Microsoft Power Automate — How You Can Use It For Your Business?

Microsoft Power Automate — How You Can Use It For Your Business?

As a business owner myself, I know the importance of business growth.

When you start a business, it’s very exciting. Everything is going according to the plan, but suddenly, the growth stops.

There can be a number of reasons for that. One of those reasons is that we become complacent and stop trying new ways to grow.

So let’s discuss a great way to get on the growth path again: BPM.

What Is Microsoft Power Automate?

Businesses are looking for a fast and automated environment every day. Business process management (BPM) is a concept that is gaining a lot of traction lately. In simple terms, BPM aims to optimize, enhance, and automate business processes.

This is done by avoiding tasks that take time and automating workflows using business process management software (BPMS). Microsoft has its own BPMS called Microsoft Power Automate. Previously known as Microsoft Flow, this tool is very useful and can become your next favorite business tool.

As I was saying earlier, you need products that simplify how you do business. To run smooth operations, you need to automate business processes. Process diagrams, documentation, and emails can be hard to track, so why not automate most things.

If you pick any successful business, you will know that they are smart and work efficiently. I have talked about productivity before.

Automation will bring a sense of relaxation. This relaxation is about not worrying about repetitive tasks. Just focus on important things and automate less important tasks. Bring modern ideas and tools into your business today and grow your business.

This tool comes with a lot of templates and recommendations about what apps can be linked and for what purpose.

This tool has three types of flows:

• Automated Flow: Whenever an ongoing event ends, this flow is activated. An example can be when a blog post is posted, everyone on the team will receive a notification. This flow is activated at the completion/occurrence of an event — so time is not specified.
• Scheduled Flow: This flow occurs at a specified time. For example, giving notification to your team about an upcoming event.
• Button Flow: Whenever you press the button, a flow is triggered. It’s great for on-the-spot notifications.

Complete Guide for Microsoft Power Automate

Using Microsoft Power Automate For Your Business

Integrate it with other applications easily

You can integrate this tool into your 365 Microsoft office package. It’s very simple to use and beginner-friendly.

Using connectors, you can add workflows into apps you are already using. The connector is a simple tool used to connect two or more external apps. An example is connecting MailChimp to Slack.

This method is especially good for those people who are not tech-savvy. Keep in mind that there are a few connectors only premium users can access.

Share and access data with ease

Sharing data from one app to another is hassle-free if your apps are connected with this tool. An example would be the connection between SharePoint and Outlook. Whenever your team member sends you an email file, this tool starts a flow and lets you access the same file on your SharePoint. Amazing, right?

Let’s look at another example where you want to collect data for market research. Getting data from Microsoft Forms (or some other tool you use) becomes repetitive because you don’t want to copy and past all day. So why not utilize Microsoft Power Automate while you focus on more productive tasks. You can use it for collecting data from your email as well.

Create custom connectors

You can create custom connectors as well. For that, you must describe the APIs (application programmable interface) you want to connect.

Think of connecting Twitter to Microsoft Power Automate. This will automate tasks between these two. Let’s say you found it boring to check tweets about your brand. By linking Twitter to this tool, you’ll get a notification whenever someone tweets about your company.

This will also let you know about the new trends. It will open the doors for new opportunities. Without doing anything, this data can be used to check the customer satisfaction of your company.

Prioritize tasks for employees

See if you can relate to this: Your inbox gets 50+ emails per day, most of which are marketing promotions or related mundane tasks. But every once in a while, you receive an important business email.

Now if you were the employer, you wouldn’t want your employees to miss that priority email. Using this tool, you can design a flow that will notify you and your team members each time a priority email comes.

Several plans to choose from

You don’t need to go all-in right away. Whenever someone recommends a software, try the trial version. If there’s no trial, buy a one or two-month subscription, and see if you will use it on a long-term basis.

With this tool, you get three types of planes.

1. $15 per user/month: Start with this version and see if it gets your job done. You can create unlimited flows based on your unique needs.
2. $40 per user/month: Use the free trial of this plan first. It allows individual users to create unlimited flows and automate legacy applications through robotic process automation (RPA) and AI.
3. $500/month for five flows: Implement flows with reserved capacity for unlimited users across your organization.

As I said, there’s no need to hurry. Take your time to decide if this is the right tool for you.

It will help you streamline repetitive tasks and focus on things that matter the most.

As Microsoft says,

“Take care of what’s important. Automate the rest.”

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