Steve reads his Blog

Part 5 in my series of Sally and Power Platform

Part 4 in my series of Sally and Power Platform

Part 3 in my series of Sally and Power Platform

Part 2 in my series of Sally and Power Platform

In this mini-series, we will follow Sally from HR as she uses the Microsoft Power Platform to solve business problems.

For as long as I have been in this business, about 25 years now, costs for clients have always been a wild card.

How do you write an RFP for Dynamics 365 or Power Platform Services? You don't. You can search for "How to write a CRM RFP?" or "Template for CRM RFP", or "RFP for Dynamics 365", or similar, and what you will find are a lot of RFP examples that failed to generate responses.

It has been exactly one year since we signed our first customer up for “The Works from Forceworks”

When Microsoft introduced the Power Platform as a "Citizen-Friendly" set of tools for non-technical business users to create apps to solve business challenges, it seemed a worthy endeavor. Well, enough time has passed to assess the outcome. Those who jumped in with both feet now have a mountain of shitty little apps. Those who watched from the sidelines decided, "We don't need that!" So is that the end of the tale? Let's see. The First Mistake To enable broad and rapid adoption of the Power Platform, Microsoft decided to add a "seeded" Power Apps capability to all Microsoft 365 licenses. Thus instantly putting a version of this technology into millions of "citizens" hands. While IT could turn this "off", it was "on" by default. Microsoft knew that no IT Admin would ever enable it if it were the other way around. This led to many citizens seizing the opportunity to replace their shitty little Excel spreadsheets with a slightly less shitty app. Excel was the original Citizen tool, and many organizations have a ton of Excel spreadsheets floating around, which are now slowly but surely being replaced with shitty Power Apps built by people who not only don't know what they are doing but don't know that there is anything beyond those seeded capabilities. The Second Mistake Once IT figured out what was happening, many flipped the switch stopping this unchecked motion. In response to alleviate their concerns, Microsoft launched the "Center of Excellence" CoE. A tool that could wrangle this proliferation of shitty apps to be under IT's control again. CoE was a solution to a Microsoft-created problem. Now IT could see all of the shitty apps that had been built, including apps that never got used, multiple apps trying to solve the same problems, apps connecting to external sources, apps exposing internal confidential sources, and users having access to apps they shouldn't. There are few things more fun than watching the faces of fear of IT when a CoE lights up. Going back to the Fork I have written before about the poor citizen, oblivious to anything beyond the seeded capabilities, building some contorted solution only to months later learn there were better options. They unknowingly took a fork, unaware there was more than one fork to take. Their anger towards Microsoft is deserved. But they are not the only ones to take the wrong fork; Microsoft also did. Microsoft determined at the beginning that Joe NoNothing building his own app to solve his own problem was the best path. With rare exceptions, disaster ensued, or a least a lot of wasted time. Recognizing the obvious, that no organization wants a thousand shitty little apps, Microsoft took a pivot with an emphasis on a new idea, "Fusion Teams". Pair Joe NoNothing with Sally KnowsAlot and Bob ProDev... this is a "Fusion Team". Now instead of a shitty little app that does not do very much, you can expect a nice little app that does not do very much. Again, even the Fusion Team has taken the wrong fork. What Other Fork is There? There is another fork, but you can't see it from the seeded Power Apps. Had Microsoft called the seeded Power Apps something like Power Apps Lite, you might have been given a clue, but inexplicably, they chose not to. So you are left thinking that you have seen Power Apps and are justifiably unimpressed. But there is another "Power Apps" in the Power Platform. One that is much more capable and runs on top of a relational database called Dataverse instead of a SharePoint list or Excel spreadsheet. Why did you not know about this? Why would you? In the time you have been struggling to create a Canvas app, you could have built an entire, bulletproof solution to your problem. A solution that could be easily extended also to solve related problems. What's the Catch? Ok, you got me; the catch is that the "real" Power Platform is not included with your Microsoft 365 license. It will add either $5 or $20 to your monthly cost per app user. Still pretty cheap to actually "solve" a problem rather than just canvas over it with shit. The Fork Microsoft Should Have Created I am sure some inside of Microsoft would agree that mistakes were made.  Had they forgone the Citizen path and instead emphasized the Rapid Development low-code Power Platform as a way to solve mission-critical business challenges at a much lower cost than ever before in history, we would all be in a different place today.  Fusion Teams was the one bright spot in this series of missteps. What about Citizens? Don't Citizens already have a job? Why are they wasting time pretending to be app developers? As an organization, your cost to have complex mission-critical applications built by professionals is a fraction of what it was only a few years ago. Seriously, drop a zero off of the end of what you previously paid! Do you really need to reduce those cost savings even further by having Sally build some shitty app on her own? Some of you reading this are already sitting on a pile of shitty apps and can see that the "savings" were never real. So What is the Power Platform... Really? I'm glad you finally asked! The Power Platform is a suite of capabilities, including Apps, Automation, ChatBots, Webpages, and AI. Individually, each component is pretty cool, but when combined, there are few business challenges that cannot be solved. Forget about your shitty little "Time Off" app. I am talking about enterprise-grade; run your entire organization level stuff. That $5-$20 is starting to sound pretty cheap now, isn't it? Why hasn't anybody told you about this? It's because of that $5-$20 thing. Microsoft and most partners would actually prefer that you buy their first-party business applications for a buttload more money. If word got out that instead of customizing Dynamics 365 Sales @ $95+/user, you could spend the same amount customizing on the Power Platform and end up with the same thing at a fraction of the cost... well, that would not be good for those who sell the $95+ apps. Prove It! Ok, here are some examples of some of our clients. An NFT company that sold $90 million worth of NFT tokens on its first day manages the entire process on the Power Platform with integration directly to the blockchain. A Solar contractor runs their entire end-to-end business, from web prospects to permitting to construction and long-term maintenance agreements on the Power Platform. An Insurance Brokerage generates and tracks thousands of quotes daily on the Power Platform. A Mega-Church manages hundreds of monthly events, including event creation, promotion, and kiosk-based check-in for thousands of constituents on the Power Platform. An Opportunistic Investment firm created an in-house deep financial research solution on the Power Platform. A Petroleum Distributor and Convenience store operator with thousands of locations runs their organization on the Power Platform. Still think the Power Platform is about shitty little apps built by Joe NoNothing?

