4 Simple Ways Power Platform can Transform your Business

Launched in 2019 and rapidly gaining popularity from the outset, Power Platform is Microsoft’s unique suite of low-code tools that enables businesses, and expert partners like Silicon Reef, to develop efficient, flexible solutions at pace. Incorporating best-in-class services for discovering insights, creating apps, automating processes, and managing enquiries, the platform is gathering momentum as a fast-track route for businesses to take control. Essentially the platform is an accessible cloud computing product suite that puts the capability for development and insights into the hands of your employees. No techies required.

But what exactly is Power Platform, and how can it enable your business to understand your data better, operate more efficiently, and serve your customers in a more targeted, meaningful way?

The Power Platform toolset

Power Apps

This set of low-code tools makes mobile app creation accessible to everyone in your business. Using Power Apps applications, workflow automation, and AI – as well as secure data access and analysis – you can develop and run your own unique business-enabling and customer-facing apps. These apps can connect to hundreds of third-party systems and even work within Microsoft applications such as Teams.

Power Pages

Build secure, engaging websites quickly and with minimal code to deliver information to customers and partners at a lower cost, and with greater control. Easily create online forms to collect data from your customers or users and use the insights to optimise your website and inform your business.

Power Virtual Agents

Create intelligent bots using Power Automate that integrate with data sources to manage business requests. Using AI Virtual Agents can provide preformed simple answers to frequently asked questions to resolving complex issues through conversation.

Power Automate

Free up time and create efficiency in your business by creating automated workflows for common or repeatable tasks. Using robotic process automation (RPA) and digital process automation (DPA) to revamp legacy applications and quickly re-energise business processes.

Power BI

A business analytics service that enables employees at every level to access the latest analytics, visualise results on mobile or desktop, and share relevant, actionable insights from your business data.

Power Platform brings efficiency and energy to your business

By using the tools within Power Platform independently or in combination, we can help you create solutions that help your business do more with less, understand better, and support your customers in a more efficient and consistent way. The applications are infinite but here are just some of the ways Power Platform could make a real difference to the way that you work.

1. Enjoy the efficiency of enterprise level organisations whatever the size of your business.

86% of Fortune 500 companies use Power Apps to deliver simple to complex solutions to a wide range of business challenges, and the framework Power Platform provides helps their staff create apps quickly. But even SMEs can use the platform, either independently or with the support of a Microsoft Development Partner – such as Silicon Reef – and can reap even greater benefits from the efficiencies Power Apps and Power Automate provide. Simple, quick, and affordable solutions to managing workflow and repeatable tasks can make scaling affordable. By allowing small businesses to create and manage the Power Apps they can expand along with their business, and with Power BI flexible enough to allow employees to call on almost any data at any time, businesses can remain agile and responsive while minimising cost and adhering to compliance and security.

SMEs looking to make a low-cost, low-risk impact online can use Power Pages to make a brand impact, access customers and gather data from the outset while using existing talent to do more, with less.

2. Help your customers (and your employees) to self-serve

Maximise the use of your business resources – and free up your staff to support customers in more complex shopping, or after sales, tasks – by using Power Virtual Assistant to create chatbots that can facilitate simpler customer shopping or service missions. With 88% of customers now expecting businesses to have a self-service option it seems prudent to find flexible straightforward solutions to delivering that capability. Equally, your employees are more in need of self-service support and Power Platform can help your business provide, for example, IT service desk ticket management without any service agent, data preparation for insights generated with simple queries and connectors, or a conversational bot leveraging data and AI to answer simple HR queries consistently.

3. Streamline your in-store customer experience

Power Platform benefits aren’t limited to your digital channels. By using Power Apps in combination with product data sets and Power BI, merchandisers and User Experience experts can infer typical product alternatives and project completers to develop in-store shopping apps. With Power Apps we can easily create product comparison or project bundle apps for sales staff to access on their tablet while serving customers on the sales floor, giving them the capability to help customers to research options and make choices right where they are shopping. Using a predefined Power Automate workflow, the sales assistant can then email the customer with their sales confirmation, and even send them a link to a virtual assistant chat (created through Power Virtual Agents) to provide after-sales care.

4. Save money and drive efficiency

A 2021 Microsoft report found that, because of lower costs for both internal and external development, the average cost of large development projects can be 70% less when using Power Apps. And, it’s much simpler to maintain the code and manage the applications.

There are savings to be made across operational efficiencies too. The opportunities through automation alone can be significant. Power Automate helps businesses of any size increase productivity by streamlining or even eliminating time-consuming repetitive tasks and business processes allowing your organisation to operate in an accessible, connected way and at a faster pace.

The platform easily connects to Microsoft Dataverse offering secure, single-location storage for all your relevant data. This way your Power Apps and Power Automate processes can interact with a centralised set of data and logic. This offers considerable savings and enables skilled employees to spend more time focusing on more valuable, lucrative priorities.

There is so much opportunity for businesses of all sizes with Power Platform. All Power Platform tools are low or no code and can be used individually or in combination and are further enhanced – but don’t rely on – the Microsoft ecosystem, connecting Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365, Azure and hundreds of other apps. Their ease of use, and security and compliance assurances, mean that
your employees can gather data and insights, streamline processes, and create solutions either independently or with the support and guidance of Silicon Reef’s Collaboration, Productivity and Business Process Services. The possibilities are endless.