When I joined Crowe UAE as a Sitecore Developer in 2023, I quickly noticed something: teams were spending significant time on tasks that could be handled automatically. Emails being manually copied into spreadsheets. Forms submitted through the website going untracked. The same data re-entered by three different people.

Over the next two years, I built a series of Power Automate flows that addressed these gaps one by one. This article is a practical breakdown of what I built, how I approached it, and the results.

The Problem: Manual Work Hiding in Plain Sight

Most organisations have a version of this problem. Someone submits an enquiry form on your website. The response arrives in an inbox. Someone opens the email, reads it, copies the details into a spreadsheet, and then sends a reply. Repeat 50 times a month.

It does not feel like wasted time in the moment. But it adds up.

Flow 1: Website Form Submission Capture

The first flow I built targeted two types of form submissions arriving via email from the company website:

  • Firm services enquiry forms — potential clients reaching out about Crowe's services
  • Candidate application forms — job applicants submitting their details

How it works:

When an email containing a form submission arrives in the designated mailbox, Power Automate triggers automatically. It parses the email body, extracts each field (name, email, phone, message, etc.), and writes a structured row into an Excel workbook stored on SharePoint.

The relevant team is notified that a new entry has been logged. No human touches the data transfer.

Result: This flow eliminated manual user intervention entirely and has saved over 300+ hours to date.

Flow 2: PDF to Excel / Word Conversion

Teams were regularly receiving documents in PDF format that needed to be converted into editable Excel or Word files for further processing. The existing approach was either manual retyping or using external online converters — both slow and the latter raised data security concerns.

I built a desktop Power Automate flow that handles the conversion locally within the company's Microsoft environment. The data never leaves the organisation's systems.

Result: Saves 10+ minutes per conversion, with the added benefit of keeping sensitive documents secure.

Flow 3: Bulk Email Automation

Several workflows required sending personalised emails to multiple people — reminders, updates, notifications. Doing this manually for each recipient is tedious and error-prone.

I set up automated flows that pull recipient data from SharePoint lists or Excel sheets and send individualised emails at scale. Each message uses the recipient's name and relevant details dynamically.

Result: What used to take 30–60 minutes of drafting and sending now runs with a single trigger.

Key Lessons

Start with the highest-frequency task. If something happens 50 times a month and takes 6 minutes each time, that is 5 hours a month — a clear target.

Keep data inside your ecosystem. Using third-party tools for conversion or processing creates security and compliance risk. Power Automate Desktop lets you do most of this natively within Microsoft 365.

Document every flow. Future you — or a colleague — will need to understand what a flow does and why. Add notes to each action inside the flow builder.

Test edge cases. Forms do not always arrive in a consistent format. Build your parsing logic to handle variations and always test with real data before going live.

If you are working with Microsoft 365 and want to reduce manual data handling, Power Automate is one of the most accessible tools available. You do not need to write code to build powerful automations — though understanding the logic helps enormously.

Feel free to reach out if you have questions about any of the flows described here.