The Truth About Power Platform in Global Mega Projects

00:00:01 Mark Smith
Welcome to the power platform show. Thanks for joining me today. I hope today's guests inspires and educates you on the possibilities of the Microsoft Power platform now. Let's get on with the show.

00:00:23 Mark Smith
In this episode, we'll be focusing on bigger apps or anchor apps on the power platform and where they've been used around the world in very large mission critical implementations. Today's guests is from Amsterdam, N Holland in the Netherlands. He works at Avanade as a group manager. He's a solution architect by trade. He has been in the IT industry for more than 15 years, always focusing on line of business solutions with Microsoft Technologies. He had the opportunity to work across the globe and help many large scale digital transformations. Last time I met him, one person was here in New Zealand where he used to live. But as you can see, he now lives in the Netherlands. You can find links to his bio and socials etcetera in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Eric.

00:01:09 Eric Regnier 
Thanks, Mark. Good to be here.

00:01:11 Mark Smith
Good to have you back on the show. I I know my podcast recording are in the 630 forty Type episode number and the last time you were on was Episode 359, so it was a wee while ago.

00:01:26 Eric Regnier 
In a while. Yeah, it has.

00:01:28 Mark Smith
Then a free podcast since, so why don't we start with an update with food, family and fun being that your world has totally changed since we last talked here and you know, you were in the southern hemisphere there in the northern hemisphere, you're in a tiny country now. You're in a massive country based on its influence. The Netherlands tell us what's going on in.

00:01:50 Eric Regnier 
Your world, yes. So basically, you know, two young kids, right. And then we reached a point where we needed to decide, you know, where should we settle and where life should be. Right. So my wife being from Europe, right, and none of us being from New Zealand. Although we we love music. Feeling it's pretty much over this place from both our families, so we needed a more long term plan, right than we were in the state. OK, either we really invest in New Zealand and and buy a home and you know live the the Kiwi life or we start looking for a more long term plan especially for the kids, right, it's we'll say. Our school. So yeah, we ended up here in Netherlands, Amsterdam, going back to a place avanade where I used to work so. We're quite familiar and yeah, it was easy for my wife to get work in her field here as well. So yeah, it just. Seemed like a. Like a good option? Yeah. And so far, it's been almost three years, and yeah, we're we're loving it here.

00:02:55 Mark Smith
In flies men two years. That's incredible.

00:02:58 Eric Regnier 
Two years already. Yep.

00:03:00 Mark Smith
How did the how did what was the logistics element of moving you originally came from Canada, right, is that right?

00:03:06 Eric Regnier 
Yes. Yeah, exactly from Montreal.

00:03:09 Mark Smith
Yeah. Yeah. And so you came to New Zealand? Tell me about the logistics to moving to the Netherlands. Did you already have your job? I take it you're already hired?

00:03:19 Eric Regnier 
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So in in Montreal is where I started sort of my journey with Avanade, right, so I will there the few few implementations which I have that I moved to Hong Kong. Where I worked on another huge implementation there. And then yeah, after a couple of years in Hong Kong, we decided. To. Try out and visit that part of the world, so Oceania, New Zealand and Australia. And then yeah. Then when it was time to settle, I basically got a hold of avanade again. And yeah, there was a being in the power platform. Space. I guess one of the perks is, yeah, there's a lack of senior resource, a bit everywhere. So uh, so I had the that opportunity to sort of, yeah. To choose I guess. Where to go if that makes sense?

00:04:09 Mark Smith
So so avanade correct me if I'm wrong, would be similar to what IBM you know my experience and and and being an IBM. And that although. You work for avanade in those other geographies. They are quite independent avanade, if you're like in the Netherlands, right? You don't sit under a global umbrella of the power platform practice. So they all individually run practices in each of these Geoface.

00:04:35 Eric Regnier 
And sore dove, for sure, the people locally, let's just say have have a priority to service the local customers, right. Or usually we try to service, but we do help out from our capability more globally right to the overall practice. Right and or across the different regions, right? But generally, yes, yeah, each country have their own P&L and their own objectives and stuff, right? Following a wider strategy.

00:05:05 Mark Smith
How easy is it for you though, to let's say if somebody in the US said we need Eric to present to this customer cause Eric's a guru on power platform for banking as an example. Yeah. How easy is it for, you know, and I'm talking about the logistics behind the scenes of how companies run for you to get into charged. You know, behind, you know, from Avanade, Netherlands to Avanade North America. How easy is it for that charge back to happen internally? Do you have an easy way of that?

