How Microsoft Power Platform Is Driving Digital Transformation

At present, we are witnessing digital transformation across the business world. To stay at par with the competition, your business has to find and utilize new technologies that drive changes in business processes. This comes at a time when businesses are being confronted with challenges. This includes having to manage an ever-increasing volume of data with a limited employee pool. Microsoft Power Platform is such technology that delivers solutions for these challenges and is central to driving digital transformation.

What Is Digital Transformation?

At its tenet, digital transformation is the integration of digital technologies into different facets of the enterprise. It involves rethinking the old way of doing business and necessitates experimentation that could potentially challenge the status quo. In rethinking the old operating model, the business becomes more agile and is more equipped to respond to customer needs. Overall digital transformation means bringing together people, data, and processes for increased velocity.

How Can Microsoft Power Platform Impact Your Customers?

As highlighted, Microsoft Power Platform gives your business new capabilities and ways to adapt. On the platform, your business can create, easily deploy and innovate at a pace that makes it quite competitive. A neat element of the platform is that it benefits more than just the business. It has quite an impact on your customers as well. For starters, customers experience greater satisfaction as business processes are smoother. As the platform allows for customers to avail their responses in a timely fashion, responses can also be faster, thus better outcome. Overall, there is increased trust.

The First Line Is the Bottom Line!

First-line workers are those involved in the daily operations of an organization. They become the initial point of contact between the customer and your enterprise. This means that they are uniquely positioned to understand the problems and inefficiencies within the organization. Besides, they have a greater grasp on what the customer wants and what frustrates them.

Low Code/No Code and Citizen Developers

Low code solutions like PowerApps and PowerAutomate seem to be a viable solution for the database conundrum. Specifically, it bridges the gap between those who make the databases who essentially do not understand what the database needs to do and those who know what needs to be done but do not understand the data. With the single low-code development space that is Microsoft Power Platform, you get four different components. The first is Power BI, a business analytics service that transforms data into real-time dashboards and reports based on custom-configured criteria. The second is Power Automate, which is a solution for building automated workflows between the applications and services. The third is Power Apps, which is the low-code platform to build customized applications running off your business’ data. The final one is Power Virtual Agents. This application builds AI-driven chatbots to automate any repetitive tasks and responses.

These tools empower the end-users to create their own solutions seeing as enterprise digitization efforts are getting more mature. This new business model that includes citizen developers plays right into the immense pressure that businesses are currently facing as it pertains to modernizing the existing IT infrastructure. Besides, the low code/ no code model should help the business advance its digital agenda. Note that this solution is extensible, which means that while the base functionality can be built by citizen developers, it can be augmented and improved by programmers. Overall, this is a win-win for the business, whereby you get products that best capture what the end-user is looking for without necessarily compromising on the quality of the end product.

Four Key Steps in Planning for Business Process Automation With Microsoft Power Platform 

Suppose you have identified some processes that you believe would be great candidates for automation. To set yourself up for success, predetermine the specific steps to follow as you plan for the business process automation.

Stakeholder Input

Before you begin work, you want to make sure all your stakeholders buy into the idea. For most businesses, these stakeholders are business owners or managers, team members who currently manage the process on a daily basis, and those who will do the work of automating the actual process. These stakeholders should help you define the business problems that you will be solving. Be sure to convey the business value of the proposed automation. For instance, highlight how the business owners benefit from reduced time-related costs. Determine how the office manager will likely save time and reduce risks related to human error. Finally, discover how the IT person will know if the project was an appropriate investment.

An insider tip would be to also ask about any potential risks that stakeholders see in the automation of the processes. Overall, you want to capture any concerns during these conversations as this ensures that you address these within the proposed solution. Additionally, consider capturing any quantifiable goals that will be part of the success metrics you go with during later stages.

Identify Your Scope and Outliers

Off the gate, you want to decide what application needs to be done. To avoid being blindsided, be upfront about what the app will likely not do, as well as what things might likely cause gaps. For instance, you want to make considerations for customers that will only pay with Venmo or customers on old contracts that may fall through a new notification process.

Paint a Pretty Picture

A step that might look a bit vain but is completely necessary has to be visualizing and documenting the entire process. A consideration you could make would be going with a whiteboard, posting notes, or putting the picture together with Visio.

Have Metrics in Mind

Before going all out and deciding to automate business processes, you want to predetermine what success looks like to you. Oftentimes, businesses want either faster invoices, shorter lines, or reduced paperwork. A pro tip would be to measure whatever metrics you have in mind before and after to determine the value of the process as well as to identify changes that could improve it further.

Learn More About Microsoft Power Platform Driving Digital Transformation

Agile IT’s modern workplace and digital transformation services can help automate your critical functions to deliver customer outcomes and increased profitability. To find out how we can meet your business process automation goals and support them with a dedicated team of engineers and software developers, schedule a consultation with a Cloud Service Advisor today.