Power Automate at Bayer

Navicon implemented Microsoft Power Automate at Bayer, an international concern specializing in biomedical solutions for healthcare and agriculture. This company is a world leader, our long-standing client, the work with which was built in such a way that we would quickly learn about the needs of the customer and could offer the best solution.

This time, the customer was faced with the problem of automating the routine work performed by an analyst in the financial department as part of the preparation of monthly reports. The Bayer analyst was doing a lot of manual work on the data in Excel, then feeding it into the analytics system. Manual work took at least 40% of the working time and, in addition, increased the risk of the occurrence of errors.

We offer low-code \ no-code products that are current now not only to new, but also to existing customers. Therefore, as soon as we learned about the difficulties of the financial department associated with manual reporting, we immediately offered to set up a software robot that would relieve a user from routine operations and speed up the process generally.

The most interesting thing is that in the project we used an approach as close as possible to the very idea of low-code\no-code solutions. Specifically, we did the project not with the IT department of the customer, but with a business user - with an analyst from the financial department of the customer company. The essence of our work on the project was to show the analyst that it was not necessary to be an IT specialist to set up a robot - for this the knowledge of a business user is enough. During the execution of the project, we showed the user the main aspects of creating a robot applicable to his/her task and helped to solve the difficulties that arose.

As a result, the business user has independently configured the robot, which has more than 700 actions and helps to reduce the duration of the monthly reporting process by 4 times.

When discussing the project, we made a comparison for the customer between various RPA platforms and, as a result, decided to opt for the Power Automate Desktop product from Microsoft. This product not only has good functionality and is quite easy to use but is also continuously and very actively developing. In addition, the customer liked its availability - just download it and you can use it.

At the moment, the customer is using the desktop version of the Power Automate, the robot starts at the user's request. The client notes the following conveniences of the solution for his/her purposes:

• system performance

• convenient, intuitive interface

• ability to work on any device

• convenient mobile version

• lots of new features that are implemented by standard means without code knowledge

• ease of connecting different applications, including the Power BI.

The project implemented not only resolved the specific difficulties faced by the business, but also allowed us to plan further work. For example, it is planned to implement the ability to start the robot fully automatically, in unattended mode. To do this, it is planned set up a flow in cloud Power Automate that will run a robot on a schedule in Power Automate Desktop using the Unattended RPA add-on.

As of the end of March, we are discussing with the client options for further creation of robots for the financial department: based on the experience gained within the project, the business user began to independently configure other robots that will facilitate his work and the work of his department. In addition, the success of the project has generated interest in the technology in related departments of the company, which also plan to start using it.

Over the past year, despite external challenges, we have done a great job aimed at popularizing low-code technologies. We expanded our team of low-code specialists by almost 10 times and launched networking, which ensures the involvement of employees from other departments – we hold regular meetings, meetups, where we share interesting ways of using low-code applications with all employees, which helps them to take a fresh look at one's current projects and tasks. This applies not only to technical specialists, but also to project managers, employees of sales and marketing departments, which ensures a comprehensive immersion of the company in this subject.

The company's management has included selling of low-code platforms in the KPIs of sales staff, which means an additional incentive to discuss areas of application of technologies with current and new customers. The marketing department has also broadened the information on low-code platforms on the company's website, held several advertising campaigns on the topic of Power Automate and Power Apps. In addition, as part of co-marketing, As part of the work of the sales team with current customers, a number of needs were identified that could be met best by the possibilities of the Power Platform.