This was my fifth chat with Charles Lamanna.

  I had a chance to sneak up on Vahe Torossian, a Microsoft Corporate Vice President and the man in charge of Sales for Microsoft Business Applications. While Vahe has been with Microsoft for 30 years, many of you may not know him, so I wanted to fix that. Vahe is no ordinary Seller; he’s the “Top” guy who sets the sales strategy and motions for the entire global team. Vahe is also the guy who runs the really big enterprise customer meetings, and he’s super-friendly, as you would expect for the Chief Rainmaker. We covered a lot of ground in this one, so enjoy! Transcript Below: Vahe: Hey, Vahe Torossian speaking. Steve: Vahe, Steve Mordue, how are you? Vahe: Hey Steve. In fairness let’s say Charles mentioned that somehow you were going to call me. I didn’t know when, but it’s great to talk to you. Steve: After I interviewed him, I asked him who would be a good person to talk to? And he dropped your name. So it doesn’t surprise me that he gave you a little heads up. Have you got a few minutes to chat? Vahe: Yeah, of course. Thanks Steve. Steve: Oh, perfect, perfect. So before we get into it, maybe we can tell the listeners a little bit about what your role is. I know you’ve been at Microsoft forever, I think like 30 years or something like that, and you’ve held a lot of different positions. But now you’re in the business application space and that’s been fairly recent. So there’s probably a lot of folks that might not be familiar with you, who should be. Vahe: Oh yeah, thanks Steve. You’re right. I’ve been celebrating my 30 years anniversary at Microsoft in April in 2022. I actually took the helm of the Biz Apps sales organization globally in late 2020. So basically I took my one way ticket to Redmond in December 2020. And the plane was almost empty, it was during the pandemic. And it was kind of a strange feeling for someone who has been traveling so much in the past. And of course, let’s say I came with the lens of the business application, of course. Having led let’s say Western Europe in my past role, having all the businesses of Microsoft. And I think Western Europe was quite successful on Biz Apps, our trajectory growth. And I guess that was also in fact the good match to some degree to try to take it at the global level. Steve: So is it a little easier to think about a smaller segment of the product mix, now really being able to focus like a business application? So I think before you were looking over all sorts of different things, weren’t you? Vahe: Yeah, actually it’s a great question. Because I think it’s very different way of looking at the business. When you are, let’s say almost you are the CEO of Microsoft in the countries that you are, let’s say leading. You have all the levers to engage customers, partners, government, in different circumstances. And you try to leverage as much as you can the portfolio that you have to maximize the value. In the context of let’s say the business application. I think it was, the interesting bet to some degree Steve, was to say, Hey, this has been a portfolio at Microsoft, whether you call it Dynamics 365 or Dynamics only as a brand in the past. And if you go back 20 years, let’s say almost, with the Navision and Axapta, and Solomon Software and Great Plains. All these stories, all these product came together. And 20 years later, I think it has been part of a portfolio somewhere. Vahe: And you had almost what I will call the strong, let’s say, portfolio of Microsoft, the platform, the modern workplace and environment. And I felt the work that James Phillips in the past, and with Alyssa, and Charles, and Amy here now on the marketing side. Have been a strong inflection point to bring together both the technology in the cloud environment. But at the same time, a market environment that requires very different, let’s say tools to make the most of this transformation. And I felt that there’s one piece at Microsoft that requires a huge catalyst leveraging the innovation. But responding as much as we can to what the customer need or even don’t know yet what they need. And I think that’s what I think to me was almost a bet. It’s almost like all of a sudden you move to the little dog, if I may say. But with a huge potential of transforming something with great asset for Microsoft, and the customers and partners. Steve: Well I have to say, having been involved with Microsoft for a while, we have a phrase over here called redheaded stepchild, which is kind of what Dynamics was for many, many years. It was off campus, it was just this thing out there and under Satya, when Satya came in, he’s the first one that I think came into the position that recognized this should be another leg on the stool, not some remote thing out there. And I think that’s made a huge. Difference because I was involved in the years before Satya with business applications and they were not just something over here on the back shelf, and now they’re right