Automation of repetitive business processes using Power Automate, forms and integrations — deterministic, auditable and considerably cheaper than an AI approach.
Most of it is not AI
There is a reasonable amount of money currently being spent on AI to solve problems that a rule and a form would handle better.
The repetitive work in a typical business is overwhelmingly deterministic. When this form is submitted, notify that person. When a request sits unapproved for two days, escalate it. When an invoice arrives from this supplier, file it here and create the record. None of that requires judgement, and none of it benefits from a system that occasionally produces something creative.
Rule-based automation is cheaper, entirely predictable, auditable, and it does not fabricate. For this category of work those properties beat intelligence comprehensively.
Where AI does belong
The dividing line is whether the task requires judgement or handles genuinely unstructured input.
Extracting data from documents that arrive in inconsistent formats. Categorising free-text enquiries. Summarising something long so a person can decide what to do with it.
Those are real AI use cases and they are a minority of the automation opportunities in most businesses. When we assess, most of the list turns out to be rules — which is good news, because rules cost less and break less.
Fix the process before automating it
The most valuable part of an automation engagement is frequently the mapping, before anything is built.
Documenting what actually happens — including the workarounds people have developed, which usually exist for good reasons nobody recorded — reliably surfaces steps that serve no current purpose. An approval that exists because of a decision made in 2017. A form filled in and filed and never read. A report generated weekly and opened by nobody.
Removing those is free and immediate. Automating them entrenches them and makes them faster.
You probably have the licensing
Most Microsoft 365 plans include a level of Power Automate covering workflows within Microsoft services. Premium connectors for external systems and databases cost more.
That means a substantial amount of useful automation is configuration time against software you already pay for, which changes the economics considerably. Worth establishing what you have before assuming anything needs buying.
Start small and visible
The best first automation is high-frequency, rule-based, and currently irritating to everyone involved. Leave approvals, staff onboarding checklists, recurring reports.
Not the most complex process in the business, however appealing. A first automation that works and is visibly useful makes the case for the next five. An ambitious one that stalls halfway makes the case against.
Give it an owner
Automation that runs unattended and silently stops is worse than no automation, because the step everyone assumes is happening is not.
Failure notifications, a named owner, and documentation of what it does and what it depends on. Undocumented automation built by someone who has since left is a recurring problem we get called in to unpick, and it is entirely avoidable at build time.