Automation is a huge trend in business today. It’s not just for the manufacturing or automotive industries – automation can support almost every job role and business function.
With automation, people can do their job, faster and without reduced quality. It frees up your staff from manual, repetitive and mundane tasks in favour of time for strategic, rewarding work.
Automation doesn’t need to be excessive. Even small-level automations can deliver huge benefits if used correctly. The key is identifying the right places for automation across your operations and utilising relevant tools to alleviate the workload.
Microsoft Power Automate was purposefully designed to make automation accessible for any business, without the need for complex coding. It can be tailored to your processes, leading to automated workflows that just make sense.
Plus, there are plenty of ways to use it within your business to get significant wins. We explore some of best Power Automate examples to inspire you.
What is Power Automate?
Power Automate, previously known as Microsoft Flow, is a SaaS platform designed by Microsoft to automate workflows and processes. It’s part of the comprehensive Power Platform, which makes innovation and digitalisation more accessible for businesses.
Within Power Automate, you’ll find:
- Workflow automation: Power Automate allows you to create and run automated workflows across various devices and browsers. You can streamline repetitive tasks and processes so they take a fraction of the time.
- Low-code platform: Power Automate offers user-friendly, low-code functionality, making it easy to build workflows. You don’t need extensive coding knowledge, so it’s accessible to both technical and non-technical users. There are even templates to get you started.
- Connectors: Power Automate has over 1,000 prebuilt, certified connectors to popular services like Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, so you can easily integrate your automation with the tools you use. You can also create custom connectors for cloud applications.
- AI and RPA: Copilot can be embedded into Power Automate, providing AI guidance as you build your workflows. Robotic process automation (RPA) also allows for easy automation of core tasks.
- Cloud-based: Power Automate is cloud-based for uninterrupted access wherever your staff work. However, you can also securely connect to your own on-premises services using a data gateway.
In short, Power Automate gives you everything you need to embrace automation, without complex work required to set everything up.
Power automate use cases_
There are multiple ways you can leverage Power Automate to improve efficiency across your core business areas. We’ve listed 17 examples to get you started – but remember, the possibilities are endless!
1. Streamline inventory management_
You can set up workflows within Power Automate that track inventory levels and notify relevant teams when stock count is low for specific items. You can even trigger it to reorder products when stock reaches a certain number.
As a result, you can easily manage and replenish stock to meet demand without manual intervention. Coca-Cola use Power Automate for this exact purpose, without needing to build costly APIs.
2. Lead management_
Another workflow you can leverage is to add leads into your CRM system from form submissions on your website or marketing campaigns. It means your CRM system is constantly kept up to date as new opportunities emerge, without sales or marketing teams having to do manual data entry.
As Power Platform integrates with a range of leading CRMs, it’s very simple to set up this automation.
3. Expense approval workflows_
You can set up automated workflows for expense approvals, ensuring timely processing and reducing manual effort. When a user submits an expense form, it will notify the approver (such as a line manager) that there’s an action to take.
Then, the finance team can be notified when the expense is approved, allowing for faster completion of the expense process.
4. Customer onboarding_
There are usually a checklist of tasks and communications required to welcome new customers to your business. With Power Automate, you can build workflows to send welcome emails, provision accounts and provide necessary resources to new customers.
You can even stage these out at regular intervals or when the customer completes a specific action, allowing you to effectively onboard them without bombarding them.
5. Social media posting_
A common example of Power Automate is to schedule posts across your social media channels. This allows you to maintain a consistent presence online, with regular touchpoints with your followers.
Build a workflow that can trigger activity to be posted at a specific time. You can also create workflows that post blog content directly to your social channels or ensure that once a post appears on one channel, it’s replicated on your others.
6. Data synchronisation_
A challenge that faces many businesses is the need to keep data consistent across different systems, which can require repetitive data input. However, you can create a workflow to automate data synchronisation between databases, apps and services.
It means every system has the same information so there’s no room for error – without hours of admin.
7. Automated feedback_
Gathering feedback can be crucial across your business, including getting customer insights, employee engagement or internal ideas.
When you send out surveys and collect responses, you can trigger follow-up actions in Power Automate based on feedback received. For example, if a customer replies with negative sentiment, you can alert a customer service rep to give them a call.
