Microsoft Power Platform is built to analyze data, build solutions, automate processes, and create virtual agents, all of which can save your organization both time and money. As your organization continues to digitally transform your business processes, one of the keys to success is giving users – both outside and inside of IT – the power to transform data into insights and ideas into actions. Power Platform extends the power to create customized business solutions in an easy-to-use platform. Now the people in your organization closest to the process can create apps, workflows, reports, data visualizations, and chatbots – all with low code and no development expertise required. By removing the complexity, Power Platform democratizes IT and drives accountability and ownership across all business units.
To truly understand the impact, let’s explore how this power is applied across different business scenarios in the automotive, healthcare, and professional services industries.
What is Microsoft Power Platform?
Microsoft Power Platform is a collection of Microsoft products that companies can use to create end-to-end solutions and collect invaluable data that decision-makers need. More specifically, the platform is made up of these four products: Power Automate, Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agents.
Power Apps
Your company can build simple mobile-friendly apps without any coding knowledge with Power Apps. Many companies build apps around their data sources, for example, to improve workflow and provide more insight.
Power BI
With Power BI, you can create interactive dashboards and reports to track any number of activities within your business. It gives companies a chance to unify all of their data streams and access a centralized dashboard with complete data sets. This isn’t just helpful from a business growth standpoint, it’s also invaluable for companies that are held to regulatory or compliance standards.
Power Automate
Are there processes in your business that you could automate? If so, Power Automate can help. You can save time and money by using this tool to streamline repetitive tasks. Intelligent workflows give businesses the power to set up the process once and then focus on other more demanding tasks.
Power Virtual Agents
Want to set up a chatbot to communicate with customers or internally with employees? You can do that with Power Virtual Agents. You can create AI-powered chatbots that can improve communication and productivity.
These four products can connect to Office 365, Dynamics 365, Azure, and hundreds of other apps, which makes integration and implementation easy. To truly understand the impact, let’s explore how this power is applied across different business scenarios in the automotive, healthcare, and the professional services industries.
Powering Engineering & Development in the Automotive Industry
The “Big 3” in the automotive industry relies on Microsoft Power Platform to provide visibility into the engineering and business processes. From understanding where a certain car is in the assembly process to create a robust dashboard that presents regulated safety standards and statistics, this industry has developed a multitude of uses for the platform.
There are a number of benefits that manufacturers express when using the Microsoft Power Platform:
Improved efficiency
Using Microsoft Power Platform, you can design processes that are currently siloed to one visible action or take a more complex workflow with moving parts and automate certain aspects of it. With better processes in place, engineering practices, data reporting, and collaboration are improved company-wide.
Usability
With the Power Platform, creating things like build calendars, dashboards, and engineering processes are easy. The platform provides both out-of-the-box and customizable solutions that anyone - not just developers - can implement.
Time savings
Many automakers see big-time savings when they develop an Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) process with the Microsoft Power Platform. Doing so gives companies the ability to:
- Create a SharePoint library
- Collect data from a SharePoint form
- Utilize a Power Automate workflow to gather approval
- Send reminder notifications
- Communicate outcomes in an email (with or without attachments)
- Grant access or limit access to certain documents or dashboards
- Communicate or gather data from external sources
- Create a snapshot dashboard to show the current standings of items in the process
"Power Platform is the industry leader of automation, as it offers a practical approach to how we communicate with our data. Solutions are truly scalable and integrate well, eliminating the tech debt that was the burden of past customization."
– Automotive Manufacturing Web Applications Developer
Improving Data Management in the Healthcare Industry
The amount of data collected and maintained in the healthcare industry is staggering. For some, the statistics, reports, and metrics are so cumbersome it feels like they’re drowning in a sea of numbers.
From patient records to internal safety reports, the industry demands data to be readily available, secure, and compliant. Managing this kind of data, with an acute awareness of privacy, can be a daunting and challenging task. Microsoft Power Platform offers solutions to automate data collection, create reports, and store this valuable data securely.
