Bill Gates once famously stated, “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it”. While we don’t entirely disagree with that premise, what you’re really looking at here is efficiency and the answer is automation!
Businesses have always had to find ways to save time and money. As the world changes and the cloud provides new capabilities, teams are finding new ways to streamline their workloads and increase productivity. A significant way to achieve the optimisation of your business processes right now, is through automation.
The key is to identify and streamline repeated processes and tasks that waste time spent elsewhere, thereby improving workplace productivity and reducing human error.
“Gartner Predicts 69% of Routine Work Currently Done by Managers will Be Fully Automated by 2024” – Source.
Microsoft Power Automate is a desktop and cloud-based intelligent application solution for developers and non-developers alike to automate repetitive routine tasks such as reporting, data entry, and scheduling.
It is a Microsoft Power Platform component that serves as a single solution that combines the capabilities of robotic process automation (RPA) and digital process automation (DPA), which is further enhanced with artificial intelligence (AI).
Below are some example scenarios of where you can use automation:
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REPEATED KEY PRESSES IN APPLICATIONS
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BUSINESS REPORTS
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APPROVAL PROCESSES
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CRM INTEGRATION
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REACTING AND RESPONDING TO EMAILS
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COPYING DATA FROM WEBSITES
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SENDING EMAILS
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DOCUMENT PRODUCTION
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SCHEDULED EVENTS
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FILE RETRIEVAL FROM SHARED LOCATIONS
Starting with Power Automate can be intimidating at first. In this article one of Quorum’s Senior Developers has broken down the most popular automation categories so your citizen developers can determine which is best for them.
Keith Atherton
Senior Developer
Keith likes to “Move Fast and Automate Things” and is always happy to share knowledge and help others with all things Power Platform and development-related.
What is RPA?
Robotic Process Automation is divided into two categories: attended and unattended automation, and it is crucial to understand both before deciding which is best for your organisation.
Attended Automation
Attended automation frees your time to focus on higher-value tasks throughout your organisation. This is accomplished by automating repetitive, manual front-office activities and simulating actions performed on your desktop or browser, such as mouse clicks, by recording and replaying these actions in real-time.
Unattended Automation
Unattended automation, on the other hand, does not require someone to be at their computer, as the name implies. Unattended bots do the work instead, recording and replaying actions. They’re ideal for accelerating the automation of high-volume tasks across your organisation because they can use triggers and schedule automated events.
What is DPA?
Digital Process Automation focuses on enabling the automation of modern systems via APIs, allowing your employees or “citizen developers” to connect your apps, data, and services to over 350 first- and third-party services via built-in API connectors, putting the power of automation in the hands of all users.
With hundreds of triggers, they can start workflows however they want – with a button, through connected cloud apps, or on a schedule. They can automate thousands of actions by selecting from pre-defined actions or creating their own.
All users can get started quickly because a large set of curated, pre-built templates makes it easier for users to automate immediately and customise as their needs change.
The Right Tool for the Right Job
At some point in our careers, we have been tasked with cutting/pasting contents of one massive spreadsheet to another or with a task that is repetitive and not the best use of our time. It is tedious for the person doing the work, and the outcome is much more likely to contain errors. It will also likely take much longer than a bot performing the same task.
With RPA/DPA, your employees can delegate this type of task to a bot, giving them more time to focus on higher-value tasks while also increasing productivity and accuracy.
Bots are never tired or bored and never make mistakes; their results are consistent and dependable. When robots are programmed once, they always follow the rules.
Bots also enable organisations to quickly scale up or down, allowing seasonal workflows and/or surges to be easily accommodated across business units, locations, and from desktop to cloud.
Power Automate is one part of a large platform called Microsoft Power Platform. When used in conjunction with the other apps, your organisation can leverage the full potential of the powerful business application platform to allow your users to analyse data, create solutions, automate processes, and create virtual agents.
This includes the following tools:
Power BI
Make informed, confident business decisions by empowering everyone with data-driven insights.
Power Apps
Turn ideas into solutions by allowing anyone to create custom apps to solve business problems.
Power Pages
Create low-code business websites quickly to deliver critical information and services.
Power Automate
Increase business productivity by allowing everyone to automate organisational processes.
Powerful Virtual Agents
Create chatbots that can converse with your customers and employees – no coding required.
Let Us Guide You to Become Citizen Developers!
Our power platform consultant will collaborate with your business users to help them understand their business problems, provide technical support, and ensure your users can deliver their solutions as effectively as possible. Depending on the solution, this could be a Power Apps, Power Automate (Flow), or Power BI, expert.
Quorum offers a comprehensive and tailored service on the Power Platform to provide relevant technical assurance and on-the-job training for the organisation’s business specialists.
Our goal is to give each organisation the skills and knowledge to support, maintain and enhance their developments allowing their end-users to refine their processes and tools to match their business requirements.
Contact us today to start your automation story.
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Quorum Network Resources Ltd
18 Greenside Lane Edinburgh
UK EH1 3AH
Phone: +44 131 652 3954
Email: marketing@quorum.co.uk
CONTACT INFO
Quorum Network Resources Ltd
18 Greenside Lane Edinburgh
UK EH1 3AH
Phone: +44 131 652 3954
Email: marketing@quorum.co.uk
FOLLOW US
AWARDS & RECOGNITION