Let’s be honest, inefficiency can be very expensive. Not just in the sense of the money a company or person can lose, but in energy, morale, innovation, and opportunity. Many businesses and freelancers operate under the radar of what inefficiency truly costs them until something breaks. This could look like an overworked team member who suddenly quits, a major client lost due to a missed deadline, or maybe it’s simply the slow death of productivity, data integrity issues, collaborations are not quite collaborating.
In this blog, I am diving into the real-world costs of manual workflows and how automation with tools like Power Automate + SharePoint can become your silent, strategic powerhouse. Automation doesn’t just save time; it enhances your business processes.
You might think, “Hey, I survived just fine so far.” That type of thinking has so many hidden costs and surviving ain’t thriving. Let me break down the hidden ways inefficiencies can show up:
- Employee Burnout: Constant repetition of menial tasks leading to job dissatisfaction and a high turnover rate. No one company wants to be known for high turnovers. It is not attractive to possible new hires.
- Lost Revenue: Time wasted on manual steps can delay project delivery, service, and invoicing.
- Human Error: Manual input increases the chance of mistakes that cost reputations and money.
- Lack of Scalability: Growth bottlenecks when your systems rely on people remembering to do something rather than creating processes that aligns to do it automatically.
- Innovation Stagnation: Teams are too busy executing tasks to think creatively or worry about improving processes.
How Can Power Automate and SharePoint Rescue Your Workflow?
Imagine a world where reminders, document approvals, task assignments, and data collection all just happen. They can be done using tools like Power Automate + SharePoint. As a freelancer, I use this combination to help organizations become more efficient in their processes:
I first work to streamline my clients repetitive tasks by offering to automate common approvals (vacation requests, invoice sign-offs, onboarding). We review documentation and route documents to appropriate folders based on metadata. Flows are created to notify stakeholders when tasks hit certain stages, cause we must keep them in the know. It is important to focus on consistency and compliance so SharePoint lists with required fields and automated version control are used to track who approved what and when, for audit trails.
I think overall this improves the employee experience and while reducing mundane work so employees can focus on what matters. This leads to an increase in accuracy and reduce stress. Management can be provided with real-time insights by connecting other Microsoft products such as Power BI for visual dashboards that show task progress or approval bottlenecks. This helps to foster collaboration without all the chaos. Other tools are suggested like Teams to keep cross-functional teams updated without endless email threads
Again those 5 things to focus on are:
1. Streamline Repetitive Tasks
2. Ensure Consistency and Compliance
3. Improve Employee Experience
4. Enable Real-Time Insights
5. Foster Collaboration Without Chaos
You still not sold? Okay here is a real-life scenario: before and after automation
Before: A small HR team manually processes job applications through email. Resumes get lost, interview scheduling is inconsistent, and reporting takes hours.
After:
- A Power Automate flow was created to capture applications by placing them within SharePoint
- Email confirmations are generated and sent automatically
- Interview scheduling is suggested, start days placed on calendars.
- Reports can be created from the data collected ad-hoc or on a time schedule.
This equates to plenty of time being saved and less stress.
What You Could Be Saving
Let’s look beyond “time is money.” Look to MORRe
- Morale: Empower your team to spend time on valuable, enjoyable work
- Opportunity Cost: Free up bandwidth for innovation and growth
- Retention: Avoid losing skilled employees to burnout
- Reputation: Maintain reliability with consistent service delivery
Where to Begin
Not sure where to start? Try this checklist:
- Identify 3 tasks your team does manually each week
- Track how long each takes and who touches them
- Ask: Can this be templated or automated?
- Talk to your SharePoint/Power Automate admin (or someone like me!)
Have a strategy, automation is a value amplifier. It lets people shine where they are strongest. It allows people like me to strut my creativity while helping teams better collaborate using innovative techniques to offload the busy work to systems that never sleep. Reclaim that cost with ROI and be transformative.
For more information visit tcrossmd.com