00:05:40 Eric Regnier 
No. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is definitely some some processes for there. We're over. What 4050? 1000 employees and that happens quite often, right? And it happened to me even when I went to Hong Kong, right? They needed a solution, architects. Specialized in that type of dynamics 3. 65 which? Is. Yeah, we know the the the old name of the power platform. Yeah. There's processes in place to sort of fast track these type of of things.

00:06:04 Mark Smith
So that was never an IBM. If they wanted me to work on a project in Germany, for example, the ball lake of trying to get my manager to agree with that because my manager wouldn't be able to clip the ticket on me for doing that. So and his manager would be able to click and his manager and his manager right up to country and then region level couldn't clip the ticket. If you're doing this into country or into geography. Type thing and so it just became too hard as a a model of working.

00:06:33 Eric Regnier 
Yeah, but we are we are smaller than IBM, right? We we are backed up by Microsoft and Accenture. But the beauty of Avanade is we're really focus on Microsoft and we're smaller. So yeah, we got a bit more agility there, right. And we that happens quite a lot because being small, being focused on the Microsoft.

00:06:48 Mark Smith
Valid valid.

00:06:53 Eric Regnier 
Space, especially Azure and power platform and dynamics, right, that's sort. Need is not. Yeah, it's quite often it does happen.

00:07:02 Mark Smith
I suppose I tie you with the same brush as Accenture. When I say that. So rather than you.

00:07:07 Eric Regnier 
Know. Yeah, I know. And that's that's the beauty of it. I think being over that right and why let's say I prefer to stay avanade.

00:07:15 Mark Smith
Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense.

00:07:17 Eric Regnier 
We got the best of both worlds, I.

00:07:20 Mark Smith
So I want to talk today about mega projects and this came about through multiple discussions I've had around the concern with enterprise architects not considering the power platform and enterprise solution and the more I've drilled into this and all of the big you know, companies around the world that I've been.

00:07:40 Mark Smith
Able to engage with the conversation has been. And that well, if anybody can build low code apps, there's no way that this can be an enterprise application, because Susie and accounting is going to have no idea of application lifecycle management. Gonna have no idea of the rigor of testing and iterating etcetera. And because Microsoft has pitched this platform, as you know, you don't need any skills anybody can kind of do. Do it. I've noticed that enterprise architects go OK that will be the tool that we relegate to like a similar tool set to excel, but we won't put it in the same category as SAP, or we won't put it in the same category as Pega or we won't put it in the same category as even ServiceNow, which is another local platform. You know, to a degree. And so I feel that Microsoft has to a degree, done themselves a disservice in saying that, hey, anybody can do this. Your grandmother could do this kind. Thing and that then the more traditional parts of organizations and that enterprise architecture space is it shoot. We're not going to put enterprise workloads on this platform because obviously it doesn't have the rigor. Often they don't know that it sits on Azure. Often times they have no, nobody's talked to them about you know their full robustness of our. And nobody's talked to them about, you know, this is an enterprise grade platform. They just see low code. Anybody can do this. That's not an enterprise play. And So what I want to do as a podcast series and I've I've had a a bunch of folks on to talk. About real large deployments around the world, so you know the 22nd largest deployment in the UK for example, Network Rail, I think you know big, big implementations we've talked about, we've had Rami on talking about passports in New Zealand and the entire passport. And and Visa system run on that. You're involved in that one as well. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, you know. Yeah.

00:09:37 Eric Regnier 
Yeah, I was one. I was one of the architects for the first and second phase. Yeah.

00:09:41 Mark Smith
So. So we're talking about big, these Amish and critical they they affect millions and millions of people in, in the impact of them and there's you know how do you classify something as enterprise? For me. You know the way I classify it is that if we turned it off tomorrow, would the **** at the fan, you know, is in is in? Is it that enterprise in nature? And so it could be that it has lots of users, but that might not be the definition of it. It could be that it influences 10s of millions of dollars in revenue, you know going through but knowing. They have, you know, in the case of passports, only about 600 people licenses, but yet millions of users that use, you know, through the portals and stuff in that process. So with that in mind, give me your top three biggies that you've worked on. If you can't mention the company names, tell me the industries, the geographies and the kind of. The high level stats and why the power platform was chosen.