8. Invoice processing_
Another way people commonly use Power Automate is to streamline invoice processing. You can automatically extract data from invoices, validate details and route them for approval and payment.
It means invoices are processed much faster, with the appropriate approvers notified when they’re needed.
9. Contract management_
You can also set up workflows to manage contracts within partners and clients, so that key dates aren’t forgotten about.
At the approvals and renewal stages, you can make sure relevant stakeholders are notified and send out communications. You can also notify them ahead key milestones with the project.
10. Ticket escalation_
If you have a high volume of tickets raised, such as requesting IT support, the ball can get dropped. So, a useful workflow within Power Automation is one that routes tickets to the relevant team member, based on category and priority.
It can also send out notifications when SLAs are missed, meaning your IT service desk can quickly respond to tickets and preventing productivity disruption.
11. Employee onboarding_
Similarly to customer onboarding, there are often multiple tasks a new hire in your business has to complete when they first join.
You can use Power Automate to streamline the onboarding process by automating tasks like account setup, training assignments and policy acknowledgment. It will ensure the new starter has everything they need to complete onboarding, without having to be reminded by HR or their line manager.
12. Document approval workflows_
Awaiting someone to review and approve documents can be a significant productivity blocker. However, you can create workflows in Power Automate so that the document is passed onto the right people at every stage: including document review, approval and version control.
The document will automatically pass onto the next person, making it easier to manage the process.
13. Automated reminders_
One of our favourite Power Automate examples is automating reminders ahead of key events and dates.
For example, if there’s a big meeting coming up, you can send reminders to relevant attendees, so there’s no risk of them being unprepared. You can also notify them ahead of deadlines as the due date approaches.
14. Sales order processing_
Streamline sales order processing by automate order creation and fulfilment. When a specific action occurs, such as a customer raising an order, you can trigger follow up actions that enable it to progress through the appropriate stages.
You can also notify sales teams and customers of order updates to keep everyone in the loop.
15. Performance reviews_
Use Power Automate to stay on top of performance reviews and follow up actions. For example, you can send notifications to line managers when it’s time for a performance review and schedule a Teams meeting between the relevant people.
You can also trigger surveys to go out ahead of performance reviews to gather employee feedback, and pass review documents onto HR when they’re ready.
16. Report generation_
Reports can be time-consuming, especially if required regularly. However, Power Automate can alleviate the heavy load when compiling reports.
You can create flows that pull data from your internal sources and formats it into a report. It can then send the final report to the appropriate stakeholders on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. It saves significant time when generating regular reports.
17. Automate data backups_
Another Power Automate example is scheduling data back-ups, so you’re always covered if something is lost.
Create a flow that automatically exports your data to your chosen storage locations on a regular basis. If a system crashes or there is a user error, it means you’ll always have a recent back-up to save the day.
How to get Power Automate_
By now, you should understand how you can leverage Power Automate to save time and drive efficiencies across your core business areas.
If you’re looking to embed Power Automate, you’ll need to obtain a licence from a Microsoft Partner, who can also help you to deploy it and begin creating workflows. Prices for a Power Automate licence start from £12.30 per user, per month.
We recommend beginning with just a few licences at first, so you can explore the platform, identify your use cases and realise the value of automation. You can then scale usage as you get more confident and uncover more use cases.
As Power Automate is so low code, you can start building your own workflows instantly. Anyone can create them, though your chosen Microsoft Partner may also be able to provide tailored training to ensure everyone can use it comfortably.
And once the workflow is set up, tested and working, you’ll experience the time-savings benefits straight away.
Get started with Power Automate now_
Automation can revolutionise the way your business operates, saving your staff time and effort from boring, repetitive work. Productivity will rise, giving you the feeling of more hours in the day to focus on high-value tasks.
With Power Automate, introducing automation to your business have never been simpler.
If you’re ready to experience the benefits, we’re here to help.
Our team of expert consultants has years of experience designing, deploying and supporting clients with their custom Power Automate workflows. We can help you to identify valuable use cases for automation in your business, based on an assessment of what will drive the most value, so you can effectively implement automation.
