The Power Platform is a term used to describe Microsoft’s business intelligent apps which include: Power BI, PowerApps, Power Automate and Power Virtual Agents. These apps can help businesses like yours, manipulate, automate, and analyse data within Office 365 and Dynamics 365. They also integrate well with other third-party products such as Google Analytics, Dropbox, and Salesforce (a list of third party connectors can be found here.)
What does this mean?
Automating previously time-consuming processes, the Power Platform allows you to make decisions driven by data. Powerful apps in their own right, combined they are a force to be reckoned with. Giving you the tools to move your business forward and empower your workforce, day-to-day tasks can be streamlined in order to increase productivity. For example, reports previously created in Excel or invoice details input into spreadsheets, can be built in Power BI and automated with Power Automate. They can be automatically generated and emailed to the relevant individuals or teams in minutes.
Whatever you’re looking to achieve in your business processes, the Power Platform has a solution for practically any scenario.
Creating a fantastic space for collaboration across the business, from analysts to developers and IT departments for instance, the Power Platform allows you to develop a working culture of innovation and agility.
Why use the Power Platform?
Integrating with secure and trusted Microsoft cloud services including Azure, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365, the platform also uses something known as the Dataverse to allow businesses to dynamically store their data in a secure and scalable environment. The following video explains this in practice.
The Power Platform also helps reduce costs. According to a 2021 Microsoft-commissioned Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study of Microsoft Power Platform and Azure for Corporate IT, costs were reduced by 24% using both the platform and Azure.
Power BI
Power BI is a business intelligence platform that lets users interact with data. Giving teams instant access to KPIs, it is an extremely powerful tool for analysing, sharing, and promoting insights across your business in an intuitive and interactive way.
It is designed for collaboration. Team members and departments are better able to make data-driven decisions as they will be able to model, visualise and create reports from single source of truth data while using AI.
Data can be accessed from sources such as: PDFs, Excel, JSON and XML, to name a few. Dashboards can have large amounts of data that can be refreshed in almost real-time.
The ultimate tool for gaining deeper insight into your data, you can find out more about Power BI here. However, you may find this webinar on demand that we hosted helpful also.
Power Apps
Power Apps allows you to turn ideas into solutions by providing a platform to build custom apps designed to solve your specific business challenges.
Streamlining processes or consolidating data will make workflows more efficient. Some everyday use examples include: monitoring inventory, streamlining fieldwork processes, and expense reporting.
Power Apps also gives professional developers the tools they need to extend app capabilities with Azure functions and custom connectors to private or on-premises systems.
Although described by Microsoft as ‘low code’, this does not mean no code or code free activity and creation. A basic knowledge of code will be required. You can find out more about Power Apps here.
Power Automate
You can build automated processes and workflows between apps and services. Power Automate uses drag-and-drop tools, hundreds of pre-built connectors, templates and AI to streamline repetitive tasks and automate them.
Using triggers to start a flow, these can be initiated instantly by an event, or scheduled to be run regularly as needed.
Examples in practice include:
Setting up a workflow to send a text message when you receive an email you’ve been waiting for from a specific contact.
If someone mentions you on X, a workflow can be added. You can follow the person back, replies with a thank you and adds them to a spreadsheet of contacts added to Business Central.
You can find out more about Power Automate here.
Power Virtual Agents
They can engage with customers and employees in multiple languages. Also, across websites, mobile apps, social media platforms, Microsoft Teams, or any channel supported by the Azure Bot Framework. Power Virtual Agents allow you and your business to respond rapidly to customer and employee needs with intelligent bots.
These can engage conversationally with customers and employees. Power Virtual Agents helps end-users solve a wide range of issues they may be having. For example, whether that’s a simple question or a more complex conversation.
Find out how Power Virtual Agents could fit into your business here.
What we can do for you
We can help you develop new solutions for your team to overcome challenges you may be having within your business.
Working examples created for clients include a flow between Business Central and DocuSign, where at a click of a button, contracts are triggered and sent via DocuSign to new starters. Another example includes an app for broken bottles in a warehouse. This was created as a client had a requirement to monitor breakages via an inventory for their drinks business.
Other ways you could use the Power Platform include:
- Proof of Delivery
- Sales Order management
- PO Requisition and approvals
- Absence Reporting and Holiday Requests
Overall the beauty of the Power Platform is that it is a business sandbox with problem-solving at its heart. Designed to drive value throughout your business and enhance your processes. If you have a workflow, app, or reporting process in mind you would like help with, please get in touch.
