Business process automation is no longer just a buzzword. Organizations today manage an increasingly complex tech stack, making it nearly impossible to track every process manually. Disparate teams and vast amounts of information further complicate coordination, leading to inefficiencies and errors.
SharePoint is a part of your Microsoft 365 ecosystem that provides a powerful solution for automating repetitive tasks, reducing human error, and streamlining workflows. More than just a document management tool, it is a central hub to enhance operational efficiency across departments.
Let’s take a closer look at how SharePoint can transform business processes.
Some Use Cases of SharePoint Business Process Automation
The list of industries that can leverage SharePoint for automation is virtually limitless. Any business scenario involving repetitive tasks can benefit from streamlined processes.
Take a contracting firm, for example. Approving contract sums often requires multiple levels of verification. Amounts under $10K might only need a supervisor’s approval, while contracts exceeding $100K require managerial sign-off. Automating this process with SharePoint ensures that approvals follow the correct hierarchy without delays or manual follow-ups.
A similar concept applies to healthcare. A hospital with an e-ticket system can use SharePoint automation to seamlessly guide patients from check-in to consultation. Automated workflows can route patient information, notify relevant staff, and ensure no critical steps are missed.
Industries benefiting from this automation include:
- Healthcare – Streamlining patient intake, medical records management, and compliance tracking.
- Retail – Automating inventory updates, vendor approvals, and store-level reporting.
- Manufacturing – Enhancing supply chain workflows, equipment maintenance scheduling, and quality control processes.
- Airlines – Managing ticketing systems, compliance reporting, and operational approvals.
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Business Benefits of Automating Processes with SharePoint
One of the biggest advantages of automating business processes with SharePoint is cutting down on human errors, especially those that can lead to data loss. A small mistake might not seem like a big deal, but it can snowball into compliance violations, security risks, or expensive legal trouble in a business setting.
Beyond reducing errors, automation eliminates inefficiencies that often go unnoticed. A few wasted minutes might not seem like much, but when you add them up, they turn into hours. Those hours could be spent on work that actually moves the needle.
1. Less Manual Work
The more you rely on manual processes, the more time your team spends on repetitive tasks that don’t add real value. Automating these workflows frees them up to focus on more significant priorities.
2. Fewer Errors
Mistakes in manual processes are inevitable. A misfiled document, a missed approval, or an incorrect data entry can slow things down or lead to compliance issues. Automation ensures everything flows through the right channels without the risk of human error.
3. Smoother Operations
SharePoint speeds up processes that typically get held up, such as approvals, document handoffs, and notifications, so nothing gets lost. Tasks that used to take days can now be completed in minutes.
4. Consistency Across the Board
With automation, every process follows the same standardized workflow. This keeps teams aligned, minimizes confusion, and ensures compliance requirements are met without extra effort.
5. Time Savings That Add Up
No more endless email chains, chasing down approvals, or manually entering the same data across multiple systems. By automating these processes, businesses save countless hours that can be redirected toward growth-focused initiatives.
6. Digital Workflows Instead of Paper Processes
Paper-based processes are slow, inefficient, and prone to errors. SharePoint makes it easy to digitize forms, automate approvals, and create a streamlined, paper-free work environment.
7. Improved Output
Employees benefit from fewer roadblocks and smoother workflows, making daily tasks easier. At the same time, organizations gain better visibility into processes, improve compliance, and scale operations without unnecessary overhead.
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How to Automate Business Processes with SharePoint
SharePoint allows for customization and flexibility around the approaches for business process automation. Here are some key examples:
SharePoint Rules
Rules are basic configurations that define when and how the platform executes specific instructions. For example, when a file is uploaded to a document library, a rule can trigger an email notification, or updating a metadata column can notify the specific users to whom the file has been assigned.
Power Automate
Power Automate is a Microsoft Power Platform integration with SharePoint that supports over 900 connectors, including OneDrive and Exchange. Standard connectors are included with all SharePoint licenses, but premium connectors require separate licenses.
A typical scenario in which the Power Automate flow works is an approval request sent to Teams when a document is uploaded to SharePoint.
Power Apps
Power Apps can extend the functionality of SharePoint forms or allow the development of standalone applications.
Power apps offer a low-code methodology for building applications. Instead of designing and working with a developer from scratch, you can start from a template and save on all that development overhead.
An example is a customizable app that replaces SharePoint forms and is programmed with business logic, such as allowing or restricting access to various fields based on predetermined conditions. A contracting company could use this to display or hide contract sums for different teams, depending on their designation.
Integration of SharePoint, Power Apps and Power Automate
The overall matrix of business process automation can be viewed as having SharePoint as the central document management system. Power Apps allow for customizing forms to enter data based on predefined, programmable logic, while Power Automate executes commands and workflows based on preset triggers.
Examples of How SharePoint Powers These Workflows
SharePoint’s automation capabilities go beyond simple task delegation. Its deep integration with Microsoft 365 makes it a robust platform for end-to-end process management.
Document management and approval workflows
When a document is uploaded, Power Apps launches a customized form that captures document metadata, such as the project name, modified date, due date and owner.
Upon submission, Power Automate sends approval requests via Outlook or Teams.
Time management system
With SharePoint, you can customize this functionality to track hourly work and billing. A standalone Power App developed for tracking employee hours stores data in SharePoint lists or the Dataverse. Power Automate then triggers approvals and notifications on Teams or Outlook.
Project management automation
Employees work within a SharePoint site with automated task assignments. Power Apps queries this site for project updates. Then, Power Apps update s the dashboard with a real-time status update.
Low-code app development
You can develop a customized application using Power Apps without the overhead of hiring a developer from scratch. Consider a problem-specific application, such as an expense tracking or employee productivity app that can be deployed on desktop, iOS or Android.
Best Practices for Business Process Automation with SharePoint
The first step is to use service principals or licensed service accounts and avoid tying the processes to individual’s accounts. This ensures workflows continue running even if an employee leaves the organization. Additional considerations include:
- Implementing proper handling - Use a try-catch approach to implement error handling.
- Optimize for simplicity - Use variables to store reusable values. Keep workflows simple by minimizing the number of actions and using a parent-child workflow structure to maintain overall logic and handle specific tasks to enhance the ease of maintenance.
- Utilize built-in monitoring and debugging - Power Automate provides a 28-day history to track overall workflow execution. It also allows you to see previous runs and pinpoint errors. Whenever the application encounters an error, it notifies specific users about those errors.
Security Implications for Automating Business Processes
Data loss prevention policies for creating guardrails like preventing people from creating files and uploading them to their personal third-party document storage accounts. These policies are managed from the Microsoft Compliance Center to enforce security across the organization.
Data policies are set at the connector level to prevent unauthorized integrations. They also control how connectors interact with data and ensure that sensitive files cannot be shared through unapproved services.
Conclusion
Automating business processes with SharePoint exemplifies the extensive capabilities that can be realized through its implementation. Interestingly, SharePoint connects to hundreds of connectors and supports dozens of Power Automate triggers that can be used to customize anything.
To learn more about how we can use SharePoint to customize your business processes, speak with us today.
