Fabrice Short
Is a software developer in the field of Azure Cloud Automation at KUMAVISION and is responsible for backend development there
Companies face many challenges in today's business world. But the shortage of skilled workers in particular is putting all sectors under pressure. Because a lack of qualified workers has a lasting impact on productivity, innovation and agility - three crucial factors for being successful in an increasingly digitalized world.
PowerPlatform Microsoft offers a bundle of powerful tools that addresses the issue of resources. With low-code solutions, companies can optimize their business processes, use data intelligently and even develop their own apps relatively easily. One of these innovative end-to-end business applications is Microsoft Power Automate. The platform enables companies to accelerate their operations by automating repetitive tasks. In this blog post, we will take a closer look at how Power Automate increases productivity while reducing the workload on employees.
What is Microsoft Power Automate?
Microsoft Power Automate is one cloudbased workflow automation service based on low code based and uses AI. This allows technically skilled professionals to create intelligent workflows with little effort to automate repetitive, time-consuming processes. In the background, data from different applications and systems are seamlessly linked - without manual intervention being required. A big advantage in a heterogeneous system landscape in which data transfer and evaluation is one of the biggest challenges and ties up a lot of resources.
A study by Forrester Consulting shows that Power Automate enabled companies to make their operations more efficient, reduce errors by 27,4% and accelerate time-to-market by 33%. (Source: The Total Economic Impact of Power Automate, 2022)
How do you create automated workflows?
Microsoft Power Automate is like Power Apps a user-friendly platform designed for citizen developer was developed. Using the low-code approach, these subject matter experts outside of the IT department can create software-based applications for their respective areas. This requires a little technical understanding, which GenZ and subsequent generations have. And because the citizen developers combine specialist knowledge of processes with digital know-how, this minimizes the coordination effort and development time enormously.
The platform offers an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, a visual user interface, and many built-in templates from data collection to predefined reports. This means that even multi-stage workflows can be set up and automated intuitively – without writing a single line of code. All you have to do: One Trigger define and assign the desired actions. After activating the trigger, these are then automatically executed in the specified order: That's it Flow!
The trigger is the starting point for every automation and can be, for example, the receipt of an email with a specific subject, the addition of a new lead in Microsoft Dynamics 356 or the reaching of a specific date. This then triggers the flow, an automated sequence of actions. These can be simple or complex and can be combined in a variety of ways to meet individual requirements.
Efficiency Tip: Desktop Flows allows you to record mouse clicks and keystrokes, import them into the visual designer, and create automations from them. This saves valuable clicking time!
How is the data linked to the flows?
Of course, for the whole thing to work, the flows must have access to data. There are more than 1.000 standardized connectors for this. These are something like adapters that connect the flows to a variety of applications and systems and enable data exchange. This means that every user can combine data from numerous sources such as ERP, CRM, Teams, Outlook and SharePoint and thus quickly develop workflow solutions and thus automate business processes. At the same time, Power Automate offers the possibility of a native user experience because you don't have to leave your favorite applications to send emails or upload or download data. This is not only convenient, but also saves time.
Even if data sources are not directly connected, Power Automate can be used: For example, if a supplier does not provide you with a technical interface for data transmission, but sends the order confirmations via email attachment in XML format, you can evaluate this automatically via Send Microsoft Teams to your purchasing department for a quick visual inspection and have the data transferred to the ERP system - secured by an approval process.
Which applications and services can be linked?
Microsoft offers a variety of connectors for the entire Microsoft product world such as Microsoft 365 (Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive etc.) and Dynamics 365 (Business Central, Marketing, Sales Etc.). But also solutions from other providers such as Salesforce, Dropbox, Google Drive and many others can be integrated into your automation workflows thanks to the more than 1.000 API connectors.
- Microsoft: With Power Automate you can switch processes between different Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Dynamics 365 automate - without switching applications and interrupting your workflow. This ensures optimized processes within the Microsoft ecosystem. A classic use case is the weekly marketing report to controlling. While an employee previously had to manually download the report from the marketing tool used in Excel format and prepare it as a summary, this is now done by a Power Automate Flow including sending by email.