Through improved data management, a clinic, hospital, or any healthcare company can save time and mitigate risks.
Healthcare leaders who use the Power Platform experience the following benefits:
More efficient communication
Power Platform provides a host of tools that makes your staff better communicators. For example, an organization can gather data from various collaborators in different locations, assign tasks to specific people, and connect easily about a certain patient or file. The platform can be used for more immediate needs too, like when a certain floor of a hospital needs support, the request can be implemented through the platform.
Data visualization for improved decision making
With Power BI, you can see real-time, easy-to-read charts and data at a glance. The data that’s curated into a single location can provide valuable insights for decision-makers, who rely on statistics to implement changes or grow the business.
During the pandemic, several hospitals used the platform to maintain a real-time number of available beds and needed supplies. Data was collected by nurses on their phones and uploaded to a central dashboard where administrators could access it.
Saves Time
How many reports, spreadsheets, and PDFs do you send on a routine basis? Imagine being able to automate the delivery of these documents and set up automatic reminders so the process isn’t stalled in someone’s inbox for days or weeks.
For forms that need approval, the process is similar. You can automate the delivery process, set reminders, and collaborate more effectively through actionable emails. This functionality means leaders can provide approvals on the go with their phone for quicker turnaround times and a more efficient office.
"The Power Platform offers low-code/no-code solutions that are easy to implement. It contains many actions and connectors, which makes importing/exporting data, and ways you report/save/work with the data streamlined and easier. The cost of ownership is low, and the tool is robust. It takes a practical approach to solutions and is easy to use and learn!"
– Healthcare Technical Project Manager
Data-driven Decisions in the Professional Services Industry
The professional services industry is another data-heavy vertical that relies on statistics to monitor markets and maintain business processes through mergers and acquisitions. Microsoft Power Platform helps you automate certain processes to improve productivity while providing a real-time look at the data that’s needed to make everyday decisions.
The advantages of the platform are vast and include:
Improved efficiency
It takes a full team of people to make your organization run, but for many, it’s almost impossible to see what each person is working on or what their job duties are for the day. With the Power Platform, you can automate status reports that are delivered to team members every Wednesday, for example or set up a series of reminders to make sure tasks are done in a timely manner.
In addition, managers are afforded enhanced visibility for greater insight and awareness. You’ll know where a project is at, who has it, and what’s next. The platform has a seamless integration with SharePoint, so delegating tasks, compiling results, and sharing data with the team is simple to do.
Managers are no longer mired down, wondering who has a certain document or how close a certain project is to wrapping because workflows are automated and visible.
Mergers and Acquisitions
The process of acquiring and migrating business processes and data in an efficient way is critical to business success. Using the Power Platform, organizations are able to automate data extraction, transformation and view insightful reporting. Save time and focus on critical tasks with automation of business processes and workflows.
Access to better insights
Each department often deals with sensitive data, which tends to create a siloed business structure. While it’s important to keep certain data confidential, managers often need a complete 360-degree view of a client or deal. Power Platform can provide this insight and fuel real-time decisions with a quick glance of a dashboard, and by connecting to Microsoft and Office 365 applications, as well as many third-party titles.
"Interlink has helped accelerate our adoption of the Power Platform, by standardizing on best practices appropriate for our industry. We use 80+ custom enterprise applications that are compliant with our data governance policies and have saved both time and money through customizable automation specific to our work environment."
- Dan Duncan, Legal Technology & Development Manager at Frost Brown Todd
How Interlink Can Help
Interlink recently helped a law firm with over 500 employees set up Power Platform with customized solutions that provide all of these benefits. The law firm is working more efficiently, communicating with purpose, and executing decisions based on visible, secure data visualization. Regardless of your industry, contact Interlink today to let us help your organization realize business value with the Power Platform.
If you’d like to learn more about this solution and how it can be incorporated into your business, join our upcoming webinar, Power Platform 201 - Discovering the Value of the Power Platform, or sign up for a Microsoft Teams Apps & Solutions Workshop.
