A practical introduction to Microsoft’s Power Platform: Power Automate, Power BI and Power Apps.
Microsoft 365 is packed with tools to help teams collaborate and get things done. But when it comes to building custom workflows, visualising key data, or solving specific operational challenges, many organisations still find themselves relying on manual workarounds or juggling disconnected apps.
That’s where the Power Platform comes in. It’s a suite of tools designed to help you automate, analyse, and app your way to better business outcomes. At the heart of it are three incredibly capable tools: Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Apps.
Used on their own, each tool has plenty to offer. But used together, they become a powerful foundation for working smarter, gaining clearer insights, and unlocking even more value from your existing Microsoft investment. (Microsoft’s Power Platform is included in most Microsoft Business and Enterprise licence subscriptions.)
Let’s take a look.
Power Automate: The quiet force behind streamlined workflows
Power Automate is Microsoft’s workflow automation tool. It helps you streamline repetitive tasks, connect systems, and improve operational efficiency. And the best bit? You don’t need to be a developer to use it.
With an intuitive interface, hundreds of pre-built templates, and connectors that span Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and popular third-party services, it’s easy to build automated workflows that save time and reduce manual effort.
Power Automate allows you to:
- Create automated flows across apps and services with minimal coding.
- Build workflows for notifications, file synchronisation, data collection, approvals, and more.
- Use ready-made templates or create flows from scratch with simple logic-based steps.
- Integrate with Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and external platforms like Salesforce, Dropbox, Twitter, and more.
What does Power Automate look like in practice?
- HR teams triggering onboarding processes that assign tasks, send welcome emails, and update SharePoint automatically.
- Finance departments routing invoices for multi-level approvals based on value thresholds.
- Operations managers capturing form data and syncing it directly into structured lists or databases, ready for reporting.
Used strategically, Power Automate helps eliminate inefficiencies, enforce consistency, and free up your team to focus on the work that really matters.
Power BI: From raw data to real insight
Power BI is Microsoft’s business intelligence platform. It’s built to help you make sense of your data and turn it into clear, actionable insight.
Instead of battling spreadsheets or waiting on monthly reports, Power BI gives you the ability to create interactive dashboards and visualisations that tell the full story in real time.
With Power BI, you can:
- Connect to a wide range of data sources, from Excel and SQL Server to Azure services, SharePoint, and third-party tools.
- Build customisable dashboards that bring together KPIs, charts, and metrics tailored to different users and roles.
- Explore data using filters, drill-downs, and natural language queries, without needing advanced analytics skills.
- Share insights across teams and departments to support faster, more informed decision-making.
Some practical applications of Power BI include:
- Creating a centralised dashboard for sales performance, pipeline forecasting, and customer segmentation.
- Monitoring service desk ticket volumes, resolution times, and SLA compliance in real time.
- Analysing financial trends and budget spend with live connections to your data sources.
Whether you’re working at a high level or drilling into the detail, Power BI helps bring clarity to complexity and supports smarter decisions across the organisation.
Power Apps: Build exactly what your business needs
Power Apps is Microsoft’s low-code application development platform. It helps you build custom apps quickly and easily, without needing a team of developers.
It’s designed with accessibility in mind, so everyday users – not just IT pros – can create apps that solve real problems. With drag-and-drop functionality, pre-built templates, and intuitive logic, your teams can go from idea to working app in no time.
With Power Apps, you can:
- Create apps for desktop, mobile, and web from a single build.
- Use a low-code/no-code interface with drag-and-drop design tools.
- Integrate with other Microsoft tools like SharePoint, Dataverse, and Teams, as well as third-party services.
- Empower teams to solve specific business challenges with tailored, user-friendly apps.
Practical applications of Power Apps include:
- A facilities team building an app to track equipment checkouts and maintenance.
- Field workers capturing inspection results on mobile, synced automatically to central systems.
- Finance teams simplifying expense submissions with a user-friendly custom app.
Power Apps helps you respond to business needs fast, avoid development backlogs, and reduce reliance on unsanctioned tools, all while keeping everything within Microsoft’s secure, compliant framework.
Stronger together: How the Power Platform tools work in harmony
Each of the Power Platform tools is powerful on its own. But the real magic happens when you bring them together.
Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Apps are designed to work seamlessly as part of a connected ecosystem. This gives you end-to-end control over your data, workflows, and applications. It also enables you to build smart, responsive solutions that scale with your needs.
Here’s how the synergy plays out:
- Power Automate can trigger workflows based on actions taken in a Power App, such as sending notifications or updating records.
- Power BI can pull data directly from Power Apps or flows created in Power Automate, surfacing real-time insights on dashboards that update as users interact with your tools.
- Power Apps can embed insights from Power BI and initiate flows from Power Automate, creating a loop where users not only view data but act on it instantly.
This integration boosts productivity, reduces manual gaps, and keeps everything within a secure and scalable Microsoft environment.
And when you connect it with the wider Microsoft 365 or Azure ecosystem, the possibilities grow even further. Think automated Teams alerts, SharePoint-integrated apps, or custom tools that link into Dynamics 365. It’s all possible, and often easier than you’d expect.
Real-world inspiration
Here are a few examples from organisations making the most of the Power Platform:
- Evergy, a U.S. energy utility, built over 275 automated workflows using Power Automate, saving an estimated 120,000 hours annually. One standout solution streamlined drone image analysis for storm damage, cutting turnaround time from three days to just one night.
- Degrees of Change, a nonprofit supporting underrepresented students, used Power Apps and Power Pages to digitise their student application and internship processes. This made operations more efficient and allowed their team to focus more on student support.
These stories show what’s possible when you put the Power Platform to work – creating tailored, scalable, and surprisingly quick-to-deploy solutions.
Powering smarter ways of working
The Power Platform isn’t just about clever apps or flashy dashboards. It’s about transforming how your organisation works. Processes become faster, decisions smarter, and solutions more accessible to the people who need them most.
By combining Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Apps, you create an environment where workflows run themselves, data drives decisions, and innovation doesn’t get stuck waiting on dev cycles. And best of all? You likely already have access to these tools through your existing Microsoft licence.
Whether you’re looking to eliminate inefficiencies, replace outdated systems, or empower your teams to solve their own challenges, the potential is right there – ready to be unlocked.
Ready to explore what’s possible?
At Cloud Essentials, we help organisations get hands-on with the Power Platform, from identifying practical use cases to designing secure, scalable solutions that deliver real impact.
We’ll help you:
- Understand what tools you already have access to.
- Spot quick wins where automation or app-building can make an immediate difference.
- Ensure everything is integrated, compliant, and future-ready.
Let’s talk about how to turn your Microsoft licence into a true productivity engine. Get in touch.