

In any aspect of your business, you must have a clear understanding of what goals your business wants to achieve before you can develop action steps to work towards those goals. Step 1 – Be clear on your business goals. To harness the power of Microsoft 365 integration, read on. The magic happens because all of these applications are part of the broader Microsoft 365 platform and come already integrated with each other. As part of your subscription, you will receive access to a range of applications such as SharePoint, Outlook and Planner. This is one area where the Microsoft 365 platform truly shines. Unfortunately, this is the point at which many integration efforts stall due to lack of time and technical resources. Although the tools are continually improving, you will still need some level of technical expertise to build these integrations and maintain them over time. Most modern applications offer some ability to integrate through API’s, and with third party integration tools such as Power Automate, some level of DIY integration is possible. Leveraging the power of app integration is the key to driving quality and efficiency of operations.

Ironically this can result in decreased quality and efficiency as we wrestle with the gap between applications, often by plugging that gap with human labour. The inevitable outcome of this is to find yourself with an ever-expanding stack of subscription-based applications in use, each of which does one thing very well, but all with very little app integration between each other. The prevalence of cloud apps sold on a subscription model has resulted in a tidal wave of options for everything from HR management to sales, marketing, finance and every other facet of running a business that you care to name. With technology at the heart of modern business this means that (as we hear so often) – “There’s an app for that”.

Every business has a multitude of processes and functions that must be performed in order to deliver value to stakeholders and ultimately remain in business.
