The best Power Automate projects usually start with boring repetitive admin. Not glamorous AI demos. Not a grand modernisation programme. Boring admin. That is exactly where the value is, because boring admin is where your staff lose hours every week to copying, chasing and retyping.
Power Automate is most useful when it removes small, repetitive tasks that happen every day. The goal is not to automate everything. The goal is to remove friction, reduce errors and free people from work a computer should be doing. Here are the kinds of things we build for clients as a Power Automate consultant.
Good candidates for automation
- A process has a clear trigger, such as a form submission, new email, uploaded file or date.
- The same steps happen repeatedly.
- Information is copied between systems or spreadsheets.
- Approval is needed from one or more people.
- People regularly chase for updates.
- The process needs an audit trail.
If a process ticks three or more of these, it is probably worth automating.
Practical workflow examples
| Example | Trigger | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase approval | Microsoft Form or SharePoint list item. | Approval request, decision log and notification to requester. |
| Invoice processing | Invoice uploaded or emailed. | Metadata capture, approval routing and archive to SharePoint. |
| New starter onboarding | HR submits starter details. | Tasks created, IT notified, accounts requested and manager updated. |
| Quote or proposal generation | Form or CRM input. | Word template populated, PDF generated and saved to SharePoint. |
| Customer enquiry triage | Email received or website form submitted. | Lead categorised, assigned and follow-up reminder created. |
| Policy acknowledgement | Document published. | Staff prompted to confirm reading and report generated. |
Notice none of these are exotic. That is the point. The onboarding one alone typically saves an hour of back-and-forth per new starter, and it means IT actually hears about new people before their first day for once.
Discovery checklist
| Check | Why it matters | Evidence / decision required | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Process owner | Automation needs a business owner, not just a technical builder. | Named owner and approvers. | |
| Exception handling | Real processes always have exceptions. | List of failure scenarios and who acts. | |
| Data source | Flows are only as reliable as the data they use. | Forms, Lists, SharePoint, Excel, APIs, email. | |
| Licence impact | Premium connectors can affect cost. | Connector list and licensing check. |
What not to automate first
- Broken processes that nobody owns.
- Processes with unclear rules or constant exceptions.
- Critical finance or HR flows without testing and audit.
- Anything relying on one person's mailbox unless that is a deliberate design.
- Excel files used as databases without considering SharePoint Lists, Dataverse or proper systems.
Automating a broken process gives you a faster broken process. Fix the process, then automate it. And that Excel file someone treats as the company database? That is a conversation worth having before you build flows on top of it.
Practical recommendation: start with one visible workflow that saves time every week. Deliver it properly, prove the value, then build an automation backlog. SMEs do not need an automation empire on day one.
Microsoft's Power Automate documentation is genuinely good if you want to tinker yourself. When the flows start touching invoices, HR or client data, that is usually when it makes sense to get them built properly.
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