What is Power Automate?
Power Automate is one of the core elements of Microsoft’s Power Platform. A cloud-based Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tool that enables users to create automated workflows powered by low-code and artificial intelligence (AI). Power Automate allows organisations to automate repetitive manual processes across Microsoft 365 apps and other third-party services such as Google Drive, Twitter and Dropbox.
What is Low-Code Automation?
Low-code automation refers to the automation of manual business processes using tools like Microsoft Power Automate that do not require the use of complex coding scripts or typical automation programming methods. Users with even limited coding experience can create workflow automations with the user-friendly interface that provides pre-built automation components and drag-and-drop elements.
What can Power Automate do?
Power Automate is a powerful automation solution that facilitates the integration of simple task automations to more complex business process automations. Below we outline some possible use cases for Power Automate.
Automation of Daily Tasks - Power Automate helps automate repetitive tasks and streamline routine processes to improve worker productivity across the business. You can create workflows to automate general day-to-day tasks like file management, schedule recurring processes like meetings, perform data analysis and generate reports without manual intervention.
Automate Approval Workflows - Power Automate can streamline approval processes by automating the routing of documents like contracts or invoices forms to the relevant stakeholders for review and approval. Users can create workflows to automate processes like expense approvals, purchase orders and annual leave requests.
Data Integration - Power Automate allows businesses to integrate data and synchronize information across different systems. For example, you can create workflows to automatically update customer data on your customer relationship management (CRM) system or add information to Excel spreadsheets from online forms, reducing manual data entry and saving employees valuable work hours.
Automate Notifications - Power Automate can be used to create automated notifications to keep employees and stakeholders informed about important events, tasks or updates. For example, you can set up workflows to send sales teams email alerts for new leads in CRM, upcoming deadlines or changes in project status. Companies can even send automated emails to customers to respond to queries or schedule follow-up calls after meetings, helping businesses keep customers engaged.
Who can use Power Automate?
As a low-code automation tool, Power Automate empowers even users from a non-technical background, or citizen developers, to create automated workflows. Power Automate is a great option for organisations who want to leverage the power of automation to transform business processes, without the high cost and time investment involved in traditional development. Standard Power Automate connectors can be accessed within certain Microsoft 365 Business licenses, while more complex functionality and connectors can be accessed via the Power Automate Process Plan and Power Automate Premium licenses. For more information on Power Automate licensing check out the Microsoft Power Automate licensing page.
Why use Power Automate?
Below we outline some of the key benefits of Microsoft Power Automate.
Optimise Business Processes – Augmenting business processes with automation dramatically reduces both the time and resources required to carry out high-volume manual tasks. As well as this, the risk of human error is greatly reduced, ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of business operations.
Leverage AI – Using simple natural language prompts, Copilot in Power Automate can help users create, edit and enhance automations, simplifying and accelerating automation authoring and integration.
Get deeper insights – Process mining features in Power Automate help businesses uncover the hidden insights that enable them to further enhance end-to-end business processes. Process mining in Power Automate involves analysing large amounts of data from various business systems and visualising it to provide a clear overview of business processes so managers can easily see areas for improvement. Users can then receive AI-generated recommendations on how to optimise processes with automation efforts.
Powerful integration – Power Automate not only enables automation across Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft 365, SharePoint and Dynamics 365, but also facilitates automation across hundreds of apps outside the Microsoft ecosystem. Power Automate can be used across Google services, Twitter, YouTube, WordPress, Slack and DocuSign, just to name a few.
If you would like to learn more about what Power Automate can do for your business, get in touch with one of our solution specialists today.