What is business process automation?

Before delving into SharePoint’s capabilities, it is important to understand what business process automation, or BPA, is. BPA means using technology to automate complex business processes and functions that exceed conventional data processing and entry tasks. Essentially, its aim is to streamline and optimize workflows and reduce the number of manual activities.

SharePoint plays a significant role in implementing BPA by providing a collaboration platform that allows organizations to automate routine tasks, manage content, and facilitate smooth communication between teams.

Does your company need SharePoint automation?

To determine whether your company needs SharePoint automation, assess current workflows, identify bottlenecks, and recognize improvement opportunities. If your organization faces recurring tasks, challenges in document management, and working effectively together, SharePoint may be the right solution.

Automation can significantly reduce human errors, improve consistency, and free up valuable time so that employees can focus on more strategic tasks. SharePoint’s automation capabilities can be customized according to the specific needs of your organization, making it a suitable solution for companies of any size.

How to use SharePoint for business process automation?

Operational inefficiencies can lead to significant revenue loss. Market research firm IDC estimates that companies lose 20–30% of revenue annually due to inefficient processes. Using SharePoint workflows helps manage and automate various processes—from collecting signatures and feedback to monitoring routine activities.

Below we’ll explore in more detail how SharePoint can be used to automate workflows and provide an overview of other Microsoft 365 solutions that, when integrated, further increase productivity.

Real-time updates using SharePoint notifications

Stay informed of changes in various documents and files using SharePoint notifications This way, you receive notifications every time a file or folder important to you is changed. Users can easily set up notifications and alerts in SharePoint for lists, libraries, folders, files, or specific SharePoint rights or groups. The result is fewer situations where important documents or files have changed without the employees who use them daily being aware.

Set up confirmation flows

With Power Automate, you can activate the functionality of confirmation flows in SharePoint, especially for documents containing sensitive information. By creating document confirmation flows, you can smoothly manage document approval. Documents awaiting approval remain hidden until they have successfully gone through the process. This ensures a controlled and secure workflow so that important documents are visible only after all necessary approvals have been obtained.

Using SharePoint workflows to simplify processes

SharePoint-based workflows offer a versatile solution to solve common business problems, from approvals and feedback to digital signatures, task management, and content publication. For example, collecting signatures or requesting document approval requires manual effort but could be easily automated with SharePoint.

Task management and tracking, including forwarding documents and sending reminders, often requires significant additional work. This can be burdensome for you and your colleagues. Using SharePoint workflow templates automates specific tasks. For example, a SharePoint document approval workflow automates the review, tracking, and management of automatic reminders and forwarding during the document collaboration process.

In situations where tasks are delayed or other problems arise, existing workflows generate notifications that keep you informed. This not only reduces the need for constant manual monitoring but also ensures that you are immediately notified of any deviations in the workflow. Overall, SharePoint’s built-in workflows alleviate the burden of manual intervention in repetitive processes.

Using Power Automate in SharePoint

Power Automate, integrated with Microsoft Lists, SharePoint, and OneDrive, allows you to easily create workflows that save work time. Such automated flows help maintain consistency and efficiency in routine tasks. Power Automate extends possibilities even beyond SharePoint, covering various Microsoft 365 services and third-party applications if needed.

Here are several ways you can use Power Automate in SharePoint:

• Data collection: Simplify data collection from Excel sheets, PDF files, and other documents. This speeds up the data acquisition, validation, and report generation process and improves data-driven decision-making.
• Document processing: Power Automate allows you to automatically collect information from forms, PDFs, images, emails, and various data sources. This lets you create and share documents faster.
• Workflow automation: Simplify and automate key steps in work processes. For example, you can automate tasks such as checking inventory, placing orders, filling invoices, and sending information to customers. Automating these routine processes saves valuable time and reduces the volume of lower value-added manual work.
• Automating the flow of critical information: Ensure efficient handling of important documents and business information. Power Automate integrates seamlessly with SharePoint, offering numerous connections and “plugs.” This simplifies activities such as obtaining email attachments, monitoring social media updates, managing tasks, and much more. Additionally, you can automatically save and share this information with your colleagues, regardless of their location.
• Automating manual and external party-related processes: Simplify processes that involve extra steps, such as data verification, sales information validation, and other workflows. Use the opportunities arising from SharePoint tools and various extensions to increase the accuracy and efficiency of task execution.
• Automating repetitive work processes: Maximize your workday and reduce the time spent on activities from hours to minutes. Power Automate allows you to automate tasks such as sending emails, creating tasks in Planner, and sending messages to the team. This not only saves time but also ensures that routine processes operate consistently.

Joined forces with Microsoft Teams

SharePoint’s integration with Microsoft Teams opens up even more possibilities for collaboration automation. Create automated channels where activities in SharePoint trigger notifications or updates in Teams, raising team collaboration to a new level.

For example, you can automatically notify a Teams channel when a new document is uploaded to SharePoint, ensuring that relevant team members are informed without separate communication or sending an email.

User-friendly forms and data validation

Use SharePoint and Power Apps to create user-friendly forms. These forms can then be added to SharePoint, automating data entry. Apply validation rules to the data entered to ensure its correctness. Automatically collecting data through customized forms not only reduces errors associated with manual data entry but also improves the overall user experience. This supports the adoption of the Microsoft 365 platform throughout the company.

In summary

To survive in the competitive market, company processes must be efficient. SharePoint is a great tool for achieving this, offering powerful automation features that improve collaboration and productivity. Assess your company’s needs, use SharePoint workflows, and adopt Power Automate for process automation. If it’s not quite clear how, then we’re happy to help you navigate the possibilities— contact us.