- Third-party apps: Power Automate offers a variety of connectors for third-party applications and services such as Salesforce, Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack, Twitter, Facebook and many others. These allow you to sync data between different applications, allowing you to automate workflows across different platforms, such as leads from SalesForce save to Dropbox or automatically schedule and publish social media posts.
- Azure services: Power Automate seamlessly integrates with Azure services such as Azure Logic Apps and Azure Functions to implement more complex automation scenarios such as onboarding new employees. Various steps such as creating the personnel file or handing over the keys must be carried out and numerous approval procedures must be completed. With the help of extensive Azure functions, you can adapt this process individually to your company, ensuring that onboarding runs smoothly across departments and with just a few clicks and that no step is forgotten.
Why should you use Power Automate?
Why shouldn't you do it? It saves you time. And as we all know, time is money. But using Power Automate is not only worthwhile from an economic point of view. Because it will also make your own working life much more pleasant. You finally have more time for creative and demanding projects instead of wasting your everyday office life on time-consuming routine tasks. This makes you happy and contributes significantly to increasing satisfaction.
But that's not all. Power Automate is also something like your good colleague. He makes sure you make fewer mistakes. Because with repetitive tasks such as manual data transfer, errors often occur - that's human nature. But that's in the past! Finally, the quality of your work matches your skills. And the trust of colleagues and superiors in you increases.
Power Automate reveals its strengths and inspires the ability to act, especially when it comes to approvals and complex workflows. Because automation makes decisions measurably faster and the processing time for tasks is significantly shortened. Goodbye frustration: tedious approval processes no longer slow you down and you can put your ideas into action.
But it's not just you who benefits, but also your entire team: automated notifications and approval processes improve communication across departments. And because everyone involved can track the progress of tasks in real time, misunderstandings are eliminated and the focus is on the value-adding activities of the collaboration.
And last but not least, your work-life balance also benefits. Because Power Automate supports processing tasks on various devices, giving you the freedom to work outside of the office. This is how modern work works.
Are there templates that I can use out of the box?
Of course! You don't have to start from scratch. Whether it's archiving emails, managing tasks, syncing data between applications, or creating approval workflows, you have access to thousands of pre-built templates that allow you to start automating your business processes right away begin. You can use these templates as a starting point for your flows and customize and extend them according to your individual requirements. This makes it easier to get started with automation and saves valuable time because you don't have to start from scratch.
To make it easier to get started with Power Automate, Microsoft has the Copilot integrated. The virtual AI assistant supports you in creating flows. To do this, simply tell the ChatBot via text or voice message which process steps should be carried out. For example: “Please check the SharePoint list ABC weekly for the value This makes it easy to automate, for example, manual checks that are carried out in specific cycles. Monitoring of project key figures in the ERP system can also be carried out easily in this way. This means that employees no longer have to spend time checking whether all projects are still within budget.
Which AI functions can I still use?
Microsoft Copilot also supports you in uncovering optimization potential in your processes. For this purpose, Power Automate offers the so-called process mining tool, with which workflows are visualized and analyzed using various metrics such as throughput times, processing times and error rates. This gives you a deeper insight into the business processes in your company, allows you to identify bottlenecks more quickly and then optimize processes using the Power Platform. If monitoring and optimization is carried out continuously, it has demonstrably positive effects on process quality and return on investment, as the study “The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Power Platform Premium Capabilities” shows: Companies can increase their ROI to 140% and at the same time Reduce app development costs by 45%.
Particularly helpful: The tool allows you to first simulate improvements before they are implemented in the ongoing process.
In order to detect inefficient processes, process mining combines data from existing systems such as ERP and self-developed solutions and platforms, even if they are in the Cloud be executed. Based on the traces that a process leaves behind with its activities in the different systems, the tool maps the entire process in a single model.
