According to Microsoft, five million active developers and 500+ enterprises (including 97% of Fortune 500 companies) are harnessing the potential of Power Platform.

Organizations looking to leverage data to drive success must digitize their processes and automate recurring tasks. The most viable way to collect data, develop facilitating applications and drive accountability across all departments is to use specialized software solutions such as Microsoft Power Platform.  

What is Power Platform and how it helps in finance?

Microsoft Power Platform is a software suite of low code/no-code tools for workflow automation, application development, chatbot functionality, reporting and analysis. It is also highly useful for the finance function in organizations as its success depends on data accuracy, confidentiality and financial analysis.  

Finance professionals need to access numerous data sources to make detailed reports in the shortest timeframe available. Power Platform allows them to swiftly develop applications to replace manual processes without having any IT experience. In short, Microsoft Power Platform enables finance leaders to transform processes and accelerate outcomes as they empower teams to develop low-code applications, automated workflows, data visualizations, reports, and chatbots using a single intuitive platform.  

An issue with trial balances (case study)

A financial firm was looking to derive actionable insights from its trial balances. It needed a system to reclassify and eliminate entries in the trial balance along with generating balance sheets and profit/loss statements.  

The financial company used Power Platform to develop a management reporting solution that had Power Automate in the back-end. It downloaded trial balances from numerous systems such as emails and accounting apps, and then added them into an SQL database so the analytics tool can use the data to develop insightful reports.  

The solution enabled the firm to generate cash flow statements, balance sheets and CFO level insights for each financial statement. Interaction over these reports was also increased using Power BI (Business Intelligence) visualizations. Time filters were added to provide a bird’s eye-view of company’s performance over a selected period and it helped the higher management in making informed decisions and developing growth strategies.  

Automating accounts payable clerks’ workflow (case study)

A finance and accounting company found that its accounts payable clerks were using many different applications to get their tasks done. They were working on Quickbooks and Microsoft Excel and used to receive PDF invoices from customers. The invoices were received in Microsoft Outlook. The clerks used to pull customer data (name, invoice amount, invoice number, address) from the PDF invoice and then paste it into Microsoft Excel for internal reporting. The same data then went into Quickbooks before the clerks could cut a check for the vendors. The data was then copied from Quickbooks and then pasted into Outlook to send an email to the company to confirm if the payment was processed.

The company then used Microsoft Power Platform to automate the entire process and made a robotic accounting bot that could find the initial PDF from a clerk’s Outlook account and navigate through multiple screens to transfer the relevant and necessary data to appropriate documents. The bot could even find the final confirmation email, reducing the clerk’s workload considerably.

Why should Finance departments use Power Platform for projects?

While a surprising number of CIOs and CTOs continue to mull over the choice of buying or building, the Power Platform for finance brings both options in an intuitive software suite. Finance departments can avoid huge capital costs of software development by using the custom low code solutions available with Power Apps.  

Modern companies need to focus on automating business processes to improve the productivity and efficiency levels of their staff. Having software suites like Power Platform and using them to develop low-code applications can ensure continuous innovation in the most cost-effective way.