How Microsoft Uses the Power Platform

(Link to this article: https://aka.ms/HowMicrosoftUsesPowerPlatform )

The Microsoft Power Platform is the #1 low-code platform that empowers anyone to build solutions that accelerate business outcomes.

The Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of low-code tools that enables users to create efficient and flexible solutions. It includes Power BI for data analysis, Power Apps for building low-code solutions, Power Automate for streamlining processes with no-code automation, Power Pages for secure, low-code business websites, Copilot Studio (formerly Power Virtual Agents) for handling routine inquiries at scale with conversational AI.

Power Platform by the Numbers (January 2024):

• 33 Million monthly active users, 50% year over year growth (Source )
• Over 350,000 organizations?are using Power Automate each month?(Source )
• Power Automate has more than 10 Million monthly active users (Source )
• 63,000 organizations?have used Power Platform & Dynamics Copilot (Source )

Microsoft Power Platform

"How is Microsoft using the Power Platform?"

I often get asked how is Microsoft using the Power Platform? ?In this article, I will explore a few of the public ways Microsoft is using the Power Platform to transform operations, solve various business challenges, improve efficiency, and foster innovation across the organization.

How Microsoft Uses the Power Platform

Please Note: all details are publicly available at the time of publishing and cited within. While it was correct at time of publication, as operations evolve it may no longer be accurate or reflect the current situation at Microsoft.

1) Rev Ops: Revenue Processing with Power Automate & AI Builder

Key Takeaway: Microsoft has saved approximately $15 million in cost and 71 percent in time by using Power Automate RPA.

Revenue processing at Microsoft spans 13 business units, 257 regions and territories, 18 million emails, 2.5 million transactions, and more than $100 billion per year in revenue. Roughly 4,000 business process outsourcing (BPO) agents positioned at various regional operation centers (ROCs) throughout the world manage the contracts and transactions that keep those operations moving.

Microsoft largely outsources contract operations to vendors in multiple Regional Operations Centers (ROCs) worldwide, as the following data points illustrate, including that ROCs (source ):

• Process transactions and manage inquires via 3,800 agents worldwide.
• Handle 2.5 million transactions and inquiries annually.
• Process and manage 18 million email messages annually.
• Deal with multiple languages across 257 countries/regions.
• Apply and manage more than 90 compliance controls that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), privacy, trade, and tax policies mandate.

Microsoft Revenue Processing

Microsoft has used Power Automate, a low-code platform that enables data analysis, app creation, and business process automation, to streamline its revenue processing operations. By using robotic process automation (RPA), a feature of Power Automate that automates tasks for legacy systems without APIs, Microsoft has reduced manual work, human error, and compliance risk for its business process outsourcing (BPO) agents.

Power Automate | Process Advisor

RPA works by recording the steps that BPO agents take to perform tasks such as scanning documents, validating data, and entering data into target systems. Then, it uses AI Builder, a capability of Power Platform that provides optical character recognition (OCR) and forms processing, to extract and verify the required data from the documents. Finally, it uses a business rules engine to automate the data entry process for legacy systems.

For Microsoft, some of the impacts of using Power Automate RPA are:

• A 71 percent time savings and an estimated $15 million in cost savings over the next two to three years.
• A 40 percent automation of case management work across 14 business units at Microsoft.
• A more efficient and compliant workflow for BPO agents, who can focus on more impactful work.

Learn more here:

Microsoft automates revenue processing with Power Automate

2) Sales: Account Planning with Power Apps

The Business Process and Tools Team within the Microsoft Worldwide Global Sales and Marketing Operations organization (WW GSMO) used Microsoft Power Platform to digitally transform the account planning process for thousands of enterprise accounts covering an annual $80+ billion book of business. The solution uses Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Common Data Service, Azure SQL, Office 365, Microsoft Stream, LinkedIn, Dynamics 365 and Azure workloads.

Microsoft Power Apps

The Sales Account Planning Power App reduces the time and effort required for sellers to create and update their plans and provides new insights and visibility for senior sales leaders.

Watch a demonstration of the Account Planning Power App here:

Microsoft Account Planning App built with Power Platform - demo

Some of the impacts of using the Power Platform solution are:

• A faster and more efficient account planning process that saves time and money for Microsoft and its customers.
• A richer and more consistent account plan that covers all aspects of the customer’s digital journey and Microsoft’s value proposition.
• A better collaboration and alignment among sellers, v-teams, and executives within Microsoft and with the customer.

Learn more here:

Microsoft transforms sales planning process using the Power Platform

3) Marketing: Microsoft improves marketing operations efficiency with Microsoft Power Automate

The Global Demand Center (GDC) at Microsoft is the sales and marketing engine that runs all the commercial marketing campaigns for the company. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to generate leads and nurture customers.

The Power Platform solution uses Power Automate, a feature of Power Platform that automates tasks and workflows, to connect the GDC’s legacy systems and modern cloud services. It also uses AI Builder, a capability of Power Platform that provides optical character recognition (OCR) and forms processing, to extract and validate data from invoices and purchase orders. The solution reduces manual work, human error, and compliance risk for the GDC’s operations team.

