What is Microsoft Power Platform?
Power Platform is a collection of (currently five) applications that enable staff, without specialist technical skills, to automate workflows, build apps, and analyse data. Â
Power Automate has been around since 2016 and enables workflows and repetitive process tasks to be automated. Â
Power Apps is a low-code platform for building custom business apps. Superficial examples sometimes don’t sound too dissimilar from Power Automate workflows. But while both can involve automation, they are complementary tools, with significant differences that address different needs. Â
For example, a business with field engineers could use Power Apps to create a mobile app. The app would guide engineers through the correct checks, document the results with text and pictures, and gather signatures. Meanwhile, Power Automate could handle related workflow tasks, like updating the CRM system, setting the next inspection date, advising account managers, and ticketing repairs.Â
Power BI is a business intelligence (BI) tool that enables you to combine data from multiple sources and analyse it in visually impactful dashboards, charts, and graphs.Â
Power Pages is graphical software for producing low-code websites and customer solutions.Â
Microsoft Copilot Studio, which started life as Power Virtual Agents, enables you to customise or build customer or employee focused Copilot (i.e. Chatbot) experiences.Â
Power Platform is licenced as an add-on to Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Dynamics 365 subscriptions. It’s useful to know that Microsoft 365 subscriptions include limited Power Apps Basic and Power Automate Basic licenses that will enable you to experiment. Additionally, free 30 days Power Apps and 90 days Power Automate trials are available. You can learn more by downloading Microsoft’s latest (dated February 2024) Power Platform Licensing Guide.  Â
Here, we want to focus on how Power Automate, Power BI and Power Apps can help you, though 25 practical examples. Â
9 use case examples for Power Automate
Power Automate is great for automating workflows and frequently occurring tasks. Â
Streamline absence reportingÂ
Unplanned absences typically trigger a host of actions, and all of these can be automated. The process is triggered by the employee or their supervisor completing an ‘Absence Form’, via Microsoft Forms or as a Power Apps form. Power Automate will trigger an email or Teams notification informing their manager with an approval or review link. It can also trigger an email or Teams notification to relevant colleagues. Other notifications can go to HR and, if the absence exceeds a threshold or affects bonuses or allowances, Payroll. On the employee’s estimated return date Power Automate will send them a reminder to update their absence record. If they need to extend their absence, the form is re-submitted, repeating the workflow, and if not, relevant notifications will be sent to manager, colleagues, HR and Payroll.  Â
The workflow could be further customised to integrate with a third-party HR system and to manage return-to-work forms.Â
Aside from saving manual processing, it ensures that all absences follow the same process, that actions aren’t missed, and improves internal communication.Â
Simplify credit checking
In most organisations there are examples of data in one system being re-entered into another. This often happens at the interface between different parts of the business. In this example we’re looking at sales requesting new trade customer credit checking, it could equally be one of many other cross functional, cross system interfaces. Â
Again, the process is triggered by the submission of a new request. This could be through Microsoft Forms, a SharePoint List, or a Power Apps form. Power Automate can validate the submission against predefined rules, such as company policies and check for missing information. If necessary, an email or Teams notification will go to the submitter requesting corrections. Using connectors, or custom APIs, Power Automate can gather key credit details from credit information providers such as Experian, Dun & Bradstreet, and Equifax. Conditional logic can be used to automatically approve low-risk customers, refer medium-risk customers for formal review, and reject high-risk customers. Notifications can then be sent to all relevant stakeholders and new records created in relevant systems, such as credit control, finance, and sales.   Â
This automation speeds up the process, reduces response times, improves data accuracy, both at the request and data input stages. It ensures process adherence, reducing possible human errors, is transparent and keeps all stakeholders well informed.  Â
Other use case
You’ll see from the above how, based on set rules, Power Automate can trigger a variety of actions: verifying, sending notifications, distributing actions, inputting data and more. How else could your business improve efficiency with Power Automate? Here are some more common uses:Â
- Approving invoicesÂ
- Employee onboarding Â
- Assigning sales leadsÂ
- Inventory management Â
- Automating reportsÂ
- Collecting service feedbackÂ
- Logistics notifications.
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9 use case examples for Power Apps
Apps, when done well, enable you to complete a task quickly and easily. With Power Apps, even those without a development background can create a custom app focused on a specific business need. Such as simplifying approvals/rejections, gathering data, or guiding people through a process. Power Apps aren’t costly to produce, they are mobile-friendly, they’re compatible with other Microsoft productivity tools, and are secure.   Â
While very sophisticated uses are possible, here are nine ideas for current activities that might be taking too much time and paper/email in your organisation.Â
- Expense submission and approval Â
- Sales pipeline updatesÂ
- Field service reportingÂ
- Incident reporting Â
- Event registration Â
- Equipment inspection checklistsÂ
- Gathering customer feedbackÂ
- Helpdesk ticket submissionÂ
- Remote data entry (integrating with other systems).Â
7 use case examples for Power BI
Every part of every business needs to monitor how it is doing against its key measures of performance. But often that data is collected and held in more than one place. Power BI pulls that data together into a single real-time dashboard or report and presents it to enhance understanding and decision making.  Â
The figure below shows how effectively a dashboard can present a lot of complicated data. Â
- Senior management: summarising the key commercial, financial, stakeholder, and performance measures from across the organisation. Â
- Finance: showing key indicators such as revenue, costs, profitability, outstanding payments, and cash management. Â
- Sales: providing total revenue and sales margin, sales by market, product/service, and channel, actual vs budget performance, and forecast sales. Â
- Customer service: types of issues, trends, response and resolution times, customer satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS), and escalation trends.Â
- HR: employee engagement, turnover and retention rates, diversity and inclusion stats, causes of absence, and recruitment metrics.Â
- IT: service uptime, network and application performance, incident response metrics, blocked cyber-attacks, and upgrade/rollout completions. Â
- Operations: Inventory levels, inventory turnover rates, process efficiency, delivery timeframes, and supplier performance.
Next steps
You can probably now see how beneficial Power Platform could be to you and colleagues. But what’s the best way of making this a reality in your organisation? Why not find out by talking to one of our subject matter experts.Â