We have been talking about the Microsoft Power Platform a lot these days, and with good reason. It really is in the name — a powerful platform for tools that can completely change your business. 

App and bot creation, automation, or data analysis used to be exclusively left to IT or development teams, with a high level of complexity and a hefty price tag. Staff would need to outline their projects, submit their requests, wait for it to be approved or not, and then wait for it to be built, spending months or years on one project.  

This is why we find the Power Platform so exciting. This platform gives the typical end–user or non-technical employee the ability to access tech that can transform processes, build problem-solving apps to share, build game-changing reports and even implement bots in the business. Using the Power Platform can be a big step forward when it comes to self-service IT and overall digital transformation. 

 

What exactly is the Power Platform? 

 The “Power Platform” is Microsoft’s term for the combination of Power BI, Power Automate, Power Apps, and Power Virtual Agent.  On their own, each of these tools can be used for specific goals, but together they can help people easily access, analyse, act on, and automate their data: 

There are four products under the Microsoft Power Platform: 

• Power BI – Used to analyse data from different data sources. 
• Power Apps – Used to build powerful mobile apps for internal use by the organisation. 
• Power Automate – Used to design automated workflows to reduce manual tasks. 
• Power Virtual Agents – Used to develop flexible chatbots that can communicate with external customers. 

 
We won’t go into too much detail on each solution, as you can see more about them here.  

 

1. Power BI

Power BI has a few different offerings starting from the Desktop version to the Power BI Service which is hosted on the cloud. You can build interactive reports, dashboards, and other visually compelling graphs by connecting to many different data sources, Microsoft owned or not. Once the data is within Power BI, you can modify, shape, and transform this data to match reporting needs and to support forecasting, predicting, and other types of analysis.  

2. Power Apps

Power Apps is an intuitive low-code/no-code platform that can empower the everyday business user to quickly create a mobile-; or tablet-friendly app to solve specific business problems like asset management or leave requests.  

Using a drag and drop functionality, you can add controls such as text boxes, choice fields, or even use devices such as camera and video. Once the development is completed, you can instantly publish the app and share it with the organisation to use.   

Power Apps can connect to or surface data from business applications such as Dynamics 365 or Office 365 (including SharePoint, Outlook, OneDrive). It is also compatible with third-party apps like Dropbox and Twitter.  

One important thing to note here is that with Power Apps, you can build mobile applications for users inside your organisation, not necessarily for customers.

3. Power Automate 

Power Automate allows you to create automated workflows between Microsoft services or other third-party applications such as Twitter, Trello or Jira, making quick work of repetitive, manual tasks and increasing productivity. Modern businesses are always trying to improve on an automated environment, tackling simple to complex automation, from automating leave policies or automatically launching an email once a certain task has been completed. For example, if a salesperson gets an email order from a client. This can kick off a workflow to add the order to the system or even generate a quote. You can set up triggers, automated emails, and push notifications that will completely streamline the way you and your team works. The ways to leverage this application are nearly endless. 

4. Power Virtual Agents

 Power Virtual Agents is a fairly new addition to the stack and gives organisations’ code-free bot-building capabilities. This starts from creating dialogue and topics for a natural conversation with your bot to deploying it on channels like Teams, WhatsApp, or even your website.  This can integrate well with the other tools on this platform, also giving bots the jobs of kicking off workflows based on replies received by the customers.  

If you want to create a bot that speaks to your customers and answers the easier requests, Power Automate and Power Virtual Agent can handle these together. If you just want an informative report or a notification for certain things, it might be better to use the app on its own.  

All these tools can be used on their own, to fulfill a particular business need, or they can be used together in a mix and match way. Companies like Coca-Cola are investing in this platform to deliver new digital experiences and innovative solutions for their employees and customers. 

 

How else could you use Power Platform? 

Power Platform can deliver ROI for your organisation through these ways and many others:  

• Automated approvals, requests, etc. 
• Less manual tasks 
• Speeds up lengthy processes and removes blockages 
• Gives you better visualisations of data for strategic decision-making
• Alleviates inundated customer service teams

Popular use cases for the Power Platform 

 

1. Asset Management or Procurement

We have built an Asset Request Management Power App for clients before, providing a rather simple solution to this tricky organisational challenge. This app allows for smooth asset requests when an employee loses or breaks a laptop or any piece of equipment.  All requests and approvals will move seamlessly from the employee to their manager, to the IT Manager, back to the employee, making sure there is full transparency and rapid resolutions through your mobile phone.  

 

2. Employee Onboarding and Management

HR Managers will be delighted to hear that the Power Platform can really assist with some of the many complicated processes they have to coordinate. Leave requests, performance reviews and employee onboarding are some of the most popular use cases, including automation for:
  

• Scheduling 
• New machine procurement
• Desk assignment
• Account creation
• Onboarding training

 

3. Data Management  

We often see companies sitting with so much valuable data and no way to access it. It is a gamechanger to give business users access to this data in a way that makes it more digestible. Plugging your data into Power BI gives Managers, HODs, Team leaders, or Product Managers the information they need to make better decisions in what products or services are selling the most, which teams are more effective or even strategising and planning for marketing campaigns. 
  

4. The dreaded spreadsheet

The easiest solution to most reporting or planning is the infamous Excel spreadsheet. This means that Excel sheets are everywhere and can become confusing and cumbersome.  The Power Platform can help replace and automate spreadsheets through Power Apps, Power Automate and Power BI.
  

Hopefully, these explanations and examples give you a good idea of what the Power Platform is and how it can be used to solve challenges in different areas of the business. 

If this post sparked a project idea or you have any questions, give us a shout below.