front and center. I think that between Dynamics and what’s happened with the power platform, cloud in general. Microsoft’s ability to get into and help customers is massively different than it used to be. And in your role now, you’re dealing with a lot different type of customer. You’re talking about Office 365 or Azure, you’re dealing with IT. And now you’re mostly dealing with business users. It’s a completely different audience you’re having to work with today, isn’t it? Vahe: Absolutely. I think also you’re right since Satya took the helm of the company, to some degree you of course we have seen how we tackle the cloud computing hyper-scale environment. But at the same time, in fact what happened with the Covid in the last two years, have seen an acceleration of what we call in the past, the productivity tools to become more and more collaboration environment. And from almost an application or a set of application, it became more and more a platform on its own. And so it’s almost like when you think about where we are today and we were talking about the Covid, I don’t think the Covid is yet over fully everywhere. But now everybody’s talking about recession, right? And there’s no one headline that you look, you say, oh my goodness, what’s going to happen? Which just means in terms of planning for 22, 23. Vahe: So I think the assets that is now quite unique to some degree, or differentiated as you said, between the Dynamics 365 platform components and the Power Platform, it’s almost bringing together. But I think, I don’t remember Steve, in a few years back, I think Satya was talking about the mobility of the experience. And that was more from a device perspective initially. But actually what you see now is that with Teams as a platform, the system of productivity almost connect with the system of record more and more. And it’s re-transforming the way you are thinking. It’s almost like, you think about, you don’t have to go to a CRM environment or ERP environment to get access to the data. It’s almost like wherever you work, if you use an Excel or if you use Teams or whatever, you get access naturally, almost intuitively to your data set. And the data set are that’s almost fulfilled naturally. And so we have no additional task. Vahe: And so I think that’s the transformation world in which we are. Which connects cheaper well. We almost do more with less, right? And that’s going to be almost the conversation we’re going to have in the coming month. And it started already with many customers and partners. How we can optimize the assets that they have, how they can let’s say increase the deep provisioning of some assets that they have. They are paying too much to concentrate a bit more, to get more agility. And I think this is where also, from a partner perspective, Steve, I see a lot of potential. You are referring to Power Platform, it’s fascinating to see what it was in the very beginning, this notion of citizens developer, what does it mean? Vahe: People didn’t know exactly what it is, we’re quite afraid to touch it. But now when you see the shortage of developers in the market in general. And how you can make the most of some absolutely topnotch people who are not developer, touching the last mile execution challenges. Have been facing crazy environment and situation that they say, I can’t believe how my IT guide doesn’t solve these things. I’ve been telling them the customer pain point for so many years. And now with some, let’s say [inaudible 00:08:45] place, let’s say available for them, along with some let’s say technical assets, you can really make the magic in the very, very, very time. Steve: Charles came up with a term on the fly, ambient CRM. Kind of where we’re heading here when you talk about things like Viva Sales and some of these pieces that are really wiring all these components together. Covid was a terrible thing, but it certainly was a perfect storm for pushing the technology forward into a place that it’s been fighting to get to, it’s really been fighting to get to that point. And Teams was a great product. But certainly Covid created the perfect environment where Teams made insane sense for companies that were maybe just thinking about it or dabbling with it, and suddenly they’re all diving into it. And you guys of course poured the investment on top of that. And I think that the silver lining of Covid, for technology, is how far it really allowed it to advance in that period of time. Maybe we just need a pandemic every five years to push a technology forward. I don’t know. Vahe: No, but I have to say that even in my previous role when I was running Western Europe. Even the most skeptical people in regard to the cloud or the transition to a cloud environment. Having the one that rushed in the first, almost to a cloud environment, once the pandemic has been a bit of a real situation to face, and to drive the economy or the public services let’s say on. So I think you’re right, so you don’t wa