Microsoft Flow: Digitally transform your business - BRK2006
Morning. All. Right my. Name is Ashwini Sharma I'm a program, manager on, the flow team, good. Morning my name is Kent weir I'm a senior. Manager enterprise architecture, and integration, at an energy company called, inter pipeline and. The. One person that's missing is John Levesque he, unfortunately, pulled, his back so I'm here representing, him but. He sends his best wishes and, he wish he could be here to. Do his presentation Oh. How's. The conference going so far four. People yeah. Any. Interesting. New announcements, that, really, piqued your attention. It's. Again. No. I was outside. Any. Announcements. Ai builder, was one that was. Announced yesterday if, you haven't seen it already just go down to the booth it is awesome for, for, people that are interested in AI but. Don't really know how to embed, it into your applications, or into your workflows, that's, a great experience and of. Course power bi had a whole bunch of new announcements. As well paginate, report is just there's a long list of things. This session is slightly different this session is, at. The start what we start out with is this, thing called transformation, and, as. A as a vendor what we say is hey you just get the tool and life is good and you're transformed you, just wake, up the next day you deploy and life is awesome, but. What this session focuses. On initially, is this. Thing about people and, how. Do we, transform. Not, just the tools and the, systems, but also the, role of people in this organization and, what. We'll do is I'll cover for the first 10 minutes or so this, this overall. Framework or how do you transform, a business. What. Are the key people. Skills. Or the key people, gaps. That you need to be aware of an address and then, we'll see how we are applied in inter, pipeline as an example just to make it real. And I'll be looking at my notes since. Since. I'll do that. The. In, this session, just to get an idea of who. Is in the session how many people consider themselves to be end-users. Of tools that we built. Yeah. How, many are IT consider. Themselves to be in IT. How. Many are in development, consistent. System developers, how. Many would-be leaders. Great. How, many are managers. Okay. Thank you how. Many are leaders there are not managers. Thank. You yeah. It's important, for, that one because sometimes, people conflate both of those two things together and there's, there's, no reason why only managers, can affect change leadership. Is independent. So, that's. What we're going to talk about in transformation. Now.
Transformation. Is hard, work and there, are many roadblocks, many hurdles on the way to, get you to that. That. Place the. First one is around fear, which. Is fear, of of. Messing. Up fear, of making mistakes fear of not looking good fear, of just, a lot of I may not know enough I may not do it the right way so and, that's real that. When, people anytime, they start to look for change let's start to make change, there's this just, this aspect, of will I be successful if, I take this on, the. Next one is about tools. Or trainings, I used. To be at a company where there. Was a I have to fill out a report for, getting, a subscription, to a $15, per per month, tool. Which. Would affect me and one. Of the things that when I joined Microsoft one of the things my manager said at the time he was a great manager was hey. The only thing we can't buy is time. Let. Me know what you need right. That was such a fundamental. Shift in. Just. Empowerment, of me, as an employee to say, wow this this this. Organization. Cares about, making change and they, know what the priorities, are but, that's not real for many organizations. So the, tools or training, gap if. You got you came to this conference you got the tools you've got the latest AI builder or power bi and now. What the training is to get you, impactful. With that with, our tools that we got so that's another hurdle that people run into the. Flip side of this is the next one which is too many options and, this, is if. You take communication, for example some teams are using slack some teams are using Yammer some teams are using teams some teams are using the. Facebook, workplace. Some people are old school and use emails, and you just confused, okay, where who, is trying to reach me and say what on what channel, and how do I keep up with everything that's going on so that could be another hurdle where you're just wasting, time looking at all these different options, that are available to you and not being able to make a sense of it and. Finally. Which is the there's nobody in this room by. Definition you would not be here if you have this. Which. Is the stock mindset, and there, are many people that are in. This place which is know this is the way we've always done it. Microsoft, as a company has gone through a renewal. In the last few years and you, can feel the transformation is hard change is, difficult you can't just snap your fingers and everybody. Is aligned so. Even though it's a hundred thousand, fairly. Decent spot employees, still. It takes time and effort to, get out of this fixed mindset, that we have into embracing, the. Unknown and trying, new things out. So. Change is hard. The. The words are worth. It, if. You just think of it from an abstract perspective and these are large numbers. 18%. Increase in three years of, 500, billion dollars spent, a lot. Of this will go into improving. Your customer, experiences. Building, better products and services, empowering. Employees or. Maximizing. Your operations, a. Lot, of this is just possible thanks, to the 500, billion dollars of spent and then, there's even bigger number which, is over the next 10 years a hundred trillion, dollars. Of new. Opportunity, created just, imagine 100, Microsoft's.