Microsoft Power Automate

Since integrating Power Automate into Marketo flows, the GDC team has been able to reinvest thousands of employee hours and reduce reliance on vendors, putting them on track to meet their fiscal year goal of maintaining consistent output while reducing their budget and time spent on manual tasks by 26%.

"The best result is that our marketing stakeholders don’t even know that any of this exists because they’re able to retain the same throughput as they were before." - Jen Lightbody: General Manager of GDC Marketing Operations

Learn more here:

Microsoft improves marketing operations efficiency with Microsoft Power Automate

4) HR: Microsoft's AskHR utilizes Power Platform to handle more than 1 million inquiries per year

Microsoft's AskHR is our internal employee-engagement application that Microsoft Digital Employee Experience (MDEE) built for supporting inquiries to Microsoft’s HR department and managing ongoing cases related to those inquiries.

Today, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform have transformed how Microsoft HR connects with and serves employees through our internal employee engagement platform, AskHR.

We’ve built our entire HR support platform around Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Power Platform technologies. We’re using many of the built-in capabilities to better support Microsoft HR. Using technologies including AI and machine learning, Power Virtual Assistant, Power Automate, Microsoft Teams collaboration, and Customer Voice, we’ve enabled Microsoft HR to deliver a highly intuitive employee interaction solution that engages our employees in ways that were previously only equated with customer interactions. - Mahesh Sharma, director, AskHR Cross Industry Solutions

Microsoft has seen significant improvement in several areas of employee engagement and HR efficiency, including:

• Reduced case resolution time. Due primarily to automatic routing and contextual data sharing, we’ve reduced case resolution time by 18 hours per case, on average.
• Improved NSAT ratings. Our net satisfaction (NSAT) rating for employees and advisors has increased by almost 10 percent.
• Improved advisor productivity. Our advisors are spending approximately 12 minutes less per case than they did before AskHR.
• Increased first-time fix rates. Our rate for fixing an issue or closing a case after the first point of HR contact is 29 percent.

Learn More Here:

Microsoft HR Boosts Employee Engagement with Power Platform

5) Content Management Modernization

Microsoft's Inside Track team used Microsoft Power Platform to modernize their content management system for their website. The new system improved performance, scalability, compliance, and collaboration for both citizen and pro developers. The article also provides some best practices and tips for using Microsoft Power Platform to transform legacy systems and enable business innovation.

The migration from the old system to the new included:

• SharePoint data to Microsoft Azure SQL: We took the opportunity to move our data from SharePoint and Microsoft Excel to a SQL database. Most of the static data moved easily, but because the team wanted to keep the new environment in sync while tested, it used Microsoft Power Automate to sync changes with the legacy system and transform any data that needed extra attention on the new platform.
• Custom SharePoint UI to Microsoft Power Apps: To ease user transition, the team kept a similar interface with the new UI, but some controls (like multi-select combo boxes and the ability to search for multiple people across the org) didn’t work the same in Microsoft Power Apps. In these cases, the team built alternatives where needed using a customized view and low code solutions.
• Microsoft Power Automate for workflow: Because Microsoft Power Automate seamlessly integrates with the platforms the team was using, Peyton and the rest of the team had already been moving their workflows to Microsoft Power Automate. With the ability to invoke stored procedures in SQL, the team has even more options and flexibility to meet its automation needs.
• Microsoft Power BI for dashboards: This was the heaviest lift of the migration. With plenty of deprecated data in the old system, it was time to rebuild these from scratch. The team moved to shared data sources, making it easy to create multiple reports without rebuilding its datasets each time.

Learn More:

Revamping a Content Management System at Microsoft with the Power Platform

If you have made it this far, congratulations. There are dozens of ways Microsoft is using the Power Platform. Here is the full list.

TLDR

Microsoft's Use of the Power Platform (Public Examples)

How Microsoft Uses the Power Platform | Full List : Inside Track

1. Microsoft automates revenue processing with Power Automate
2. Microsoft transforms sales planning process using the Power Platform
3. Microsoft improves marketing operations efficiency with Microsoft Power Automate
4. Microsoft HR Boosts Employee Engagement with Power Platform
5. Revamping a Content Management System at Microsoft with the Power Platform
6. How Microsoft uses process mining to accelerate digital transformation
7. Transforming how Microsoft executives use their time with Power Platform
8. Citizen developers use Microsoft Power Apps to build an intelligent launch assistant
9. Powering decision making at Microsoft by analyzing data using Power BI
10. Unleashing the citizen developer in all of us with the Microsoft Power Platform
11. Microsoft transforms cash flow data into an intelligent analytics platform
12. Retooling how Microsoft sellers sell the company
13. Microsoft uses analytics and data science to enhance the user experience
14. How automation is transforming revenue processing at Microsoft
15. Empowerment with good governance: How our citizen developers get the most out of the Microsoft Power Platform
16. Upgrading Microsoft’s core Human Resources system with SAP SuccessFactors

Are there public stories I missed? Let me know in the comments. Thanks!

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Are there public stories I missed? Let me know in the comments. Thanks!