Six ways to improve business process efficiency with Power Automate

How many workdays have been filled completing manual, repetitive, time-consuming business processes, like sending reminders, scheduling meetings, or completing the steps of an approval? These tasks are necessary, but they often require time and energy that employees could otherwise spend on driving the business forward. With advancements in technology and the power of automation, these processes can be done—often from start to finish—automatically, freeing up time in your day for all the other important things you do for your company.

Here are six ways you can use Power Automate to improve the efficiency of your business processes and free up time and energy for other tasks.

What is Power Automate?

Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) is a cloud-based service that builds workflows to automate time-consuming tasks across applications or web services. Set up flows to automatically send email reminders before scheduled events, start an approval process when a document is added to a shared space, or any number of other tasks that would otherwise need to be initiated and monitored by an employee.

Power Automate functions by establishing a set of actions that begin automatically with a pre-set trigger. Not a coder? No problem. Workflows are created with no coding necessary and instead use clear, everyday phrasing. And with over 300 connectors, flows can work across Microsoft applications—such as SharePoint, Outlook, and Business Central—and third-party applications like Twitter, Facebook, and so many more.

Improve business process efficiency

Create flows for approvals, reminders, and notifications for essentially any business need. Begin an approval process; send reminders for events, meetings, due dates of items or tasks; trigger notifications when a document is uploaded to a specific space, a form is submitted, or a shared document is changed.

For instance, a flow can be made for time off request approvals. The trigger for this flow will be any time an employee fills out and submits a “Time Off Request” form. Upon this action, the flow will send an email to their direct supervisor, notifying them the request has been submitted and needs review. Approvals can be single, sequential, parallel, and can be made to include attachments, so whether the approval needs just the supervisor’s approval or also needs to be approved by the division head and human resources, or any other scenario, a flow can be made for it.

Create flows for automatic ordering in manufacturing and supply chains. Whenever a tracked inventory item drops below a certain level, a flow could either automatically order items from a distributor or alert a designated individual within the business to the low inventory and require an approval for that item and quantity to be officially ordered. The day-to-day procedure of tracking item quantity doesn’t have to be as time-consuming as it traditionally is—with the help of Power Automate.

Flows can connect processes across applications. With over 300 connectors (and that number is constantly growing), Microsoft applications (SharePoint, Outlook, Business Central…) and third-party applications such as Twitter and Facebook. One poignant example of the app’s connectivity potential is Power Automate is also an application right within Teams so that flows can be created and applied without ever leaving that window. The variety of useful flows within Teams is vast. For instance, flows can be created to notify a team when a file is added to SharePoint, or a team member can be alerted when they are mentioned in Microsoft Teams channel chats. These flows align well with the primary aims of Microsoft Teams, which is to be a productivity and communication hub where tasks are achieved, everything is connected, and tools to make work more efficient are easily accessed.

Create flows to manage time, calendars, and tasks. For example, create calendar events or tasks straight from emails or Teams chats when a certain condition is met—such as a key phrase or an email title. Flow-created calendar events can include buffer time before or after the event. For a sales team member, a follow-up can be automatically scheduled two weeks after an initial meeting with a fifteen-minute buffer before the meeting for the sales person to look over the lead’s account for a refresher and a fifteen minute buffer after to make notes about the meeting and update their CRM system.

Flows can collect data from many sources and for many purposes. Data collection can be a time-consuming process, and human error can result in missed data, but with flows, the process is automatic and occurs whenever it is triggered. A flow can save attachments from emails or attachments from certain senders, or attachments from emails with a certain title or urgency level, to a SharePoint or OneDrive location. Track form responses in Excel and notify pertinent individuals through Teams and email. Run analysis on twitter data into a Power BI visualization. No matter the sort of data, a flow can collect it and do what you want with it.

Power Automate flows save time on day-to-day manual tasks, and creating flows can be just as efficient. Templates allow for quick creation of flows so that even the process of establishing automation can be a fast process. Templates can be organized by popularity, task type, or connectors that are used. Use them as-is or edit a template that achieves a similar goal to yours but needs some shifts.

When editing a template or an original flow, information is pulled from the previous steps in the flow to create dynamic content options within that particular flow step. Catch errors with the flow checker, which identifies if a flow includes no errors or, if an error exists, points to the exact element that needs attention. Save your eyes and your time from a line-by-line scan of the flow with this useful tool.

Flows save employees time and headspace that they may otherwise use monitoring or updating items or completing the tasks (such as reminder emails) themselves. Processes are done more quickly, with less effort and fewer mistakes. With the expansive abilities of Power Automate, any day-to-day, time-consuming, manual task can be streamlined into an automated action.