Created. In the next 10 years which. Is just just. Immense, opportunity. For us to be able to do now. We can always you, know we've got a split personality so we hear these numbers and we say yeah yeah that's good but, people. Will avoid anything, to change, it's, just core, human. Just. In, the hierarchy of needs right you feel threatened, or there. Are two core motivations, I don't I want, to look good and I, don't want to look bad, right. This isn't just. Conflict. Every time that, you want to try something new. And. That's the it's real and you have to acknowledge it's, real and as leaders in the room you have to be aware that your, teams are going through this as you're pushing for change and as you're trying new things out, and. You try to lead by examples, you know try to sponsor, them but just be know this is real that you, have to address it. So. Making the change is the first step and. Essentially. To, be able to how. Do you the. Next. Section of this presentation is okay now we acknowledge, that this exists, now, what is a framework to make it possible how, do you go, from okay I acknowledge, it's time for change and what, is this art of the possible that, makes it real and the, goal of this next, slide this. Slide is, to just. Lay, out a picture, just for your awareness this is on your radar so, you can look as you're driving change, throughout your organizations just, look at these different aspects, and make sure your, foundation, is solid as you, go deploy as. You push for changes and I'll, go through all of these show-n-tell opportunity. Creating the opportunity. Ownership. Making sure people own. What. Is the value that they're getting created, what are the rewards that, you end up as managers, or as leaders to reinforce. And what's the support that you provide. So. First one show enter this. One is how many people, have, kids. In kindergarten, or. Were. In kindergarten, at some point. There is there. Is a, practice. In in, the kindergartens, which is the. Kids come in the certain circles in many. Kindergartens, and they. Have a new thing that they bring from home it. Could be a ball it could be a toy could be an airplane and they, describe, what it is to others just, as a habit, of. Communicating. So. An example of this is a kid comes in with, a small, red hammer that they got from. From, their parents and he's, talking about all the, treehouse is going to build his, grandma, is going to come in the treehouse and they're going to have a great story time up in the treehouse, and, it's. Just imagination. Runs wild. But. All of that was possible, only once, this person got the hammer, before. The hammer there was no treehouse for. This portion and that's. What one of the things that I see with Flo is and, with the, power, bi and with power apps is just, that imagination. Of what, can I do with, this thing is. Sometimes, the biggest gap you can see an abstract, yep I can analyze. I can automate, I can act right. These are abstract verbs, that I can I know what that is, but. Then what is it how is it real form organization, that's hard, for me to know so, show-and-tell is a great value in being able to have hey here's an example of what is possible and, that triggers some other thoughts in somebody else's mind so my favorite one for Flo is I. Didn't get flow until I built, this one flow, which. It was a which. Is one that manages my calendar, right so, we are busy people we have days full of meetings and what. I ended up doing was I realized, that I booked time on my calendar, just to get stuff done because. I, was just in back-to-back meetings and. Hey. I'm working the flow team so maybe I should create a flow that does that automatically, so what I have now is on Sunday morning at 1:00 a.m. I have, a flow that wakes, up and it looks at my calendar looks. For two-hour time slots and whenever. It finds two hours times thought on the weekdays, between 8 & 7 it is books them, and. I get up on Sunday morning and I see what the, calendar items, that exist and if I choose now I can take them off just for if, there are new meetings that come in I can, take them off and that's an example whenever I show that to people oh yeah, I could use that but, it's all about show-and-tell it's all about creating, something, concrete. That. Can, get, people's, imaginations. Going. The. Next one is an opportunity, I must see an opportunity, there must be an opportunity, for me to affect. Change whether. It is alignment. Of my business with power bi where, is streamlining, my process. Of business processes, with. Power apps whether, it's automating.
My Business processes, with flow I must be able to see the, opportunity, that exists or as leaders you must be able to envision what. Is the opportunity that you want the organization, to go after but, that has to be clear. The. Next one is ownership, this. One. There. Are some, organizations. That are very top-heavy, where, all the decisions, are made in a hierarchical manner, and if. You are a leaf node in, that in. Their organization, it is very hard to. Innovate because. All the things that you come up with all ideas, you come up with it. Goes, up and then goes up and then it goes up and sometimes then it comes down saying, no or, goes. Up goes up goes up did you know this other thing was happening over on the other side, and. It just keeps happening over and over again and there's only so much limited, energy that you have as a person to push, without. Support, so. As as, leaders again be clear, what you want your people to, go. What is opportunity, you wanted people. To go after and, then give, them the ownership give them the ability to make decisions, be. Clear about what metrics you know for success and then empower them by owning them. The. Next one is value can. I effect, can I deliver, value, can I is it, worth my time do, I have enough skills to learn. Have access, to blogs or to conferences, you have access to training to. Have access to the resources where I can. Transfer. My, knowledge, that I've got all the technologies potential is into the opportunity, that you've identified for. Me so, creating that support, system where, you can give value, where. You you're trained enough to deliver value. Rewards. Money, talks and this. Is one that. As. Many. Leaders what we we, have said one thing and we, have rewarded something else if you, said, no. Jokes no, joke policies, but there's this one guy or. Girl that, is just. Excellent. At what they do but they're just bone bridges as in, the process, of doing that okay, how are you rewarding what. Are what is your philosophy on. The. Rewarding. That behavior, and, is it clear to everybody else in the organization what, you value through. That reward. Philosophy, that you have do. You walk the talk essentially. If. You, want to reward innovation, if, you want to if one, of your philosophies. Is I want, this organization, to innovate and I want this organization. To transform. Are. You rewarding that or are. You rewarding keeping, the lights on, only there has to be a balance somewhere in. Rewarding. Alright, and rewards. Doesn't, have to be just monetary, it could be acknowledgments. Could be kudos could be public recognition could be leaderboards. Could be a whole bunch of different, just. Creative, ideas, to make sure you're, encouraging, that behavior. And. Then support so, if you are a manager if you have access to resources. Balancing. Those resource allocations, so that you make sure that you have enough resources. Available. To. To, be able to transform, if, you're a leader not necessarily, a manager being able to encourage lead, by example we. Were able to support. Create. Opportunities, for new show-n-tell and that's how, the circle, and continues, on once you get the circle going then. You can have new. Opportunities for for, people to transform. So, that was a, walked through and the goal of that that.
