When you open Microsoft’s page on the Power Platform you are greeted with statements about adapting, about bringing together technologies to streamline your processes but little in terms of tangible information on what the Power Platform actually is.
The Power Platform is comprised of four different business applications that work together to enable your people to create and deploy customised apps, accurate reports, and workflows. These applications connect to Office 365, Dynamics, Microsoft Azure as well as several other third-party applications, to provide your organisation with a digital solution that transforms your business processes.
Microsoft’s vision for the Power Platform came from an understanding that data or information is integral to every business process. That if an organisation can harness the information they have, that they can gain insights that will drive intelligent business processes, allowing them to outperform their competitors and continue to grow.
This article is designed to provide an introduction and provide answers to questions we get asked about the Power Platform.
What business applications make up the Power Platform?
The Power Platform is made up of four applications; Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents. They can be used independently to improve a single process, or deployed together to create a comprehensive solution, to your unique problems.
What is Power Apps?
PowerApps enables your team to create custom applications to simplify the processes they do every day. Anyone can create an app, using the simple, drag, and drop interface, without any previous experience or the need to write code. These apps can be built for desktop, or mobile and connect to the Office 365 suite, SharePoint, Dynamics, or other Microsoft Solutions.
What is Power BI?
Power BI enables you to gain actionable insights from the data you have gathered, bringing it all together from a range of sources including Dynamics or Excel. You can utilise the tool to create and deliver interactive dashboards that help your business make smarter decisions.
What is Power Automate?
Previously Microsoft Flow, Power Automate revolutionises labour-intensive processes for more efficient operations. It can be used to automate paper-based, or manual, repetitive tasks freeing up the time of your team to work on tasks that drive innovation and growth.
What is Power Virtual Agents?
Virtual Agents is a solution that allows you to create chatbots that can engage in personalised conversations with your employees, clients, or customers. Like the rest of the tools on the platform, these can be created by your team, often without the need for an AI specialist or a developer. As stated above they can be utilised to assist customers with queries or support, or they can be used to automate internal processes for HR, such as holiday requests, etc.
The Power of the Power Platform
Whilst each of the solutions adds value on its own, together they can deliver a powerful end-to-end business solution. We love sharing our experience on the Power Platform we created for one of the biggest transport companies within the UK, so if you would like to learn more you can contact us here, or you can email us here to request a copy of the case study.