Enhancing legacy ERP systems with Microsoft Power Platform

      #1 – Order to invoice process – Consider the scenario
of a order to invoice business process. Typically, a customer sales order is
received from website or email as an attachment and entered into the CRM or ERP
system. This leads to the user creating a purchase order in the legacy ERP system to procure materials
or products from the supplier. Supplier processes the PO and ships the products
to the Customer (drop ship). Supplier sends packing slip and invoice to the business.  The business user invoices the customer. In a
legacy ERP system, this can be a very manual, error prone and time-consuming
process as the volume of orders increases.  

Order to Invoice process

This process can be automated and here are some scenarios where
Microsoft Power Platform can be used along with the legacy ERP application.

1. Automate Order Entry – Using Power Automate the entering of
   the order from email or as an attachment can be enabled. Power Automate cloud
   flow can trigger AI builder to scan and read the email attachment and capture
   the items that are ordered by the Customer. The cloud flow can trigger a Power
   Automate Desktop flow to enter the ordered items in the Legacy ERP system.
2. Automate Vendor Invoice entry – As above the Power Automate
   can also be used to automate the vendor invoice entry into the legacy ERP
   system.
3. Email to Customer – Power Automate can be used to trigger an
   order delivery email to the Customer when a Packing Slip is received from the
   Vendor.

There are many such use cases that can be automated using
Microsoft Power Platform. An example of utilizing Microsoft Power Platform along with
SAP CRM and SAP ERP applications is also shown below.

In this example Azure Data Factory is used to get data from SAP CRM and into Azure SQL. Then Power Automate flow and AI Builder is triggered to complete the automation.

Some other examples of using Microsoft Power Platform are also discussed below. 

#2 – Customer Chat-bot – Power Virtual
Agent can be used on the Portal to answer queries from Customer. Customer goes
to the Portal and want to know the status of the order. Power Virtual Agent can
be enabled to trigger a Power Automate Flow to query the database and get
status of the order and provide the information to the Customer. The Chat-bot
capability can also be enabled to assist in answering queries on product inventory
and pricing.

#3 – Gain business insights – Power BI
can be used to develop visuals and dashboards to gain insights from business
data. Power BI can connect to legacy on-premise systems using the data gateway.
Power BI Desktop can be used to develop powerful visuals dashboards. Power BI
can help empower business users to work with the data, model complex business scenarios and get insights they need to take actions and business
decisions.   

Microsoft Power Platform as a low code app platform can help
to empower your employees to do more with your existing legacy applications.
Hope this makes you to try one of the Power Platform products. Do let me know about
your experience using Microsoft Power Platform with your existing legacy
applications.

Thanks for reading.

365WithoutCode     

@mihircrm