Framework. Was just to make sure that you're aware of all things to. Be aware of as. You go transform, your business and just make sure that you're accommodating, all of them. The. State of things today. IT. Is overloaded. Yeah, there, and not no fault of their right they've been asked to do an impossible, job with shrinking. Budgets be. Aware of all the cloud, things, that are happening move, to the cloud be secure do, it cheaper do. It faster. What do you mean this thing cannot upgrade to. The new latest version it we paid, it what do you mean this thing cannot cannot scale, and. Then IT this it's a discipline, how do you build robust. Applications. That live for, longer than a demo right. How do you how. Do you architect these, solutions and no wonder they're overloaded, because they're. Bearing. The brunt of what the business asks, of them and, still, the business card move fast enough and they're looking for ways to go around the IT and say hey maybe I'll just go look, at a software-as-a-service to just bypass what, ideas got because there's. Such a long line of carrying, through, to IDs and this this dynamic, is real in organizations. And we need to acknowledge that is real and then, if you're an IT then you say what is my role in, this dynamic, as. Businesses, are just getting more and more frustrated as they have access to new tools that, give them value, what really is my role and, I think can cover. Some of that as well. Ok. Great. The, future, this is the citizen, app platform. Team our, holds. Citizen, app platform, includes power be our apps, power-ups. Flow, AI Builder and the common, data service and our, few really are bet a strategic. Bet for the organization, is that we can create a future where. We can democratize, tools. For the frontline workers. Because. They are the ones that are solving problems most close they're the closest to the problems that they're trying to solve, if. You are a developer we. Want to make sure that you have two, that, allow, you as a developer to make available, connectors. And data sources and, artifacts that others in your organization's can use in. A way that's still compliant. And. Then, IT is ensuring, the proper security. And access through. Data. Leakage prevention, data loss prevention advanced, analytics, and. Compliance. Facility. Right. Once we, believe that once we have these. Targeted. Values, that we provide to these different personas that organization. As, a whole can, be able, to transform themselves. Leadership. Is there, to unblock right. One of the things we sometimes forget why leadership. Exists, while management exists the whole reason, why you exist is to. Make sure that the organization is, pointed, in the right direction and, your, unblocking. People as much as possible and, I want my first meeting was a long time back with Satya was, before he became a CEO he. Was still. In charge of the azure team, and I. Wasn't, used to this, interaction with him I went, in and he was leaning on his chair he's saying what can I do for you and. I say, just. Shocked because I was and I wasn't, ready for an exec asking me this question and I, lost, two things and, I said great why, don't we have a check point next week and I'll, check in on you and make, sure you got everything that you need and that kind of a sponsorship. That kind of a support from a leader in organization. Just. Helps, you get stuff done right just. Moves. Moves. Roadblocks, out of the way so, are you if you are a leader can, you make that happen, are you a sponsor, for your people that are pushing, making. This hard change, they've. Got fear in the back of your head I don't know if I'll succeed I don't know if I have all the right tools they're, being brave and bold enough to go push for this and are you there meeting, them and pulling them forward, so, as leadership just make sure your. Job is to ensure all justified. Initiatives. Gotta be created, okay. So here as an example we'll, have hand over to Kent and he can go through.
How They've applied this framework. Okay. Mm-hmm, Thank You ash so. As, Ash mentioned, digital, transformation. Isn't something you can buy in. Fact I'm not a big fan of the term altogether. I prefer, business. Transformation. Using digital tools because, at the end of the day when, you're working in these other business. Mainstream, businesses, it's not about technology, it's not about introducing. New widgets, it's about generating, some sort of a business outcome, and, Ashley's. Also mentioned that transformation. Is actually more about the people than. It is about the tools now the, tools enable. It but. Without, changing. Your mindset it doesn't matter what tools you're using you're still going to be delivering, IT, services, in a traditional, manner so. A little bit about to interplay plan so we're based out of Calgary. Alberta Canada we're. A major energy transportation. Company we, also do have some storage energy, storage, solutions, in, parts, of Europe. And. So, we've, undergone some change recently, in the past year from an IT leadership. Perspective and certainly. The way that we're looking at delivering, IT services, is getting, out of this mentality of being a gatekeeper, you. Know the the. People that just say no, we. Actually want to participate, with. The business we want to actually drive outcomes, because what's good for the company ultimately. Is good for IT which, is ultimately good for the individual, so, we're looking at it very much from that perspective not. From what, is good for IT then. Is what is good for the company itself and, so. What this means is we need to change our mindset and so. This is the way we're looking at the role of information technology. Going forward we're, we're there. To enable the adoption, of technology, in a safe, cost-effective. And reliable manner, now. What, this does say is that you know security is still front, and center for us but. It also takes us to take a step back and, take a look at what does that really mean you. Know some people feel that you know because you have data. In your data center it's safe. Versus. Well no it's in the public cloud that's a that's dangerous, we, don't necessarily look, that way so obviously we go through a lot of our do own own due diligence but I think it's a bit of a policy that thinking just because you have a data center that that's safe and I would love to see any pen tests, for for some of those organizations, that suggest, otherwise, now. So we're very focused on this this notion of an IT business. Partnership. And so. What this means is we're still interested in what we're calling a case for change or a very. Lightweight business, case you want to ensure that when. We're actually spending the company's money that, there's some sort of value attached, to that and the, thing is we want to streamline that we want to lean that process, out we're, not interested in these long you, know multi, week multi-month, business, cases where, you just never get started, I think the business is always excited, about what a upcoming.
