Launching a business of your own is a daunting task. But it is even more challenging to keep it growing in the face of stiff competition and rapid technological change. In this digital age, all businesses understand the significance of data. Yet many companies fail to leverage the power of data for business growth.
This is where tools like the Microsoft Power Platform and Microsoft Dynamics help you. They aid you in extracting critical insights from your business data, thus enabling you to make better decisions. Tools like these are specifically built for such purposes. They usually require little to no technical knowledge. Therefore, business owners employ them to drive business growth and efficiency.
This article gives a comprehensive overview of two leading Microsoft products: the Power Platform and Microsoft 365.
What is Microsoft Power Platform?
The Microsoft Power Platform is a set of five products built to facilitate companies in creating and managing business solutions. It is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) product that lets you automate business processes, analyze data, and integrate multiple applications.
As mentioned before, the Microsoft Power Platform does not require any technical skills for you to use it. It offers a user-friendly and intuitive interface. You can create data reporting solutions in conjunction with task automation, app synchronization, virtual agents, and business intelligence.
Your company thrives when you make data-driven timely decisions. The bulk of market data available today is raw and disorganized. You cannot use it for decision-making as it is usually dispersed and stored on different applications like spreadsheets, accounting software, CRM databases, etc. The Microsoft Power Platform enables you to integrate all these other apps into one platform, thus giving you a comprehensive view of your company’s data.
The goal of all this is to enhance business performance and give your company a competitive edge. Let’s look at the five components of the Microsoft Power Platform briefly.
1. Power BI
It is a business intelligence tool optimized for data reporting and analytics. It lets you create data visualizations and use the same for analyzing data, allowing you to make better business decisions. Power BI offers full customization to let you create your own system. Moreover, it has built-in AI capabilities and custom data connectors.
2. Power Apps
With Power Apps, you can design special applications that serve your business interests. The best part about Power Apps is that you don’t need any programming skills to create applications. It offers pre-built templates and a drag-and-drop feature to develop and update applications easily. In other words, the Power Apps component of the Power Platform enables you to create robust apps in no time!
3. Power Automate
Power Automate, as the name suggests, is used for process automation. It was formerly called Power Flow. You can automate repetitive business tasks very quickly and easily with Power Automate. Moreover, once you automate business processes, your expenditure sharply decreases as you require fewer resources and time for the same tasks.
It is available for multiple devices and platforms. You can use Power Automate on your desktop, mobile, web, and Microsoft Teams for automation.
4. Power Pages
Power Pages enables you to design and create websites for services like grant applications, licensing, permitting, and outage reporting. You can therefore build interactive websites and offer customizable user experiences with ready-to-use templates.
5. Power Virtual Agents
The Power Virtual Agents tool enables you to create intelligent conversational bots and thereby offer enhanced customer service. You can use it to determine how you wish to respond to customer and employee queries. Moreover, the Microsoft Power Virtual Agents help optimize customer service costs and empower customer service staff to operate more efficiently.
What is Microsoft Dynamics 365?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a set of business applications that provide ERP and CRM capabilities to companies on a single platform. It is a comprehensive suite of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions aimed at helping companies achieve operational efficiency by serving different business needs.
It is a platform that saves you time, for you don’t have to use different applications for executing various business tasks; you can do all that using Dynamics 365. Moreover, Microsoft Dynamics 365 uses artificial intelligence to generate actionable and meaningful business insights. It is a highly secure platform easily integrable with other Microsoft applications.
Here’s a list of features and benefits of Dynamics 365:
- It is a user-friendly application.
- You can offer enhanced and intuitive customer service through effective customer relationship management (CRM).
- Dynamics 365 optimize your sales and marketing operations by automating various tasks and allowing you to analyze your marketing campaigns.
- Cloud service and integration.
- Regular software updates and upgrades.
- AI-powered features.
- Advanced CRM and ERP solutions.
- Data analytics and tools for automation.
- Access to real-time data.
- Reduced sales lifecycle.
Conclusion
Which platform will suit you best depends on your business needs and requirements. If your business needs good CRM capabilities, you should go for Microsoft 365 and SharePoint. If you need to build something more unique, go for the Microsoft Power Platform. But most importantly, you can integrate the two to deliver exceptional capabilities to your team!