Al Rafay Consulting

#57 fastest-growing in the Midwest. Grateful — and just getting started.

We're honored to be recognized on the Inc. Regionals list at #57 in the Midwest.

Awards are nice. What they represent is better: clients who kept trusting us with bigger problems, and a team that kept rising to meet them.

Every ranking traces back to the same thing — work that holds up and people who stay.

Thank you to everyone who's part of this. The next chapter is the one we're most excited about.

Follow along.

This tiny Power Automate setting stops flows from firing when they shouldn't.

The problem: your flow triggers on every item change — including the ones you don't care about. Now you've got noise, wasted runs, and sometimes chaos.

The fix: trigger conditions.

Add an expression so the flow only runs when a condition is actually met — e.g. only when Status equals “Approved,” not on every edit.

One expression turns a chatty, unreliable flow into a precise one.

Full guide with expression examples linked in the comments. Save this one.

Contract prep that used to take days now takes hours. Here's how.

A real estate client was processing 500+ contracts a month — every one assembled, reviewed, and routed by hand.

We built CAMP, a contract automation platform on SharePoint, Power Platform, and AI:

→ Auto-generated contracts from approved templates
→ AI-assisted review to catch issues early
→ Automated routing and tracking end to end

The result: 78% faster contract prep, at scale.

That's not a productivity tweak. That's giving a team most of its week back.

Full story linked below 👇

Three questions. If you answer “no” to any of them, we should talk.

1. Can your team trace every AI answer back to its source?

2. Is your Microsoft 365 governance ready for Copilot — today, not “soon”?

3. Do your executives actually trust the numbers in their dashboards?

If any of those gave you pause, you're not behind — you're exactly where most enterprises are. The difference is what you do next.

We're a 3x Microsoft Solutions Partner with 300+ projects and 100% client retention. A conversation costs nothing, and you'll leave with a clearer picture either way.

Response within 24 hours. Book a consultation — link in the comments

𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝟭𝟬𝟬+ 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗮 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵 𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗲𝘁𝘀? 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝘁'𝘀 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲.

1. 𝗗𝗼𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 — two events, one space, and nobody caught it until it was too late.

2. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗼𝘀 — artist agreements and vendor terms live in someone's inbox.

3. 𝗦𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀 — reconciling each event's numbers takes days you don't have.

Venues run on tight teams and tighter margins. The tools should reduce the load, not add to it.

VenueArc handles bookings, contracts, and settlements in one platform.

If any of those signs sound familiar, let's talk.

𝗜𝗳 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁.

When executives don't trust the numbers, decisions slow down and everyone reverts to gut feel. The root cause is almost always the same: too many sources of “truth.”

Three spreadsheets, two systems, and four people who each calculate occupancy differently — of course the numbers don't match.

The fix is a single source of truth: one governed data layer feeding every dashboard, so a number means the same thing to everyone.

We build that layer for real estate teams. When the data is trusted, decisions get faster.

Tired of debating whose numbers are right? Let's talk.

Most intranets die from neglect. Here's how we build ones people actually log into.

A new intranet launches with fanfare, then slowly becomes a graveyard of outdated pages nobody visits. Sound familiar?

We took a different approach with our SharePoint portals:
→ Designed around what people actually need daily, not the org chart
→ Personalized content so it's relevant on login
→ Integrated with the tools people already use

The result: portals people open every day because they're genuinely useful — not because they're told to.

An intranet is only worth building if people come back. Full case study below 👇

Everyone's talking about Microsoft Fabric. Here's what it actually does — in plain English.

Most organizations have data scattered across a dozen tools: one for storage, one for pipelines, one for reporting, one for data science. Nothing connects cleanly.

Fabric is Microsoft's answer: one unified analytics platform that brings it together.

→ Data engineering, warehousing, and science in one place
→ Real-time analytics without stitching tools together
→ Everything landing in one lake, powering Power BI directly

The point isn't the technology. It's that your teams stop fighting their tools and start using their data.

Wondering if Fabric fits your stack? Let's have that conversation.

Most Azure overspend comes from one avoidable habit: leaving resources running.

Dev and test environments quietly bill you 24/7 — nights, weekends, holidays — even when nobody's using them.

The fix takes an afternoon:
→ Auto-shutdown schedules on non-production VMs
→ Right-size over-provisioned resources
→ Alerts when spend crosses a threshold

Teams routinely cut 20–30% off their bill just by not paying for idle compute.

Cloud cost isn't about using less. It's about not paying for nothing.

Save this for your next Azure review.

300+ projects. 100% client retention. It comes down to these people.

Technology gets the headlines, but the reason clients stay for 7+ years is the team behind the work.

Across our Chicago and Karachi offices, we've built a group that's genuinely curious — people who learn a client's industry as deeply as they know the Microsoft stack.

That's how you earn 100% retention. Not with a sales pitch. With people who care whether the thing actually works.

We're growing. If building meaningful things with sharp people sounds like you, follow along — we'll be sharing more.