Solution, Can provide but, if they're stuck waiting for months in, order to see some execution, they, quickly lose interest so, we're really focused on the integration of these IT solutions. With, business, objectives, and naturally. That involves, change management, involves change management on the IT side it, also involves change management from a business perspective in, as well and then, what what, enables this I think what's sort of the catalyst, for some of this is actually leveraging, the power platform. And the, reason for that is that that is a more democratized platform. That we can bring more people into building, those different, solutions. Another. Concept, that we've introduced, is this notion of rocks pebbles, and sand so. Being, in a you know publicly traded regulated. Environment, naturally we have some of those big ERP, systems, we, have energy, trading systems we, have enterprise asset, maintenance systems, right those are considered our big rocks these. Are the technologies, that fuel sort of core business processes across. The organization, now, naturally, with those big systems, you, sort of fall into that traditional, trap of like very slow moving you. Know highly constrained. Tons. Of visibility, tons of governance tons of restrictions, that involve and we. Get that there's some things where you do need to apply that rigor especially, around like financial. Reporting, consolidated. Reporting those are things that you just can't go out and do, on a whim the. Next is what we call pebbles, and this is more of existing. Tools. Existing. Sure that do require the sustainment. And ongoing maintenance or. You do need to keep these things up-to-date, or you fall, out of line with vendor, support and those types of things and we couldn't siddur those the, pebbles and now, the last one is the sand and I think this is the, most interesting. You. Know aspect, that. We're focused on it especially personally, and this is really the innovation and so. The whole idea is if you actually structure, your organization, correctly, you can actually get more done so. When you look at these jars they. Actually contain the same contents right, but, the problem is is like if you don't organize yourself correctly, what, you'll see is you won't get all of the work done and so, this is how we've, set up our organization. To focus on yes we've got projects, around the big rocks we've got projects around the pebbles but, now how do we actually sprinkle, in the sand, and actually, create, this culture of innovation and, I think this is where we're really excited about in sort of a key, part of this this talk so. How. Do we get more people up. To, speed with this technology, in, order for us to deliver more because I think ultimately it's, about scaling, how can we scale the organization in. Order to drive further, outcomes, so. We did some some hands-on learning so this was in March, of this past year at our nickname. Or academic. IPL and sweet, 18 people that, were there now. This was a very diverse audience we. Had a few people from the business that have showed a lot of aptitude, around office 365, and then, we had a bunch. Of IT folks now, these are not IT, developers, we, had people from our project management office we. Had an accountant, there we. Had project, managers, we, had organizational. Change management. Analysts, we, had some Enterprise, architects, there it, very was a diverse, audience from. Both a functional, perspective and, a technical perspective and. I think this is a key, opportunity that. Notion of diversity obviously. Is a message, you're hearing more and more about these days and diversity comes in many, forms but one. Thing to think about is this notion of diversity of thought or digital. Inclusion and that's, where we have obviously a lot of intelligent, people working, at our organization but, how can we tap in to all of those ideas that they have back.
To Ash's point about, people that are closer to the problem are probably in a better position to solve the problem that's, really what we're after from this perspective, so. In this this hands-on learning I provided an overview of the power platform, and some of the initiatives, that we were already doing at IPL, related. To it we, had a partner in Calgary fidelity, Factory helped us out with some of the power apps content, and then, I had convinced, John lavaca in the upper left hand corner I enticed. Him with skiing, in, Baffin, Calgary in March, which is generally the sweet spot for skiing, however, was minus 30 degrees Celsius, he, still came he, still insisted we go skiing, I really, didn't want to at that point but, but. He still came through and so he he came up and delivered some of the the flow content, as well and. So, we're gonna talk about for the next 30 minutes or so hours what, are the sort. Of solutions that, these teams, actually, developed. And give you some demonstrations, of it now. What. We've done it at IPL we focused initially on Microsoft, flow and power apps and exactly. What I'm showing you now is actually what we're doing with power bi we've. Just done two intakes, of power bi we, have another one next week so. Naturally Microsoft, flow if you're not familiar with it it's a cloud-based workflow. Solution. Approvals. Is a big part of the platform you see it in a lot of different use cases and it, becomes very powerful through, over. 250, connectors, I think the number is closer to 275. At this point but, this allows you to tap into a lot of your different data assets whether they be in the cloud or on-premise. Power. Apps was another key component that we talked about and it's a cross-platform. Web in mobile application, that, application. There although it's a little bit small was was, something that we developed for our Leadership Summit and so. This was another opportunity for people to build a mobile application, within. A single day and have it running on their phone so. For people that have come from say, non-technical. Backgrounds, this was mind blowing for them because they just never thought that they, would be able to do something that they could see on their phone. So. This was the app that every attendee. Built this. Is an expense, tracker application, where. You could go ahead and submit take a picture, of a receipt. After some metadata around it and then, send it to your boss, or your leader for approval, that, was facilitated through, Microsoft, flow and then, we used SharePoint, the SharePoint list to capture all of this data so. People that showed, up at that training with, no prior, power, apps and flow experience, were able to build this application, within. Five hours so. In some of the the talks I've had today the people like well what, about skepticism are people like skeptical walking, into these sure, but. There's nothing like results, that actually demystifies. Some, of that skepticism and, that's exactly, what we saw here even. With some of the developers, what's like well I'm used to you, know writing dotnet, I want to get low-level code and then they're like wait a minute I just did something super, powerful in the course of a few hours that would take me weeks or, lots. Of hours in order to do if, I was writing the code, so. This is the the team hard at work as you as I mentioned before it's a diverse audience. Across, business across, their function within IT and definitely. Their technical background, and. So. What we did is we provided, this hands-on training and you might be saying okay big deal everyone, does training everyone. Does these hackathons I think, the big difference for us is that we actually want to focus on like outcomes, so. How do we ensure that people use these skills to actually. Develop. Something, that is used and useful for the organization, and so, what we did is we split, everybody up into four teams and. So everyone you know naturally walks into the room sits besides there buddy sits with their teammates and so, we didn't want that to happen we wanted to really tap into that diversity, of thought so we handed, out random numbers and then, broke people into groups and then, what we said oK you've gone through this you've built an app in five hours now.