00:10:42 Eric Regnier 
Yeah. So for. Sure. From another perspective, I can't really talk about the actual customer, but just to talk high level about some right in the Hong Kong, right. I worked on the power platform implementation, but back then it was dynamic 365, one of the biggest. Organization and all this organization in Hong Kong, right. We talked about my memory. Serves me right. You know like over 100 million. Rumors every day we would get over 200 K campaign responses right in this huge, huge right? Yeah. So some as well in New Zealand, you you mentioned, you know, there's a birth death, marriages and all this citizenship requests and passports. All that sits on the power platform. Right. So, but let me probably talked about that. Yeah as well. In New Zealand, while I worked for a few years at the bank Westpac, right then there's a few already, a few articles on that right, but power platform at Westpac, which is one of the largest bank in Oceania, was one of the chosen platform. For the strategic platform in house, right, so if we're talking about. You know all business banking, not the core banking platform, but everything around it, right for credit applications, right and one not all cases to manage entities and and and business profiles, right? All that was all managed through a power platform. As well, you know, here in Netherlands, right? I've I help one of the biggest organizations here. Right. We have over 30 terabytes of data or over 200 environments as. Well, right, so of course it's enterprise scale. And it's funny because there's actually a recent thread online right there from a few MP's that we pose that how other companies see the power platform, right and dynamics and it's kind of like based on what they see and their offerings, they see that as actually an enterprise call. Platform. So it's changed in a way. Or I might find it interesting that perhaps enterprise architects within the companies C power platform as not enterprise Gray. However, other companies right and they're offerings C power platform as an enterprise grade and not as sort of a small medium type of of of offering for small medium. Companies.

00:13:13 Mark Smith
Yeah, but this is this comes down to positioning, right? Because you and my background was in dynamics. Ultimately CRM originally model driven development and we would take that product and we wouldn't do customer relationship management with it. The CRM that it was out-of-the-box would build other solutions for organizations, right, and we were, these were big, big implementations. Right. And and that are still in use today, right? 6/10/15 years later they're still in use today because they are critical to running these organ. Relations for years, we asked for the power platform and we just wanted a skew that gave us. When I say we asked for the power platform, we didn't want the dynamics layout. We wanted the ability to do model driven application development with us deciding the entities or the tables right, that were in the systems. We got that, but. Also with getting that with the power platform, we got this low code. Anybody can build story which is 100% a good story. I'm I'm not denying that. But I think that in parallel to that should have been the story of the enterprise nature of this tooling that was also told and the nature of enterprise architects, right. They don't necessarily get down on the weeds, they're not asking those type of questions. They're going what a fit for purpose for the major building blocks of our organization. And unless they get an educational tour below the marketing message, they are not seeing that enterprise story. And what I see people like Peggy go in and do what I see. People like ServiceNow go in and do. They talk to the enterprise architects, right? They get that story bettered in that they're an enterprise player and there's this is never a question. The biggest one I came across this was was a big mining company in Australia where they decided that it was a non strategic platform, even though they're the largest license holder. Of Premium Power platform licenses because that was felt from IT that it was not an enterprise platform because that's the level of detail or learning they had around it.

00:15:23 Eric Regnier 
Yeah, yeah, of course. It's a bit of marketing too, but I think there there's really two key scenarios when I think we talk about the power platform, right. And of course, I'm including dynamics in this, right? It's all. It's all based on the on the same back end. And I I think this is where perhaps people are getting confused. Is that there is a power platform as the chosen platform, meaning that we're gonna build an enterprise solution on top of that platform, right? Typically built by a partner or in house, but it's a chosen platform that they're building it and they're following, you know, pretty mature enterprise processes. Like to bring that to life. And then there's the other scenario where it's that, you know, end user person like personal productivity platform, right. They're new excel, right. And that's possibly what people see it or even if we look up what our platform is, we probably without knowing it get. More that perception, right, it's that I think we wouldn't. What do people call it local? 3.0. Or it's that you know New Excel type where people build their own little apps for their department or their own productive.

00:16:31 Mark Smith
Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

00:16:40 Eric Regnier 
City right. And while this is true, I I think most of at least implementation. I I'm part of was the first scenario where we deliberately chose or or the customer chose a power platform to build their enterprise solution on their enterprise systems on. Right, but following proper whatever pay and M processes and whatnot.

00:17:07 Mark Smith
Have have you been involved in in projects where you have helped info. Once the power platform being and dynamic slash being accepted as over other vendor applications.

00:17:21 Eric Regnier 
Ah yes, for sure. I I cannot talk about the exact cause like customers, but definitely for like let's say over.

00:17:28 Mark Smith
But who are the vendors that you're up against?

00:17:30 Eric Regnier 
Sales force is is the Q1. Right, Salesforce is a key 1 TRM and not key for New Zealand internal affairs. I forgot the sales force was in the shortlisted technology stack, but yeah, it might have been as. And I I was back too. Right. I was back. They they have? Yeah, quite a bit. Of strategic platforms and they're always going through an exercise of. You know, narrowing that down, right and and. But power platform always makes it in the list, and in fact West Bank Australia, where was it a year ago or two years ago, recently announced and it it made news as well that they chosen power platform as one of their key strategic business application platforms so. Definitely, but Salesforce is the one that commonly of course comes up.

