Revolutionising Supply Chain Management with Microsoft Power Platform
Reading time ~ 5-10 minutes
Introduction
If you work in supply chain and are tired of the first hour of your day being wasted by manually downloading files from various systems, or still manage your inventory on outdated excel files that often break, then buckle up - because this article is for you! We will explain in just 5-10 minutes how you can eliminate all of those mundane, repetitive activities so you can focus on the more stimulating work that actually drives your business forward.
Let’s first talk about technology. You may be thinking “this all sounds nice, but won’t I need to invest in some new software to do this?” The answer is a resounding no! At our core, we believe supply chain automation doesn’t have to mean overhauling your entire tech stack and paying for new software. Many of these automation activities can be managed solely with Microsoft Power Platform.
Power Platform is a collection of tools consisting of Power BI, Power Automate, Power Pages and Power Apps that most organisations usually already have available at their fingertips. A simple way to confirm this is to check whether your company uses an outlook email system: if so, then you are very likely to have access to these tools for free.
Let us break down further how these tools can revolutionise your Supply Chain at minimal cost.
Where The Frustrations Usually Start
Through our work in supply chain teams, we have seen a few common challenges over and over again:
Replenishment processes that rely on someone manually updating and analysing excel spreadsheets to figure out how much product to order next - often leading to delays, errors, over-ordering, or worst of all, an unhappy customer who didn’t get product.
Stock reconciliation again managed by spreadsheets - but lacking the functionality or information you need to keep on top of discrepancies on a daily basis.
Sales reporting pulled together manually from different systems, often using outdated or inconsistent data. Bonus points if you are always having to calculate and share a month-end sales estimate for the rest of the business.
Approval workflows that depend on emails or verbal sign-off, creating bottlenecks and making it hard to track what’s been actioned.
Disconnected systems that don’t talk to each other, meaning key data has to be entered multiple times or manually aligned across platforms.
These are the kinds of issues that make it harder to respond quickly, spot problems early, or scale efficiently. The ultimate consequence of inefficient processes is that you could be at risk of stockout, affecting your sales & negatively impacting your customer satisfaction.
Why Power Platform
We already mentioned that Power Platform should be easily accessible to most supply chain professionals at no cost, so now we will dig more into Power Platform functionality itself and how it can help you eliminate those boring tasks.
Let’s take the example of inventory reporting. In one of my previous roles, to get a full picture of inventory across all of the company’s network, we needed to:
Manually download seven datasets from various systems (sales from SAP, stock from email reports, etc.).
Upload these reports manually into an excel macro. If you were unlucky, the macro crashed and you had to start again.
If you were lucky, you could move on to the next glorious step of checking for any random errors and updating any master data tables.
Now you have to assess the situation - are there any products selling more units than usual? Any low volume products that sold out overnight? Any high movers which have suddenly lost demand?
After this you would be ready to start manually assessing orders to place - and suddenly the order deadline is fast approaching… no time to double check… and off the orders go!
This was on a good day. On a bad one, the Supply Chain Manager may have piled on several supply chain issues that needed resolving immediately, leaving you with less time to evaluate orders quantities. Ultimately there is risk here with rushing and ending up with a situation where you over-order (and have additional warehousing costs) or under-order (and risk stocking out).
Luckily, this is where Power Platform can save you - at no additional software cost. Let’s look at each bullet point again, but taking advantage of the Power Platform tools instead:
Depending on the report type, you can use Power Automate (or Power BI) to automatically obtain & send data to where it needs to go.
Power BI will replace the excel macros to form an all-in-one data platform to manage inventory. You will be able to set up Power BI to refresh all your data sources from Step 1 automatically.
You can integrate any master data tables you may have into Power BI as well. Ideally, we leverage your source-of-truth systems to provide this information (e.g. SAP), but we understand these systems may not provide exactly what you need for your reports. You can also use Power Automate to set up alerts to make you aware of any problems with your data.
Power BI will automatically refresh with any key KPIs you need to track - e.g. any unusual trends, or stockout risks. We can also set up email alerts to any relevant stakeholders (again using Power BI).
We can also use Power BI to automatically calculate any orders you need to place based on demand. We can even use Power Automate to email you the data, or Power Apps to set up a mechanism for you to “adjust and approve”. The opportunities are endless.
In a nutshell, Power Platform can automate every aspect of this process. We may sound like a broken record now, but just to highlight again that this is all possible with software your company likely already has access to - so no additional costs. From our perspective it’s a no brainer to leverage these tools!
Other Opportunities in Supply Chain
We touched on inventory management, but we can apply the same logic to other supply chain processes to build fast, flexible solutions with Power Platform that slot into your existing ecosystem.
Below we flag the key opportunities:
Automating replenishment triggers based on live stock levels and sales data, cutting down on shortages and overstock.
Replacing manual reconciliation with automated reporting that highlights mismatches and trends as they happen.
Building intuitive dashboards with Power BI that give you real-time visibility into orders, stock, suppliers, and performance.
Creating simple, mobile-friendly apps in Power Apps to track tasks, approvals, or deliveries - making it easier for teams on the ground to stay aligned.
Designing automated approval flows in Power Automate that reduce delays and improve audit trails.
These tools sit alongside your existing systems, so we can get results quickly - no lengthy implementation projects or excessive change controls needed.
Benefits of Automation & Simplification
We may be stating the obvious, but automation & simplification of manual processes frees teams up to focus on more strategic work. We strongly believe that work should be stimulating - which is not achieved by manually downloading and refreshing excel files. Elimination of these manual activities lets your employees use the creative side of their brain and ultimately leads to a happier workforce that will take your business to the next level.
We also typically see:
Faster, more confident decisions thanks to real-time insights
Fewer errors and manual handovers in key processes
More engaged teams, because the systems are built around how they actually work
A smoother path to scale, because the automation grows with your business
In conclusion, this is all about easy-to-make improvements, using off-the-shelf tools, to streamline your operations at minimal cost.
Want To Know More?
If the above resonated with you, we offer free 30-minute consultations to help you scope out further where Power Platform could help automate your operations. In these sessions, we will talk through your current setup, any pain points, and show you what automation could look like for your team.
If you want to go further, we can support you with building these applications. We are up-front about our costs, competitive, and can guarantee it will be cheaper than investing in new software (which often come with annual licence costs)!
So if that sounds good… hit the button below! We look forward to meeting you & discussing further.