What, Are some other opportunities. Within, the business that you could see, at being addressed using this platform and so, we asked them to identify three, just so we could catalog, some of these but, then we asked them to prioritize one, if, you were gonna do one what would you do and then, we asked them to create four milestones, how. Do we know that you're going to be on target, with this you. Know how do you how are you distributing, this work in terms of people, contributing, and, then, what we did is we met three weeks later, we've, got dual monitors, that's why people looking different erections, but, we wanted to say okay how are you progressing are you, blocked is. There anything you need so back to the leadership comment, from ash is like this is the leadership saying how, can I help you what do you need to be successful that was our role we, also wanted to say what did what did you learn and then, I think most importantly, like what would you do differently sort of that idea of retrospective if like hey, yeah I have learned a lesson but if I was to do this again I would probably approach it a different way. Then. What we did is the, following three weeks and then, six weeks in total we, did a demo. Day with our, IT executive. Of RIT GM, and. CFO. And so. Each team got, the opportunity to present to. These, executives, and demonstrate. Their applications, so back to that reward. Or recognition slide. Right this is a huge, opportunity for, people to get some exposure to. Senior, leadership to say hey you, know I am happy to be here, I am, invigorated. This is a great opportunity so we wanted to give them the floor and actually, allow them to demonstrate their, use cases and, I think that what was interesting, for me having sort, of been. Involved in this and sort of having some insight in terms of what people were building and then, seeing the executives, walk Ian cold and to, see their like minds completely blown, I think was super interesting, for me and obviously, very exciting, to see both. Sides of, the offense being really happy with people being proud of what they've built and also. The executive, recognizing. That as well so. What we're gonna do now is we're gonna walk through the, four different demos I have they're recorded, just so I'm not logging into a bunch of different things and will, actually give you a sense of what these folks actually went ahead and built, so. This is the the first one it's a station, checklist. App and. This. Is so this was a identified. An opportunity, from one, of the business folks in the room we're. Obviously we have pipelines we have different facilities, as you, would expect there's needs to be least checklist, where people are going through and ensuring that you, know specific, tasks, related to maintenance are being, done and so they felt that this would be an opportunity, to digitize, this because. It has been historically, a very paper-based, process, and I have a screen. Of that a screenshot of that paper so. Back to diversity, so we had someone from the business we had a enterprise. Content, management architect. Involved, we had a IT, developer. Who's. Part of the team and then a project manager, who, runs projects, also, part of the team and so. All of these team members were brand, new to power apps, and. So, this, is the problem they were that they were trying to solve checklists. Are currently completed. Using pen and paper the. Field resource will print out this checklist travel. To the station complete, the checklist on paper go back to the field office scan. It then upload, it into our enterprise asset management system, so. No easy way to track or search what's, been completed, on the checklist because now we've taken, a paper copy and digitized, it basically. Took, a screenshot of it essentially, so how do you actually extract, that insight maybe, we could use a eye builder, now but certainly, at this point not, like, that wasn't a good opportunity for us and, this is something that has to be completed, every week for, every station. Here's. A picture of the checklist as you can see you, know you, have to move through a lot of information, using. Pen and paper so. The. Team felt that they could build better they can build a better solution so they wanted to create a checklist application. Then, they also wanted to include notifications. To the supervisor, that would, inform them when the checklist is actually complete, we. Would then be able to upload, all of the data to SharePoint, and what. Actually the team has done since this and unfortunately I don't have a screenshot is they've now layered power bi on top, of that SharePoint, data and they've, actually used the map control in order to map out where all of these checklists.
