In 2019, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella highlighted a collection of products called the Power Platform – a platform that adds services for business intelligence, app development and app connectivity. According to a CNBC article, this was part of concerted to innovate “business process automation as a first-class platform.”
The Power Platform consists of four connecting components: Power Bi, Power Apps, Power Automate and Power Virtual Agents. These components work together alongside Microsoft’s existing applications, and hundreds of other applications to build end-to-end business solutions.
The best way to understand the power dynamics between these components is to look at a real business that used MS Power Platform to transform its business. In 2018, the year that MS Power Platform launched, G&J Pepsi used the then, new technology to automate their company’s store audit and merchandising process to deliver more on-the-go services for the company. Their IT team who previously did not have coding experience were able to use Power Apps to create two low-cost and low code apps: Store Audit to give their field personnel more flexibility and a Merchandiser app to better store delivery tracking information. They then used, Power Bi to visualise the data for quick overviews and to analyse the numbers, and they used Power Automate to trigger alerts to relevant teams.
MS Power Platform helped improve G&J’s business processes while saving them costs and so to it can do for your company.
Here are 3 things your business should know about the power of MS Power Platform:
Connect all your data all in one place – Simplify your data management by unifying data from many sources into one Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system like Power Bi to get data-driven insights about your company. The Power Platform allows to you to analyse and extract data into a common format using tools like Dataverse across Microsoft Platforms like MS Azure and Office 365, Google Analytics, and a host of other connectors to create a better customer service experience. This one source of truth is secure and can be used to build rich application apps without having to access any other sources of data which allows you to save time and money.
Build and develop low-cost apps with your team– Low-code app development tool Power Apps allows almost anyone to build web and mobile applications without software experience. This allows your employees to solve business challenges using digital means in a secure, user-friendly Microsoft environment while freeing up your IT department to work on more complex issues. France’s national rail service SNCF created an internal digital school to fuel its digital transformation. Additionally, tools like Power Automate help digitise paper-based processes and automate workflow to increase overall productivity. That was the case with Leonardo Global Solutions where their team was able to develop an app using Power Apps to transition from a physical checklist to a digital one and to share updates more efficiently. Power Apps and Power Automate combined help increase your company’s digital IQ, automate difficult manual processes and improve business efficiency while reducing overall costs.
Easily create your own chatbots – Increase your internal collaboration and customer service quality by unleashing the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered chatbots using Power Virtual Agents. Help deliver answers to commonly asked internal questions by creating a chatbot using Microsoft Teams by simply creating topics and publishing the bot to the Teams App Store. If you can send an email response, you can create a chatbot. This superpower was announced a Public Preview of a deep integration between Power Virtual Agents and Microsoft Teams in September 2020. Companies like Tru-Green have used Power Virtual Agents to handle customer concerns about perceived value or quality. This enables customers to do business on their own terms using self-service remote options allowing for remote digital business operations and continuous customer care.
Microsoft’s first-class Power Platform creates solutions that accelerate business across all fields and continues to expand its suite of technologies to innovate business as we know it. Start making your business more powerful with MS Power Platform today.
