From streamlining operations to enhancing customer experiences, you are going to need to solicit innovative solutions and embrace emerging technology to stay competitive and sane alongside growth. As it so happens, Microsoft Power Platform is one such game-changing tool that seamlessly extends the capabilities of your core productivity, ERP and CRM platforms, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, Business Central, and Customer Engagement.
Best of all, the barrier to entry with Microsoft Power Platform, both technically and monetarily speaking, is low – enabling organizations to automate processes, harness AI, and drive efficiency quickly and at scale.
If you’re looking to achieve quick wins in data analytics, workflow automation, and process optimizations through your technology investments, here’s how Power Platform can help you reduce manual efforts and unlock rapid efficiencies.
The Low Down on Low Code – What is Microsoft Power Platform?
Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of AI-powered, low-code and no-code tools designed to enhance business processes through automation and analytics without the need to employ an army of technical resources.
It’s comprised of four key products as they relate to your existing (or future) Microsoft Dynamics Business Central or CRM systems:
- Power BI – A robust data visualization and analytics tool (think pretty and easy-to-read dashboards) that helps companies and their key management resources gain access to actionable insights about operations and performance.
- Power Apps – A platform for building custom applications and workflows without extensive coding.
- Power Automate – A workflow automation tool that integrates with Microsoft and third-party applications to streamline repetitive tasks. Differentiated from Power Apps in that it focuses on automating across or inside existing platforms and systems, versus creating stand-alone applications.
- Copilot Studio – An AI-powered chatbot builder for automating customer, employee, or vendor interactions and support. This used to be called Power Virtual Agents, but has since expanded.
As a side note, a solution called Power Pages is also a part of the Power Platform suite, providing a quick way to build customer-facing websites by leveraging customizable templates. However, this product is less related to existing operational and business management platforms, so we won’t be focusing on it.
By leveraging the four, core data and automation tools inside Microsoft Power Platform above, you can rapidly extend the functionality of Microsoft Dynamics Business Central and CRM, creating an integrated ecosystem that enhances efficiency and decision-making.
In other words, Power Platform is something of a life hack to bypassing the older, manual way of doing things, and getting your business ahead.
How Power Platform Leverages AI for Business Transformation
One of the most significant, and relatively recent, advancements in Power Platform is its AI capabilities. Microsoft’s integration of Copilot in Power Platform democratizes AI by enabling users to automate workflows, analyze data, and create applications using natural language commands.
This innovation accelerates development and empowers both technical and non-technical users to deploy AI-driven solutions.
For example, AI in Power Automate can extract key information from emails and documents and execute automation rules based on the data, eliminating the need for manual data entry or management. Additionally, AI-powered chatbots in Power Virtual Agents can handle initial customer inquiries by directing them to resources and answering questions that may solve their problems quickly, improving response times and customer satisfaction.
Also read: 6 Warning Signs Your Business Technology is Failing You
Quick Wins You Can Achieve with Power Platform
1. Automate Manual Processes for Immediate Time Savings
Manual tasks like data entry, approvals, and notifications consume valuable time and are often riddled with errors. With Power Automate, you can set up workflows that automatically process invoices, update records in Business Central, and trigger notifications in Microsoft Teams.
For example, one of our customers reduced product delivery time by over 50% by automating order processing workflows to eliminate what was previously manual data entry across systems in order to trigger inventory and warehouse location availability and shipping activities.
2. Improve Communication and Visibility Across Teams
Lack of real-time information across key resources slows down operations. It’s a fact. Power BI provides dynamic dashboards that consolidate data from Dynamics 365, CRM, and other sources, offering actionable insights at a glance.
For instance, a manufacturing company can use Power BI to track production metrics in real time, allowing managers to identify inefficiencies and optimize operations immediately.
3. Enhance Customer Engagement with Automated Notifications
Power Automate can send automated customer emails and reminders, ensuring timely communication and reducing administrative workload. This type of proactive engagement will also help improve customer loyalty and lifetime value.
A service-focused business using Business Central can integrate Power Automate to send repair status updates to customers, reducing inbound inquiries and improving their overall experience.
4. Decrease the Need for Additional Overhead
Traditionally when businesses grow, they need to add exponentially more overhead to handle the increased volume of processing everything from data to orders to customer inquiries and everything in between. But now, by using any of the tools in Power Platform and leveraging embedded AI, organizations can extract and process data and automate workflows at large scale, without the need for more people on staff.
Just automating document processing with AI, for instance, which will extract and summarize key data from email attachments in seconds, saves tens of hours and at least another person on the roster you don’t need to hire.
5. Reduce IT and Development Expenses
Low-code solutions like Power Apps allow businesses to leverage custom applications quickly without relying on expensive software development teams. With reusable templates and intuitive design tools, apps can be built fast and put into action often in the same day.
One organization we work with requested a custom expense tracking system to replace manual spreadsheets and improve financial oversight. In a not-so-distant past, this would have been a large scope, heavily coded IT project or customization to an ERP. But we were able to use Power Apps to build it in hours, and the client was testing and using it the next day.
How to Get Started with Power Platform
For organizations looking to implement Power Platform (which should be you by now!), starting small and scaling up is the key to success. After all, you aren’t going to boil the automation ocean in one fell swoop.
Here’s a simple roadmap to get you going:
- Identify pain points – Determine which manual processes are slowing down productivity. Write them all down, then start to determine what on that list is costing you the most in time, money, or risk from human-error so you can prioritize what you tackle first.
- Leverage existing data – Your Microsoft Dynamics Business Central ERP and CRM system are already full of data and integrated processes with your operations, so starting there will garner some low-hanging automation and data fruit.
- Automate one process at a time – Start with a small automation, such as notifications or approvals, before expanding. Keep in mind, you can build up. For example, you can start with a Teams notification, then add an email send after you’ve used it and tested it.
- Monitor and refine – As with most things, you risk spending 80% of your effort addressing the 20% of “what-ifs” and outliers. Don’t fall into this trap or you’ll unnecessarily make leveraging Power Platform complicated and time consuming. Start somewhere (see point 3), give it a few weeks, then refine it or expand it. Whether it’s a dashboard, a workflow, or a new app. Don’t aim for perfection out the gate and we promise you’ll win the long game.
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Solicit Expertise to Develop and Execute your Power Platform Strategy
Just because Power Platform’s robust set of products are low/no code solutions, doesn’t mean you can or should approach them with reckless abandon. There are intricacies and considerations that must be addressed with all integrated business processes and managements tools. Specialized, certified advisors and technical experts are the best place to initiate your approach to automation.
As a long-standing, trusted Microsoft partner, Tigunia specializes in helping businesses extend the capabilities of their Microsoft Dynamics and data management systems by unlocking the full potential of Power Platform. Consider us your extremely proficient transformation advisors.
We provide:
- Expert guidance on Power Platform adoption and integration
- Customized automation strategies for immediate efficiency gains
- Efficient build of workflows, apps, and AI-powered BI solutions
- Ongoing support to scale and optimize your investment
If you’re ready to maximize efficiency, reduce operational bottlenecks, and gain quick wins with Power Platform, book a free consultation and demo with Tigunia today and see what’s possible!