I spend a lot of my time working with large organisations on Dynamics 365 implementations. Wessex Water, Gridserve, Park Holidays, Defra. These are big projects with big budgets and big teams. But one of the things I keep coming back to is how much of the Microsoft Power Platform is genuinely useful for small businesses, and how few small business owners actually know about it.
Most small business owners hear "Microsoft" and think of Word, Excel and Outlook. Maybe Teams. That is about where it ends. But Microsoft has quietly built a set of tools that can automate, streamline and modernise how a small business operates, and it does not require a developer or a massive budget to get started.
Let me break it down properly.
What is Power Platform, in plain English?
Power Platform is a collection of four tools from Microsoft. Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI and Power Virtual Agents. For most small businesses, the first three are the ones that matter, so I will focus on those.
Think of it this way. Power Apps lets you build simple applications without being a programmer. Power Automate lets you connect different systems and automate repetitive tasks. Power BI lets you create dashboards and reports from your business data. All three work together, and all three integrate with the Microsoft tools you are probably already using.
If you are already paying for Microsoft 365, you might already have access to some of these tools and not even know it.
Power Apps: build your own tools
Power Apps is probably the most useful part of Power Platform for small businesses, and also the most misunderstood. It is not a replacement for proper software development. What it is, is a way to build simple, focused applications that solve specific problems in your business.
Let me give you a real example. A client of mine runs a facilities management company with about thirty staff. They were tracking all their maintenance jobs on a shared Excel spreadsheet. It worked, sort of, but people kept overwriting each other's entries, nobody knew which version was current and the owner had no visibility of what was happening in real time.
We built a Power App in about two days. Staff log jobs on their phones, the data goes into a proper database, the owner has a live dashboard showing what is open, what is in progress and what is complete. No more spreadsheet chaos. Total cost including my time was under two thousand pounds, and the ongoing licence cost is essentially zero because they were already on Microsoft 365 Business Premium.
That is the sweet spot for Power Apps. Internal tools, data collection, approval workflows, simple line of business applications. Things that are too specific for off the shelf software but too simple to justify a proper custom development project.
Where Power Apps falls down is when people try to use it for complex, customer facing applications. It is not designed for that. If you need a proper web application or a SaaS product, you need proper development. But for internal operational tools? It is genuinely brilliant.
Power Automate: stop doing things manually
Power Automate is the one that makes me wonder why every small business is not using it already. If you have repetitive tasks that involve moving information between systems, sending notifications or following a set process, Power Automate can probably handle it.
Here are some examples of what I have helped small businesses automate. When a new enquiry comes in through a website contact form, automatically create a record in the CRM, send a confirmation email to the customer and notify the sales team in a Teams channel. When an invoice is overdue by seven days, automatically send a reminder email and flag it on the owner's dashboard. When a new employee starts, automatically create their user accounts, send them their onboarding documents and assign them to the right Teams channels.
Each of these used to be manual tasks that someone had to remember to do. Now they just happen. The time savings add up quickly, but the real value is consistency. Automated processes do not forget things. They do not have bad days. They do not go on holiday.
Power Automate connects to hundreds of different services. Microsoft tools obviously, but also Salesforce, Slack, Dropbox, Google Workspace, Mailchimp and pretty much anything with an API. So even if you are not fully in the Microsoft ecosystem, you can still use it.
The learning curve is reasonable. If you are comfortable with Excel formulas, you can probably build basic Power Automate flows. For more complex stuff, you might want some help getting started, but once the flows are built they basically run themselves.
Power BI: actually understand your numbers
Every business owner I know has data. Sales figures, customer information, financial records, operational metrics. Most of them are looking at that data in spreadsheets or, worse, not looking at it at all. Power BI takes that data and turns it into interactive dashboards and reports that actually tell you something useful.
I use Power BI with Crocodile and CampSuite to track the metrics that matter. Monthly recurring revenue, churn, customer acquisition costs, support ticket volumes. All of it is pulled automatically from our various systems and presented in a dashboard that I check every morning. I do not have to ask anyone for a report or wait for month end figures. The data is just there, live, all the time.
For a small business, Power BI can connect to your accounting software, your CRM, your website analytics, your spreadsheets, your databases. It pulls the data together and lets you see patterns and trends that you would never spot looking at individual systems in isolation.
The desktop version of Power BI is free. Completely free. You can connect to your data sources, build dashboards and analyse your business without spending a penny. If you want to share those dashboards with other people in your organisation, you need Power BI Pro, which is about eight pounds per user per month. That is astonishingly good value for what you get.
What does it actually cost?
Pricing is where it gets a bit complicated, so let me try to simplify it. If you are already on Microsoft 365 Business Premium, which a lot of small businesses are, you get basic versions of Power Apps and Power Automate included. Power BI Desktop is free. So you might be able to get started without spending anything extra at all.
If you need the full versions, Power Apps is around fifteen pounds per user per month for the premium plan. Power Automate is around twelve pounds per user per month. Power BI Pro is about eight pounds per user per month. These prices change regularly, so check Microsoft's current pricing, but those are the ballpark figures.
Compared to the cost of custom software development or even the subscription fees for specialist tools, this is very affordable. A five person team on Power Apps Premium would cost less than a hundred pounds a month. Try getting custom software built for that.
When it does not make sense
I would not be giving you honest advice if I did not tell you when Power Platform is the wrong choice. And there are definitely situations where it is.
If you need a customer facing application that needs to be polished, branded and scalable, Power Apps is not the right tool. Build it properly with proper developers. If you have complex data processing requirements or need real time integration with high transaction volumes, Power Automate might not be robust enough. If your team is already comfortable with other tools and switching would be disruptive, the migration cost might not be worth it.
Power Platform is also firmly in the Microsoft ecosystem. If your business runs on Google Workspace and you are not planning to change, you can still use Power Platform, but it will not feel as seamless as it does for Microsoft shops.
And there is a skills question. While Power Platform is designed to be used by non developers, there is still a learning curve. If nobody in your business has the time or inclination to learn these tools, they will just sit unused. In that case, you might be better off with simpler, more specialised tools that require less setup.
Where to start
If any of this sounds interesting, here is my practical recommendation. Start with one small problem. Not a massive digital transformation project. One annoying manual process or one report you wish you had.
Build a Power Automate flow that automates something you currently do manually. Or build a Power BI dashboard that shows you your key business metrics. Keep it simple. Get it working. See the value. Then expand from there.
The businesses I have seen get the most value from Power Platform are the ones that started small, proved the concept and then gradually expanded their use. The ones that tried to do everything at once usually ended up overwhelmed and frustrated.
If you want help figuring out where to start, that is something I do regularly as part of my consulting work. A couple of hours looking at your business processes can usually identify three or four quick wins that would make a real difference. And you do not need to be a big enterprise to benefit from it. That is sort of the whole point.
