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What is the Power Platform?

Microsoft Power Platform is comprised of three services – Power BI, PowerApps and Power Automate \ Microsoft Flow. While each of these services is best-of-breed individually, combining them into one Power Platform is a game-changer.

In today’s more modern fast-moving environment, companies have started to understand the value of using data to propel business outcomes. They’ve adopted the cloud to store more data and have become more efficient at capturing data and signals coming from sources like web leads, social media and business CRM/ERP applications. But once they’ve implemented the infrastructure for harnessing data, how can they put that data to work for them most efficiently? They need a layer above the data that enables all team members to be able to utilize it in a straightforward manner to best drive business outcomes.

This is essentially what the Microsoft Power Platform accomplishes. It’s a system that enables users to do 3 key actions on data that drive business: Evaluate, Act, and Automate. Performing this with Power BI, PowerApps and Flow all working together atop your data to assist all team members, from the CEO to the front-line employees to drive the business with data.

The Microsoft Power Platform consists of three applications:

  • Power BI – Displaying rich visualizations from your business data in interactive, real-time dashboards and reports to provide detailed insights.
  • PowerApps – Create custom, no-code desktop and mobile applications running off your data.
  • Microsoft Power Automate \ Flow – Multi-stage automated workflows that connect to hundreds of apps and services.
  • Power Virtual Agents – Easily create chat-bots to engage in conversations with your customers and employees—no coding required.

These applications handle your data through leveraging Microsoft’s Dataverse (Common Data Service) (CDS). The Dataverse (Common Data Service) Service is a cloud-based tool hosted on Azure which enables you to securely store and manage your business data. Data within the CDS is stored within a set of entities, a standard set of entities are included, however custom entities can be created for specific requirements.

 

Connect Your Apps to Data

Wherever your data is stored we have a connector for you. Microsoft Power Platform makes it possible for you to get your data into your custom solutions with over 200 connectors for many popular cloud services you use in your business and even your on-premises data. From Office 365 to Slack, DropBox and others, the platform has got you covered.

Can’t find your connector? EPC Group can build one for you. Power Platform lets you connect your Power Apps to different data sources using Power Automate \ Microsoft Flow.

Real-World Example on How the Power Platform Can work for You

Our view begins with the fundamental understanding that data is increasingly flowing from every department and companies that commit to the process of capturing their data to gain insights and then leveraging those insights to drive intelligent business processes and decisions will outperform their competitors that do not.

Power BI unlocks insights and intelligence, PowerApps converts that intelligence into action through transformative applications built in record time and Power Automate \ Microsoft Flow makes business process orchestration an easy point and click exercise.

Placing the power to “evaluate, act and automate” in the hands of team members who know their business best with built-in connectors to all the systems and sources of data in an organization creates previously unimaginable transformation opportunities for our clients.

EPC Group’s view on Microsoft Power Platform

Our view begins with the fundamental understanding that data is increasingly flowing from every department and companies that commit to the process of capturing their data to gain insights and then leveraging those insights to drive intelligent business processes and decisions will outperform their competitors that do not.

Power BI unlocks insights and intelligence, PowerApps converts that intelligence into action through transformative applications built in record time and Power Automate \ Microsoft Flow makes business process orchestration an easy point and click exercise.

Placing the power to “evaluate, act and automate” in the hands of team members who know their business best with built-in connectors to all the systems and sources of data in an organization creates previously unimaginable transformation opportunities for our clients.

Microsoft Power BI

Power BI is a self-service business intelligence tool that creates an easy platform to analyze and gain insights from the data that runs your business. This can be data that is stored in multiple locations like:

  • The cloud
  • Your own data center
  • An Excel spreadsheet
  • SharePoint list
  • Oracle database
  • SAP
  • Salesforce

Or in any of the hundreds of other systems with built-in support by the Power Platform. Power BI was the first Power Platform service delivered entering preview in January 2015.

In just four short years, Power BI has been adopted by tens of thousands of companies and millions of users. Every single month the service has been updated and improved.

Power BI is now available in over 40+ languages and used across 19,000 cities spanning the globe. Nearly 10 petabytes of data are uploaded to the service each month with more than 10 million reports and dashboard queries executed against that data every hour.

However, insights without the appropriate action bear little fruit, so while we are busy pushing toward general availability with Power BI we are also simultaneously using the services that would make Power BI’s insights actionable by utilizing applications like PowerApps and Flow.

Microsoft PowerApps

PowerApps enables anyone to build web and mobile applications without writing code. The natural connection between Power BI and PowerApps makes it effortless to place insights in the hands of maintenance workers, HR, sales, marketing and other team members on the frontline, in tailored, task-specific applications that boost their productivity to the next level.

Similar to Power BI, PowerApps connects hundreds of business systems and databases, making it easy to connect team members with the existing processes and data that are business critical. All the data captured in PowerApps can return right back to those very systems for further analysis in Power BI creating a process for continuous improvement.

Additionally, PowerApps comes with a built-in, fully-managed, enterprise-grade data store called the Dataverse (Common Data Service) (CDS) for those applications that generate data not destined for a legacy system and Power BI and Power Automate \ Microsoft Flow have connections to CDS making it that much easier to get even more value from data stored there.

Microsoft Power Automate \ Flow

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is getting a lot of interest and attention in the market with vendors raising enormous sums of money at high valuations. By automating simple tasks, RPA solutions promise to lower costs while reducing errors. Microsoft Power Automate \ Flow is an intelligent process automation service that goes beyond simple task automation by allowing non-technical users to automate complex business processes and workflows without a complex IT deployment.

Through an intuitive interface, team members can create automated workflows which can be triggered by insights from Power BI, leveraged via apps, built with PowerApps and integrated with events from any of the hundreds of systems the Power Platform natively supports. The workflows run completely in the cloud and are fully managed and secured by Microsoft.

Power Virtual Agents

Power Virtual Agents empower your staff to be able to simply create a dynamic bot with a no-code graphical interface. This eliminates the need for developers or data scientists and narrows the complexity gap between SME’s and the development teams that build the bots. This makes the process of deploying and maintaining much less complicated. 

Power Virtual Agents is part of Microsoft AI and it provides the ability for Bots to be created “code-free” using a Flow like a designer. 

Using Power Virtual Agents, you will be able to: 

  • Empower your teams – Enable your team to build bots themselves without needing unnecessary coding experience or AI expertise. 
  • Reduce costs – Automate common inquiries and free-up human bandwidth to tackle more complex issues. 
  • Improve customer satisfaction – Allow clients to self-help and resolve issues quickly 24/7 using rich personalized bot conversations. 

Why Choose Us

Why Organizations Recognize EPC Group's Consulting Services as the Industry Leader
EPC Group wrote the book on SharePoint & Power BI
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EPC Group's Chief Architect Errin O'Connor was on the original SharePoint and
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