saving of $1.5 million over 4 years on external development at TNT Sports, along with a far slicker operation.

The enhanced WBD Power App for Hair and makeup that Silicon Reef delivered, using the Dataverse cloud platform for data capture, quickly made more efficient use of time and resources. Less time spent on admin meant that its stylists were better prepared to get the talent looking camera-ready at the right time, with the right products to hand, and on schedule.

Our WBD Post Wrap Checklist project drastically reduced the number of hours WBD’s accounting teams spent on a typical checklist of 100 items – from approximately 200 minutes to around 10. The app also introduced a single interface for all users at HBO and WBS, enabling data tracking, key metrics and other details vital to closing down a production on time and with all documentation in place.

Building on the Momentum

A cultural change at WBD has been an unexpected outcome of its partnership with Silicon Reef and Microsoft, highlighting the difference between a technical project and a true transformation, building a community of Power Platform champions at a speed and scale that exceeded all expectations. As this momentum continues, key areas of focus include:

• Expansion of automation to new business units
• Integration of AI-powered analytics (Power BI) for enhanced decision-making
• Continued partnership with Silicon Reef and Microsoft to drive innovation