Unpacking the Power of Microsoft’s Power Platform

To compete in today’s increasingly complex and high-stakes business environment, middle market companies need to respond to market shifts as swiftly and perceptively as possible. That means leveraging the knowledge of business users across your organization, empowering people to make informed decisions based on that knowledge and then executing with speed and confidence.

The Microsoft Power Platform suite of applications gives your non-technical staff the ability to easily create automated processes without burdening your IT team. The Microsoft platform helps “citizen developers” work together to analyze data, build solutions, automate processes and create virtual agents using an easy-to-understand interface.

The four components of Power Platform are:

Self-service analytics at enterprise scale

Analytics is at the center of all of these capabilities. An organization’s data is one of its most valuable assets. Modern enterprises generate petabytes of data from traditional data sources, such as ERP or CRM systems, as well as from unstructured data sources like social media. Yet while most middle market companies are data rich, they remain frustratingly information poor.

Business intelligence tools, such as Power BI, can turn your data into actionable information when users want and need it. The smart tools incorporated into Power BI include hundreds of data visualizations, built-in artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, tight Excel integration and prebuilt and custom data connectors. These tools enable staff at every level of your organization to make confident decisions by accessing up-to-the-minute analytics. Because Power BI can pull data from individuals and share it with the organization as a whole, it can help reduce the cost, complexity and security risks of multiple siloed solutions.

To give you an idea of the level of analysis Power BI provides, let’s take a closer look at its Key Influencers feature, which lets you see which factors drive the metrics you’re currently analyzing and compare their relative importance. For example, do short-term contracts have more impact on churn than long-term contracts? The Key Influencers feature leverages advanced machine learning (ML) techniques, such as multivariate linear regression and clustering algorithms, to help bring intelligent analysis to the surface so users gain insights about contracts that they can convert to action.

Helping everyone optimize data

Your existing data is a goldmine just waiting to be tapped. Microsoft’s Power Platform converts the mountains of raw data flowing into your organization into previously unattainable insights. Advanced automation and AI-driven technology then lets users translate those insights into action.

RSM helps you get the most out of Microsoft Power Platform by not only guiding you as you implement the platform but also showing your people how to optimize the data within the technology. 

Why RSM?

RSM is a gold-certified Microsoft enterprise partner with decades of experience in industries such as retail, food and beverage, CPG, nonprofit, life sciences and industrials. We have more than 1,000 consultants with deep industry knowledge and access to proprietary applications that accelerate time-to-value for Microsoft solutions.  

You can trust RSM for lifetime support guided by a business-first mentality that combines Microsoft experience with broader services in management and technology consulting, risk advisory, tax, IT infrastructure, data/analytics and more.