Business Automation & Intelligence
Every business has jobs that are done by hand, weekly, forever: filing, rekeying, chasing, assembling the same report. We automate them with the Microsoft tools your licences likely already include, and give you live reporting instead of the Monday spreadsheet. Built properly, documented, and supported afterwards.
The same invoice, two ways.
A supplier invoice arrives by email. Multiply what follows by every invoice, every week, every staff member who touches it.
By hand, every time
- Open the email, download the PDF
- Rename it, file it in the right folder
- Rekey supplier, amount and date into the system
- Email the manager for approval, then chase it
- Update the spreadsheet for Monday's report
Ten minutes, five times a week, forever. Every step is a chance for a typo.
Automated, once
- Invoice arrives. The flow files it, names it, extracts the details
- Entry created in the system, no rekeying
- Manager gets an approve button in Teams
- The Power BI report updates itself
The human touches it once, to approve it. That is the only step that needed a human.
The example is deliberately unglamorous. Automation earns its keep on the boring jobs, precisely because they happen every week.
The automation toolkit you probably already license
This is not new software to buy. It is the Microsoft Power Platform, sitting alongside the Word and Outlook you already run, largely included in the licences you already pay for, and mostly unused.
- Power Automate is the plumbing. It watches for something happening (an email, a form, a file) and does the steps a person used to do.
- Power BI is the intelligence: live dashboards fed by your actual systems, so the state of the business is a glance rather than a Monday-morning assembly job.
- Power Apps makes the small tools: the job-sheet, checklist or register that currently lives on paper or in a shared spreadsheet, as a proper little app on everyone's phone.
And where a job needs reading and judgement rather than rule-following (triaging an inbox, drafting a response, summarising a document), that is where AI agents take over. The automation is the rails the agent runs on.
How we do it
- 1Find the candidates. A short session on where the hours actually go. The best automations are usually invisible to management because staff stopped mentioning them years ago.
- 2Build the first one. Start with the job with the clearest rules and the most repetitions, because proof beats promises.
- 3Document it. What it does, what it touches, what to check when something upstream changes. An undocumented flow is future shadow IT.
- 4Support it. Monitored and fixed like everything else on your managed contract. Automations are staff that never resign, but they do need looking after.
The honest bit: not everything should be automated. Jobs where every case is different, volumes are tiny, or judgement is the actual work stay human, and automating them badly costs more than doing them by hand. Part of the first session is telling you which is which.
What's included
- Where-the-hours-go session
- Power Automate workflows, built properly
- Power BI dashboards and reporting
- Power Apps for small internal tools
- Licence check: use what you own
- Documentation and ongoing support
Frequently asked questions
What is actually worth automating first?
The boring, high-volume, rule-following jobs: invoices filed and entered, approvals chased, the same report assembled every Monday, data rekeyed between two systems that do not talk. If someone can write the steps on a card, it is a candidate. If every case needs judgement, it is not, and we will say so.
Do we need new licences?
Often not to start. The basics of Power Automate and Power Apps are included with the Microsoft 365 licences most businesses already run, so the first automations frequently cost setup only. Heavier lifting (premium connections into other systems, Power BI reporting) is licensed per user, and we supply those licences on your existing bill.
Is this the same as your AI agents?
They are the two halves of one idea. Automation follows rules you set; an AI agent handles the parts that need reading and judgement. In practice the agent sits inside the plumbing automation provides, which is why building the plumbing first is usually the right order.
What happens when it breaks, or when someone changes a spreadsheet column?
That is the difference between a flow someone built one enthusiastic afternoon and a managed one. We document what we build, monitor it, and fix it when the world changes underneath it, because an automation nobody owns quietly becomes shadow IT.
What does Power BI actually give us over spreadsheets?
One screen that is always current, instead of a report someone assembles. The numbers refresh themselves from the systems they live in, everyone reads the same version, and the hour a week spent copy-pasting into a spreadsheet goes back to being an hour.
What does it cost?
Setup is quoted per job (“file and enter supplier invoices” is a known-size piece of work), and any per-user licensing lands on your existing GravIT bill. Call 03 5280 8088 and bring the job that eats the most time; that is usually the right first candidate.
Automate the job your team complains about most
That is almost always the right first automation. Tell us what it is and we will tell you what it would take.