Automation technologies are no longer just for large enterprises with deep pockets that can afford the latest and greatest. Technology providers have integrated business process automation into affordable solutions for small and mid-size businesses (SMB), and in today’s digital era, opting for automation is the only way SMBs will successfully keep up.
Automation frees human workers from doing repeatable tasks that can be completed by computers, and contrary to popular belief, it does not replace employees—it augments them. Your employees want to use the skills you hired them for such as judgment, intuition, and creativity. Automation gives them back the time in their day to use these skills to do higher value work. But where do you start with automation?
SMBs should consider Microsoft Power Automate—a SaaS platform that helps you automate recurring tasks.
What Is Power Automate?
Power Automate is a software solution that allows you to create automated workflows among your apps and services to introduce greater efficiency across your business. You can use it to:
- Move business data among systems on a schedule of your choice
- Set automatic reminders for tasks, including past due ones
- Connect to hundreds of data sources
- Identify bottlenecks in your workflows to introduce more automation
- And more
How Power Automate Works
You can automate workflows across your entire business—every department can benefit from automating repeatable tasks. For example, you can automate IT processes such as setting up new Teams channels or sharing documents externally, and you don’t need developers to gets started. Power Automate uses low-code, drag-and-drop tools with hundreds of pre-built connectors and thousands of templates so you can start automating workflows easily.
Gain Better Visibility with Process Advisor
The solution provides a process advisor—a process and task-mining capability—that allows you to record and visualize end-to-end processes so you can spot areas for improvement, reduce inefficiencies, and make business decisions based on real-time data. With visual maps and built-in analytics, you can see where your processes get bottlenecked so you can introduce automation. You can also upload data to process advisor from multiple sources and share your insights across your organization for more informed decision-making.
Make Automation Smarter with AI Builder
You can build tailored AI models in Power Automate with Microsoft’s AI Builder—a capability that helps you optimize your business processes through more intelligent automation. You can embed language models into your solution to create more user-intuitive flows, and the advanced low-code power of AI Builder means you can build unique scenarios quickly.
Free Your Team with Robotic Process Automation
Robotic process automation (RPA) in Power Automate records and mimics the mouse movements of a human user so it can learn how to perform tasks instead of that employee. You can boost daily productivity using attended RPA by automating front-end office activities where humans typically respond to prompts in addition to unattended RPA which can automate high volumes of tasks without human interaction.
How to Get Started with Automation
Microsoft makes it easy to figure out where you should start with automation in your business by walking through a free online assessment. The questions are designed to point you in the direction of the right automation solution, but many businesses have nuances and needs that can’t be factored into this brief survey.
That’s where you can benefit from the expertise of an experienced Microsoft partner. Point Alliance has a 100% Microsoft-certified team, and as a cloud solutions provider (CSP), we focus on helping SMBs take advantage of the power of automation. Get in touch with Point Alliance to learn more about how automation can open doors for your business today.
