If your firm lives in Microsoft 365, you start the automation conversation a step ahead. A capable platform is already in the licence, already inside your tenant’s security boundary, and already connected to the mail, files and chat where your processes happen. The job is to make that head start count, and most of the pitfalls are the flip side of the same strengths.
Where being inside Microsoft helps
Anything inside Microsoft 365 is close at hand. A scanned document landing in SharePoint can be sent for approval in Teams, update a list and notify its owner, and you can build that in minutes, all under the identities and audit trail the firm already manages. Approval flows are the standout. They’re the closest any automation platform comes to a built-in answer for human-gated automation, and together with Copilot and Copilot Studio they extend into AI steps and agents. For the many service firms that run on Outlook, SharePoint and a back-office system, it’s the shortest route.
Where it struggles
Connecting to apps outside Microsoft is possible but rarely pleasant. Those connectors usually sit behind premium licensing, and the rivals simply cover more apps. That’s why mixed setups are normal: Power Automate for everything inside the tenant, and Zapier or Make for the long tail. Spend ten minutes on the licensing tiers before any build.
Citizen development, where staff build their own flows, is the platform’s proudest feature, and it needs governance from day one: a list of flows, a named owner for each, credentials stored properly and a quarterly review. Without that, a firm builds up invisible plumbing one enthusiastic afternoon at a time and only finds out the day the person who built it leaves. The approved-tools discipline applies to flows just as well.