The Microsoft Power Platform offers an abundance of opportunities to digitally transform Financial Services organisations. We’ve explored how these can empower Financial Services when combined with intelligent automation and Microsoft Copilot.

The Microsoft Power Platform provides an array of robust tools that enable Financial Services organisations to streamline operations and enhance decision-making through automation. In-depth exploration of the five key components of the Power Platform – Power Automate, Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents, Power BI and Power Pages – highlights how each, alongside the exciting new Microsoft Copilot, supports financial institutions when paired with intelligent automation.

It’s time to discover where the Microsoft Power Platform can extract the most value and understand where its tools can best be implemented across Financial Services organisations…

Accelerate and automate

In the fast-paced Financial Services landscape, there is no room for time-consuming, repetitive tasks. Power Automate is a game-changer for task and workflow automation, with the ability to connect various applications and services from the Microsoft stack and beyond.

To speed up approval processes, Power Automate can be used to create approval workflows for financial transactions, such as loan approvals or expense reimbursements. This eliminates manual reviews and accelerates decision-making, driving improved customer satisfaction.

With the ease of integration with data sources like Excel and SharePoint, Power Automate enables financial data to be automatically entered and updated to reduce the risk of human error. Financial Services organisations can also benefit from automated notification systems to ensure employees are kept up-to-date with real-time data. For example, notifications can be enabled about market changes, account updates or compliance alerts to improve employee efficiencies.

Tailored apps for Financial Services

Being a low-code development platform, Power Apps’ extensive functionalities enable the creation of custom applications both with and without deep coding expertise. This makes the Power Platform adaptable and flexible, suited to a variety of technical skill sets across your organisation.

A clear use case for this within Financial Services is client onboarding. Automated onboarding processes can be developed, integrating with different systems to gather customer information, perform background checks and initiate account setup. Telefónica Tech used the Power Platform to digitise Virgin Money’s business banking customer onboarding process, reducing application times from days to minutes – watch our Virgin Money video case study series to learn more.

Microsoft’s new release, Copilot, also integrates with the Microsoft Power Platform. Power Apps Copilot can now harness the capabilities of Copilot’s natural language processing to deliver a ‘prompt and response’ engagement style approach when generating apps. To continually improve performance, Copilot can generate detailed insight reports from various data sources to aid decision-making.

Advanced customer interactions

Artificial intelligence (AI) powered customer service agents within Power Virtual Agents drive accelerated efficiencies in responding to customer support queries. In the new era of bot building, generative AI within Power Virtual Agents moves beyond pre-built customer query dialogues to extracting answers from knowledge sources to provide support. Examples of knowledge sources that can be linked to Power Virtual Agents include: an external website, an internal SharePoint or separate documents.

Virtual agents can be automated to handle routine customer queries within Financial Services, such as account balances, transaction history or general inquiries. This frees up human agent time for more complex support tasks, where Copilot can help agents by automating responses to customers, ensuring quick and accurate assistance.

To prevent fraudulent activity, AI models undergo continuous training to recognise and prevent fraud. Power Virtual Agents can automate fraud detection processes by engaging with customer to verify unusual transactions, saving valuable time.

Data-driven insights

From a business intelligence perspective, Power BI provides advanced data visualisation capabilities to enable organisations to make data-driven decisions with speed and precision. By enhancing Power BI with intelligent automation, Financial Services organisations can benefit from automated distribution of performance reports to stakeholders, ensuring transparency and accountability. Alerts can also be automated, triggered when certain financial metrics reach critical thresholds to enable swift actions to be taken.

Why wait? Realise the potential of the Power Platform today!

The Power Platform holds limitless opportunities to enhance the customer and employee experience within Financial Services, on top of completely revolutionising business processes. Get in touch with our team of Financial Services experts to find out how you can make the most out of the Power Platform and intelligent automation.