We have helped many companies increase efficiency using Microsoft 365 platforms, including SharePoint workflows, Power Automate, and Power Apps. Our goal is to provide tools for more effective business process management and their management. Over 15 years of SharePoint consulting and development experience allows us to offer solutions for tasks of various sizes and complexity.

Regardless of your role in the company, SharePoint Online has something to offer you. For this, we have highlighted some practical uses of SharePoint Online and common pitfalls to avoid.

But what is SharePoint Online?

SharePoint Online, unlike SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2017, is part of the Microsoft 365 suite – a cloud-based service intended for businesses of all sizes. It allows teams to collaborate in an efficient and secure environment. From storing documents to managing projects, SharePoint Online offers a variety of functions.
And best of all – it comes FREE with Microsoft 365 subscriptions.

What SharePoint Online is great for?

• • Document management and collaboration: One of the main strengths of SharePoint is a host of useful functionalities that facilitate document handling within a company. It serves as a central place where your team can store, share, and collaboratively work on documents, reducing email and multiple file version confusion. SharePoint Online ensures secure document storage, using Microsoft’s top-level security measures. This means your important business documents are protected against unauthorized access and potential cyber-attacks.
• • Team sites: Create sites tailored to your team or project needs. Each site can be unique or use site templates to create a standard structure for each project. Each site can establish team access, design, links, folder structure, content pages, and much more. Site creation can also be automated. A team site offers a unified environment for sharing team or project information and documents, facilitating easier collaboration, and keeping the team updated with the latest project information.
• • Integration with Office 365: Collaborating with colleagues in Word or Excel stored in SharePoint is convenient and quick, mirroring a SharePoint page or documents in Teams is just a few clicks away, and Forms surveys can be easily added to any SharePoint page. These are just a few examples of the tightly integrated services on the MS 365 platform.
• • Corporate Intranet: SharePoint Online enables the creation of a central platform where employees can find company news, events, employee contacts, view upcoming birthdays, and access other important materials. Thanks to a customizable user interface, every company can create an intranet that reflects their brand and corporate culture.
• • Workflow automation: Say goodbye to manually doing tedious tasks! With PowerAutomate, SharePoint allows for the automation of daily simple workflows, such as document approval or onboarding processes, saving time and reducing errors. Automation can be implemented for each employee’s tasks or create automated processes for the entire company.
• • HR processes management: SharePoint efficiently manages processes such as vacation planning, employee arrivals and departures, and other personnel-related procedures. Employees can easily submit vacation requests, track their vacation balances, and managers can quickly approve or reject these requests, making the whole process smoother and more transparent.
• • Quality management: SharePoint Online is particularly useful for companies that must adhere to ISO standards or other quality management requirements. SharePoint makes it easy to store and manage quality manuals, procedures, ISO documents, and other quality-related documents. Thanks to the precise application of access rights in SharePoint, only the right people have access to the right important documents, ensuring compliance and easy access to necessary information.

This list is far from exhaustive but gives a little insight into how the SharePoint Online platform can be implemented in a company.

What SharePoint Online is not great for?

• Replacement for a database system: Although SharePoint is excellent for managing various types of information, it does not replace a database system. SharePoint lists can store information like tables and relate tables to each other, but it is not a relational database and is not suitable for large data volumes.
• • Complex project management: For complex project management needs, a better choice might be specialized software – like Microsoft Project. SharePoint is well-suited for simple to medium complexity project tracking but may not suffice for complex project management.
• • For a homepage or external web: SharePoint Online is primarily intended for internal company use and is not a good choice as a platform for a public homepage or external web. While SharePoint allows creating web pages, it is not intended for complex, high-traffic public websites where advanced SEO features and customized user experiences are necessary. Simpler external web pages can be created using PowerApps Pages.
• • Warehouse system or ERP: SharePoint Online is not intended for warehouse management and logistics. Although it allows for document management and data storage, it lacks specific functions necessary for efficient warehouse management, such as inventory tracking, shipment tracking, or complex logistics management.

Common Challenges and How to Overcome them

• • Not knowing how to start: Implementing SharePoint Online might initially seem daunting, especially without prior experience with similar platforms. Like with anything, it is recommended to start with a goal – what SharePoint will be used for? Often the initial plan includes everything – intranet, document management, CRM, etc. Then the plan should be divided into stages, and each stage further detailed. Certainly, involving an external specialist to help the team better understand the system and more clearly turn the goal into a concrete action plan can be helpful.
• • Lack of knowledge about system capabilities and fear of breaking something: Ignorance about the capabilities and functions of SharePoint Online can cause fear of misusing the system or “breaking something.” To address this concern, it is important to involve an external SharePoint expert and organize thorough trainings or workshops focused on the system’s capabilities and best practices. Often, there is a fear that an external expert is a major expense for the company – but in practice, the cost of initially doing it yourself and later reaching the point where external help is essential turns out to be much greater.
• • Employee adaptation: Introducing a new tool can be challenging and create resistance among people. Our recommendation is always to start with a small group of people who are curious and enthusiastic about trying new solutions. If a test group of people is already ‘on board,’ then later they also remain support persons for the rest of the collective, from whom to seek advice and encouragement.
• • Management: Establish clear guidelines on how SharePoint should be used in your organization to avoid misuse or information overload. Creating guides and support materials that help users understand and effectively use the system should certainly be considered. Keep guides and support materials using the SharePoint platform itself.

SharePoint Online is a versatile tool that significantly improves your company’s collaboration and efficiency. However, it is important to understand its capabilities, potential limitations, and follow best practices to get the most out of it.

Do you need more guidance or want to explore how SharePoint Online fits into your company? Definitely contact us, and we’ll make your business operations smoother and more efficient!