Have Been completed, in the timeliness of it once. Again this team didn't have a lot of power bi experience, either. Here's. The the key components, or the solute high level solution architecture, where power, apps to capture the information sharepoint. To store it flow, to automate, the approvals, and to, send notifications and. Then power bi to visualize, so, back to the the Act the. Automate, and the analyze here, they're using the entire power, platform, to do so. So. What I'm going to do is just quickly run the the demo it is a little bit quick. But, just in the interest of time in order to get through all four of them, so. Yes these are the the team members as I mentioned very diverse, skill. Sets but. Was interesting, is that these people have become champions, as a result of the platform itself we. Did integrate, the power app with, our map solution, we've, plugged in our safety information, as well so people have that readily available, here. You would have a technician going, through a station checklist, and instead, of ticking off all those boxes here. We're just using controls, not, going to run through all of those naturally, have, ability, to take a picture in this case if the gate lock needed to be replaced we could capture that, information. You. Can see all of the items that are in progress, and when. You're done with that you can basically send, it off and the. Supervisor, will get notified, that. That's been completed, so this is the supervisor. Getting, the notification. Where, they would have the ability to click on the link go, right into SharePoint, and perform. A more thorough investigation if. They were required. Now. In terms of how long did this solution take. To build the. Team says it was it was less than 10 hours probably. The power bi would be, beyond. That but. Once again something that was very manual. Historically. Was done in a matter of around, 10 hours. So. What are some of the benefits, of this so, these were all software. Tools that we had we didn't have to pay any additional licenses, for this the. So. They would they talked to the business in terms of what the the benefit, would be of this and they estimated. About in 1.5. Hours per week of saving, time from a technicians. Perspective, which, equates to around 95, K per year in terms, of outcomes, and. Beyond, that we've got now better data higher quality, data where we've if, we ever had more of compliance, or an audit we, wouldn't have to be hunting, through lots of PDFs, in order to define that information, it's all indexed, we can surface. It up through Power bi very quickly and easily and. Yeah. The last point there on the screen is in, terms of overall time savings we feel yeah but 1.5, hours per week across. 950. Employees that's a. Most 72,000, hours, per, week are. Sorry per year across. 32 FTEs. So. That was the the first use case the. Next use case I want to talk to you about is a software. License requests, and renewals and so, this has traditionally been another, manual. Process, for us naturally. You've got different like IT managers, who have different sort, of relationships, with these different vendors, unfortunately.
I'd Say we haven't done a great job of sort of consolidating. That information, in order to be able to track it that's. What this solution is gonna, do for us so we spent significant, dollars. I removed the actual number from presentation, but it's in the millions for. Software, spend so, naturally. We there's, a big, opportunity here the. Other thing is we're growing we're. A growing business we keep adding seats, so, when we add seats naturally, we're adding cost especially in this subscription. Models, of office 365 power. Bi etc. Here's. The current process not, going to go through this one by one with you but, the team wanted to focus on this part of the process and as they were taking a look at it they actually took. The opportunity to lean out the process, and we're, able to eliminate a step which, is naturally, something you should always be doing when you're looking at these things if you digitize. A poor process, it's, still going to be a poor process even though it's been digitized, so. They removed the step because they felt we got we don't need to do this anymore. Now. In terms of like what are the benefits of this solution that. Can automate a largely, manual, process, they. Can create, visibility. For. All software, requests, to go through their life cycle and now, they can actually easily. Search and report on software purchases, and renewals, another. Opportunity, with this is naturally you're capturing, all of this information, but, how do you track the renewals, how, can you get ahead of those renewals perhaps get. Some cost savings or, rationalizing. The number of seats you need usually. These things creep up on people because everyone's busy but we can actually use flow. And will we call it like the digital neg where, every day it can go into that list and say what's an upcoming renewal, and actually, who's the owner and send that notification out, in, order to get that visibility that's another opportunity, with solution, as well so. Here's the team it's made up of a IT. Supervisor. An accountant. An architect. And then someone from our service desk as well. So, here's the power app itself in. This case they're going to go create a new, renewal. You can see that we've integrated in, with office 365, so we can you know specify owners. And whatnot the. You. Know we we did speed this up there's a lot, of data that needs to be captured we. Do have mandatory fields. Identified. In red. You, can't proceed, without completing, out those fields. If, we want to include detachments, say a quote from from the vendor we have the ability to include that as well stored. In SharePoint on, the backend, they've. Implemented features, such as sorting filtering. Across. All of the key fields. If. You want to go ahead and edit an existing, form, because you're naturally not going to do that at all in one sitting you can have the ability to do that in. This case we recognize. That we captured.
The Address wrong so we're going to go into the the quotes and get the right address, and head, back into the record to go ahead and update that. So, there's a series, of states that exist so. We can actually go ahead and see that this. Is now pending review so. What we can do now is kick off a flow in, order to have the. IT manager, go ahead and review, that upcoming. Request in order to ensure that it aligns and the numbers are accurate and that, you know the quote sounds correct so here's the approval going through, flow and through, your office 365, inbox. We. Can see there now the state has changed to pending, approval, and then, we can go ahead and send that approval off to, our internal, supply chain team for, them to go ahead and, process, that quote. So, net yes now it's been approved. And. Then. What we can do is we haven't integrated this with sa P but once we have, the, purchase request number from si P we would go ahead and update, this, and basically close off this, part of the process. So. Next steps so. Naturally, want to link to a master, software. Slash vendor, list so this is you, know typically, stored inside of the ERP so you'd want to be able to to, do that so we've got a single source of truth build. Power bi dashboards, on top of this so we can actually visualize. All of this data now that it's captured, inside a SharePoint we can see what, is the upcoming renewals, what does the estimated, spend things, like that and then, just include s ap connectivity. Right so we can handle the the purchase, request number and purchase, request creation, part, of the process as well. So. The next scenario, I want to talk about is a helpdesk bot, and so, this is a combination, of a few different folks we've got a project manager, involved we, have the supervisor. Of our service desk and end-user computing we. Did have a SharePoint, person. And then also business. Intelligence developer. As well. So. Naturally, you know. Self-service. Is a big deal these days whenever. You're dealing with customer service whether it's inside your company or, externally. With other vendors as well and so. Naturally, we want to be able to improve this process we want to people. To have a good experience when they're trying to get help because, at that point they're already disrupted, so now if we have a poor process, we're just adding to that frustration, and so. We've gone ahead and built a help desk bot in order to help, address this. Now. In order to leverage this or to help, with the AI side, of things we're using Q&A, maker so, this is a service, a user, friendly service from Microsoft, that, allows you to provide a series of questions and then, they're related answers and it uses natural language, processing in order, to understand, the intent of the request in order, to map it with an answer itself so, this means you can ask a question many, different ways but, you should get always get the same answer or a relevant. Answer. And. So naturally this this, runs in the cloud there's. Growing list, of available channels that you can integrate with this whether that's you, know your office 365 your, Outlook Yammer, power. Apps teams etc. So. We'll get right into the demo.
