The differentiator between businesses that succeed and excel and those that struggle with growth has become how well they use technology. A study by global consulting firm Deloitte on small businesses found that those that were digitally advanced greatly outpaced their less advanced peers.
Small businesses that leveraged technology well were found to:
- Be 2x as likely to have employees that collaborate
- Experience revenue growth nearly 4x as high
- Earn 2X as much revenue per employee
- Be almost 3X as likely to be creating jobs over the prior year
One of the ways that small businesses in Charlotte and beyond become digitally advanced is by leveraging technology that enables them to do things they would not normally be able to do without their own team of developers. This includes using platforms like Microsoft 365 and its family of interconnected apps that keep work teams connected and enabled.
Four big drivers of both customer experience and company efficiency over the last decade have been:
- Automation and integration of data and processes
- The ability to analyze business data and pull out actionable insights
- The use of custom mobile apps that can do exactly what your team needs (not more or less)
- Using technology to enable proactive customer support
Any of those tasks can seem out of reach for a small business owner that doesn’t have a lot of time and money to invest in the development of custom solutions. Well, it turns out that Microsoft has this handled through a package of tools it calls the Microsoft Power Platform.
What Can the Microsoft Power Platform Do?
The Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of four applications that can help small businesses do things like build custom apps, launch virtual chatbots, and connect data systems seamlessly. All without needing extensive knowledge or development time.
The drag-and-drop interfaces in the tools are designed to make it easy to work with technology and leverage some of the most advanced business tools of enterprise organizations, no matter the size of your company.
The four applications that are included focus on different areas of digital prowess, and all work together to help your company become more technologically advanced for little cost and time investment.
Power Apps to Easily Create Custom Work Apps
Why try to fit your processes into cookie-cutter applications, when you can enable your team easily with custom-made apps to run your business?
The Power Apps tool makes it easy for small businesses to create their own applications for what they do every day. You can use prebuilt templates and quickly deploy a solution that helps fill the gaps that commercial software won’t fill.
No coding experience is needed because it uses a user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop simplicity.
All Power Platform images are from Microsoft
Make Better Decisions Using Power Bi
Data is collected every second in businesses. From a customer complaint through your contact form to the latest shipment delivery, data tells the story of how your business operates, the areas of challenge, and areas of opportunity.
But many companies can’t read the story because they don’t have anything beyond basic data visualization tools. Power Bi is an application that will easily allow you to harness all data points in your business and bring them together to learn meaningful insights.
The tool uses AI to enable the identification of the most meaningful information and best data cross-references to gain better insights into running your business.
Power Automate to Reduce Costly Manual Tasks
It’s estimated that the cost of each manual entry for an HR person is $4.70. When you have repetitive manual entry tasks, those costs can quickly add up to thousands of dollars per month across your company.
Integrating your systems so you can automate processes sounds great, but many businesses aren’t sure how to do it. Power Automate in the Microsoft Power Platform helps make the path to automation more straightforward.
This low-code, drag-and-drop tool includes hundreds of pre-built connectors that enable companies to quickly automate those time-consuming manual tasks to free up worker productivity time and reduce entry error rates.
Give Customers the Attention They Want with Power Virtual Agents
Thirty-seven percent of consumers use virtual chatbots to get an immediate response to a question. In an age where instant gratification has become an expectation of customers, it can be hard for a small business to keep up.
But using a smart, AI-powered chatbot on your website can give you a 24/7 customer service agent that’s there to answer common questions, even if they come in during the wee hours of the morning.
Power Virtual Agents simplifies the process of creating and deploying your own smart chatbots, so you can engage with more customers to drive sales conversions.
Learn More About Leveraging Technology for Your Small Business
Rocky Knoll Technologies can help your Charlotte area business explore solutions like Microsoft Power Apps and other digital tools to improve your bottom line.
Schedule a consultation by calling 704.594.7292 or reach us online.