00:18:28 Mark Smith
When you talk. About it, then how do you convince? How do you educate that the power platform should be the choice?

00:18:35 Eric Regnier 
Yeah, well, one well, one is especially the companies already invested in Microsoft. We try to articulate and show right that the fact that already invested in Microsoft are already in Azure right for my money wise, right? It's going to save time and money, have a cleaner sort of architecture. For the power plant, that's. So if star already invested in. And Microsoft, that's an easier one to sort of showcase, and the the rest, I mean. For me it's. Just show right? So if there was something we prototype sort of by I I say it from an old boss. Show versus tell. And typically when they see an action, when they when they have a feel, when they actually contribute to the overall, I guess prototype, then that talks a long way, right?

00:19:27 Mark Smith
What do you see is is in in the last two years of your your view of things, the impact of generative AI now having on the power platform.

00:19:39 Eric Regnier 
To be honest, a lot and there's been quite a bit going on, but I was going to say to be honest. I haven't really. Implemented in production, a lot of generative AI related features on the. Power platform umm. It's there's a lot going on, but it hasn't. If I could say really hit me yet. Like there hasn't been. I've been, yeah. Yes. Being we're working on larger projects and things like that where we're still working on. On stuff from years ago, if I. Could say, yeah.

00:20:22 Mark Smith
Do you think it's? That will change in 2025.

00:20:26 Eric Regnier 
For sure, for sure. I I think, yeah, how that's gonna materialize and everything. Yeah, I'm not sure, but for sure, even within the company, right. Where? Yeah, generative AI is at the core and at the centre of of everything that we're trying to do and restructured it. And also it's definitely gonna have an impact somehow, right on the way we do business and the way we service our customers and yeah and on the solutions that we implement.

00:20:54 Mark Smith
Do you I as as a do you find yourself using it yourself personally for anything in particular?

00:21:01 Eric Regnier 
Yeah. Again, not quite. Yeah, I tried, right to be a good person and, you know, look at all the new tools. Right, but I have tried right to use all the copilots within the power platform space to enhance my productivity and you know so far I have it hasn't really helped. So I I use more internal copilots for emails and you know. Summary of documents and things like that. Yes, right, that that, yeah, type of scenarios, right.

00:21:31 Mark Smith
So the M365 type experience. But yeah, the ones from from power platform, whether it's power automate the power apps ones, it hasn't really added a lot of value to me. And I I don't think I'm the key audience of that yet as well. So yeah. No. Have you looked at any of the new stuff the planner type feature that's coming out that you know will help you pretty much build? The ID's and Sonar and interface and.

00:22:03 Eric Regnier 
Yeah, I again. I've tried. I flirted with it. Right with the, but no, I haven't used it in the real sort of life where I actually took the output of that tweaked and then use it. But definitely the new ERD sort of features cool. It's it's pretty nice, right? It has a lot of. Yeah, I've promises mine. So let's see where that goes. 

00:22:29 Mark Smith
What are your goals for 2025? What? Do you see where? Where will? You be at the end of this year, Eric. What do you think will happen?

00:22:37 Eric Regnier 
The questions mark. Yeah, I don't know, to be honest. Same as where I am now. Yeah, I guess hopefully I have the chance to. Yeah. Get more into sort. The AI and all the the power platform agents and all the copilot stuff. Hopefully there's there's opportunities there to to develop some solutions with it. But yeah, no major changes. Stay healthy. Hopefully can stay healthy, keep delivering sort of. Innovative solutions the power platform. Right. Yeah. Hope the trend continues, right? Nice. Nice. Yeah.

00:23:17 Mark Smith
Yeah. To wrap up to wrap up. Tell me about your. What advice would you have to enterprise architects around the power platform?

00:23:28 Eric Regnier 
I would say to to joke a bit, don't look at the the Microsoft website to learn about the power platform, right, talk to MVP, talk to experts, talk to people who actually implemented some of that. Probably first day. They probably get a better picture. Right, the good, the bad and the ugly. Rather than looking publicly at what's the power? Form. Yeah. Talk to a partner perhaps, right. They probably have, yeah, they've implemented. It. They have that experience and could could help, perhaps explain a bit more what it is and what it could and. Not do and etcetera.

00:24:11 Mark Smith
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP, Mark Smith, otherwise known as the nz365guy. Play if there's a guest you'd like to see on the show, please message me on LinkedIn. If you want to be a supporter of the show, please check out buy me a coffee.com/nz365guy. Stay safe out there and shoot for the stars.