So. Here's the the power app and it actually has sort of two modes this, is more your ask, a question get a response in more of an asynchronous manner. So, here asking, how do I get sa p-axis. Go, ahead and submit the, request the. AI bots will come back and then say go, to service central here's, all of the steps if you want to do more of a request response, synchronous, conversation, that once again still in the power app here. You're just gonna have that conversation where you say hey hi the, help desk is gonna respond say hey this, is a greeting will respond back with a with, a greeting, response, and then, what we'll do is we, will you. Know ask the question how do I get access to si P and then, the bots will provide these instructions, back and so. Behind this we do have flow that's handling that interaction, with the Q&A maker another, scenario, is is Yammer right once again if you have the same knowledge base but, in terms of how we interact with it can be through a variety of different channels, we showed power apps now, we're using Yammer and that's, what's happening is flow is listening to Yammer. Events, I'm gonna go ahead and pick up that request, go, into Q&A maker try, to get a response in, the event that it's not confident, with the response, what's, happening, here is we're actually going to send that out to a human, and they, can actually approve the, response, so, that you know that you're not going to send some like. A poor response to your user if it's not confident, in the response and that's actually handled, handle through Q&A. Maker here's. Just another view once again a different channel this, is a simple, web page where we could embed that as part of our intranet and still, tap into that same Q&A. Maker experience. And then. The idea is you provide a question. And then you get prescriptive, actions in terms of how you can go about responding, to it. So, benefits, outcomes, so, in April, our, service, desk received. Over 4,000. Tickets and of. Those, worth over, 4,000, tickets over a thousand, of them were related to application. And/or folder access this. Is an area that is right for a bot in terms, of you can still have the approval you, can still have the governance, but, you don't have that manual. Work that's happening on the back end and so, this is a big opportunity for us in terms of cost savings reducing. That frustration, of end users and actually, allowing everyone to be more productive. So. Next step is just extend. The knowledge base so basically, we have this an. Existing, IT service management tool we. Want to be able to track, or extract, all of that information and, actually, load it into the QA maker at least like prioritized, what are the most frequently, requests, requested. Scenarios, and then ensure that they're in the knowledge base to provide, a good experience from that perspective the, QA, maker is extremely.
Cheap In. Its, current form we're just using the free tier but, even if we ramp up in terms to handle our load we're looking at about $12, a month to. Be able to take advantage of that artificial, intelligence so. Once again a few years ago you, would never be able to do this on your own it wouldn't be cost-effective but. Now that we've got this democratized, technology, we can actually leverage it and it's extremely cost effective and, then, it's how do we actually extend this to our intranet extend. It to mobile phones Microsoft. Teams. The. Last scenario. I want to walk you through is the the team got a little bit creative here and and called, their their team inventory. And, so. This is as relates, to our IT store, in terms of all of our IT assets, and how we're managing them and I'd say there's a lot of improvements. In this area for, us, today. It's done or previously, it was done through you know manual spreadsheets in Excel and it, was difficult to track difficult. To report on naturally, and so, we wanted to be able to to, digitize this process, as well so that, we can take advantage of just-in-time inventory challenges. And. Just overall, just be more productive in terms of how we're managing our IT assets, once. Again you can see anticipated. Growth from an FTE perspective. So, we can't continue to rely on manual processes. If we're, expected, to help scale the, organization. Benefits. You, know costs contribute to cost savings they've. Estimated this could be as much as a million dollars annually, you, can allow the Service Desk to focus on higher, value, work than. Doing a lot of this manual, tracking and data input, you, can also increase our accuracy, as it pertains to forecasting. And budgeting and, then. Naturally, providing, a better user, experience, and better. Reporting. So. Let's take a look this was recorded right off the, the. IPhone, so, this team is made up of a project, manager, a person, actually that runs our project management office he, did most, of this app development, we also have an organizational. Change management. Person. And then also an IT director that, were a part of this team so. Here what we want to do is we've received, the shipment of Dell laptops, we, want to then go ahead and add them into inventory so. This is a power app that included, that barcode, scanner control where. They can actually record that that. Device. And actually added into inventory. Itself. Here. We're going to go ahead and add a phone in the inventory so this would be you, know an iPhone. So, that's been successfully, added to inventory. Now. We've got a new employee that's joining the organization and, we, need to be able to provide them with, computing. Devices so. We once again we've integrated into, office 365 we, can look up their name we, can see where their desk is then. We're going to go ahead and scan the laptop, that's we're about to give them and then, we can see that that's now been associated, to the record and their desk and we're, going to issue them a phone same. Thing now that's all tied to, that individuals, record. Here, what we're gonna do is check to see what laptops, we have in stock, so. Now we can actually go ahead and see okay what are we running low on a specific, type. Of model, do, we have a new project coming up where we need to be able to onboard people so, we need to to order some stock if that mate why it might be the case. Yeah. And that's. So. That concludes the the four demos that those teams, put together now. So what's interesting just to recap that a little bit these were all solutions. That, people built, without. Having any prior knowledge, prior, to that training, the. Solutions, in duration took, anywhere from you. Know around, ten hours to, about eighty hours in terms of how people went. Ahead and built these different solutions on. Top of this they still did their day job this was not something where it was like okay we're locking you into a conference. Room and don't come out until you're done this, was on top of the the other responsibilities.
That They had whether. They're in the project management office they're, p.m.. Etc. So. What are we doing next. That we've seen a lot of interest in this program we've. Got the attention of the executive, we've actually presented, this to the CEO and his senior leadership team and so. Our basically. Our mindset, going forward is how do we do more of this how do we scale this as we've already as I mentioned done to power bi sessions. Like this and, we've got another one coming up next week we've. Got two sessions around flow, what. We're gonna do bottom-up, innovation and, then, another power apps and flow bottom-up, innovation in, mid-august so. Now what's happening is more and more people are expressing interest in these, technologies they've, seen the opportunity, they want to get involved, and so, naturally our response is like okay this is great now, how do we actually go ahead and set that out first to set people up for success so. Just, to do a bit of a recap like in this session we saw, transformation. And it. Wasn't just about technology it was around people we. Educated, and empowered people we. Got employees, out of their comfort zone which. In a good way you know positive, way, see. As a result they became very passionate about what projects, they, were working, on. We. Saw a lot of teamwork these were people coming together that hadn't worked together, before and as. A, result we scaled our capability, set, so. Prior, to this training you could have asked okay how many mobile developers, do you have not. Many right, but, now what we've done is actually introduced, this, technology to a broader set and they've actually demonstrated, they can do useful, things that, drive, outcomes. Now. As a side benefit, of all of this innovation, has emerged right, we saw some pretty. Progressive solutions. Based on the ROI, relative. To the, previous approach to actually solving, those problems and. I. Think most importantly, back to the outcomes, is we were able to generate outcomes, as. A result, of this this wasn't just a hey, I'm gonna have an easy, Friday, you. Know where I'm just gonna go do some things and then go home and enjoy my weekend right at the end of the day we did tie this back to outcomes, and, I, think if you if you take a step, back and you look at what your organization's, trying to do from. Both an employee or personnel, perspective, and from. An outcome perspective, I would, I'd be willing to bet that this is what every organization, is trying to achieve and it's, certainly something that we're pretty excited about doing more of just, because we've seen a lot of early benefits, as a result so.
Shameless. Plug, in. Order to get a IT, executive, perspective. My, boss is actually and while and I are Co presenting at 9:30. So that's not a typo so that's in like 10, minutes or something in, C, 107. So if you want to get more of the executive, perspective, in terms of how she is, thinking about you. Know this transformation. And bottom-up, innovation feel. Free to go ahead and check out that, that. Session. So. Takeaways. So. There's some content, so this is content, provided, by Microsoft, this. Is flow in a day and app in a day so. You can do this, here's. The content, it's free downloaded. It has all of the labs that. Are available to, you in terms of building flows, building, apps and then. What you can do is actually you, know some within your organization, perhaps it's you can be that agent, of change go. Through this content, learn it and then, set up these sorts of sessions at your organization. And I. Think naturally leave getting leadership buy-in can be difficult, but. I would say link, it back to outcomes. Talked. About this isn't just training let's capture objectives. Let's, create some initiatives, let's, identify an. Initiative. Owners let's. Actually set, some milestones, up so that they can check in to say hey are people, actually doing this. Then. You can actually schedule the, the checkpoints, the, demo and, then. Unblock the resources, and give, them the time to work on this. Then. You have the opportunity, to share the success and, reinvigorate. Your organization. Whether they be in the business or an IT and, the. Other thing we said as part of this - was have, fun like. This is not a test, like this, is what you truly want to transform, your culture, is you, do need to create that excitement. Give. People an opportunity to have some fun as well. So. With, that, that's. The that's all I have yeah I think we have any, questions any one or two questions you have time for a couple of questions. There. Are microphones zero you can just shout yeah. So. The question. Was the app that we showed was, it the first app. The. Station checklist, yes, so the the question was was the second station, checklist. Built. Inside, of the power, apps player. Or was it a web experience so, it is actually a mobile app it, was just for that demo it, was just demonstrated, through the web browser they, didn't have the dongle like the last demo had in, order to record it so yes it is so.
It Is a mobile, application but, it was just for the demo we ran it through the browser. Okay. I'll tell you thank you very much for coming hopefully this was useful thank. You.
2019-06-16 19:10
