How to Drive Real ROI with Enterprise AI

Mark Smith: 0:19
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Chris is Microsoft Practice Director at A&M and a newly minted Microsoft MVP class of 2024. He's joining me today from South Carolina in the United States. Chris turns bold ideas into practical outcomes, partnering with talented teams and global collaborators to help customers smash their business goals with innovative solutions. You'll find his full bio and socials in the show notes for this episode. Chris, welcome to the show. Hey, appreciate you having me on Good to have you on Kind of interested in drilling into kind of what your day-to-day world looks like, working partner side and your journey to becoming an MVP. Tell me a bit about before we get started food, family and fun. What do you do when you're not working?

Chris Hinch: 1:34
Last year we bought a farm. So we bought five and a half acres out in the middle of nowhere and it was raw pasture land but the house was already on it. But we've developing the farm over the past year. So if I'm not working sitting at my desk or on an airplane somewhere, I'm out in the pastures and in the fields making sure all the animals and stuff are good to go. It keeps me grounded. Yeah, so family, wife, kids we got two kids, two little ones. They surprisingly like life on the farm. You would not think kids these days would like it, but the kids they just love it. Right, it's awesome. They also like the fact that you know dad is into all the tech stuff. So if they need anything you know dad can just fix it. So there's that part of it as well. That is epic.

Mark Smith: 2:20
It's, uh, I'm, I'm. I couldn't believe it when you just said that I I have an acre and a half property, so I and I'm big into creating a what's called a centropic forest. I'm um off grid and everything apart from power, and then I've got my own backup generators and stuff for that scenario as well. So all my water supply, all my um septic systems, uh all run, uh all self-contained on my property, which I've built from a, a blank piece of land that was fully overgrown. I cut down everything. I left one tree originally standing, and now I've got around 6 000 trees planted. So, um, yeah, yeah, I, I get where you're at and I love it. My kids love it as well. They love, they want to be outside with me all the time. You know, first thing in the morning, we get up, we go out to the greenhouse, see how the plants are done overnight, and, um, they always want to be in the garden.

Chris Hinch: 3:12
They just love this type of lifestyle yeah, yeah, they like go going and checking on the chickens because we just had some chicks hatch. So right now the exciting part is running out and looking at the baby chicks see how they're doing.

Mark Smith: 3:24
That's so cool. That's so cool. Tell me I see your area of expertise in Microsoft is Copilot. What's been your journey in that space?

Chris Hinch: 3:35
So when they first announced Copilot, it was something that just super fascinated me. So I just kind of jumped in the deep end on it and learned as much as I could. And as the kind of journey went along, with some of the friends that I have at Microsoft too, we just started doing a bunch of enablement sessions with how the marketing buzz that they do right Kind of actually comes into play for real world. And as I did more and more of the art of the possible that Microsoft calls it, more and more of those kind of trainings, the more I found myself really just engulfing myself even more and learning more about it and how I can use it in my day to day and how I can help other people use it in their day to day. And it's not like it's one of those things Once you find something that clicks, it doesn't become work, it becomes a passion, so to speak.

Chris Hinch: 4:23
And that's how this technology has really felt for me. Because if you I'm sure you have to if you looked in the studies like you can save a handful of hours per month on this and the ROI is like immediately there. If you use this right, I mean you could save 15 hours per month, if you do it right. And so my whole goal is how can I be more efficient and effective at what I'm doing with the tools that I have? And that's just kind of what it did for me is like I'm no longer just struggling looking through the boards or looking for this. It's like you're using all the power that you have with all the AI, just tools, like everywhere. The tools are everywhere inside the ecosystem. Now, just in the term that I use it if you've listened to anything else I've done, like how you can just supercharge things, and it's just, it's truly, truly that.

Mark Smith: 5:08
How do you run these enablement programs, like what's the building blocks of them?

Chris Hinch: 5:14
So it's the keyword. I mean it's funny. I saw a meme come across one of our team channels this morning. It's like how did you get the funding for that? If you put the words AI in there, then it automatically gets approved. Right? It's the new cybersecurity kind of buzzword that always got approved. So everybody wants to know about AI. And then everybody's scared about AI because you hear about the where some source code got leaked for this or something, trade secrets got leaked for that, and so how do people know that it's actually safe?

Chris Hinch: 5:47
And that took me into, like the enterprise data protection that comes with it. I tell people on how it's stored inside the tenant, how it's saved inside the tenant, it's not used for training purposes. And then we kind of take it the next step further, where we talk about don't use it just because it's AI, then you're failing. Right, If you don't have a true on use case or an objective that you're trying to solve, if you're just doing it for AI sake, then it's not the product for you. Like when you were talking about my bio. It's like if you're doing technology for technology's sake, you're already losing. So use technology to solve a problem, and so the building blocks is what problems, what challenges are you having? And that's kind of the attack that I go.

Mark Smith: 6:25
So are you doing this for customers?

Chris Hinch: 6:28
It's weird, I do it for customers, I'm doing inside the organization as well. So I mean it's a little bit of a both, because when I came to the company that I'm at currently, they were super security focused as they should, as all companies should be, but they were not as in touch with the AI capabilities. And then I started showing. I showed them at SKO the year, because Copilot was announced later in the year and then our SKO happened, and so when I got my turn to present at our kickoff and I used Copilot there, the buzz around the whole show, everybody was messaging the owner and then my boss and their directors like when can we get this, when can we get this? And so doing it inside the organization and then outside to our clients as well.

Mark Smith: 7:13
Nice. What did you show in that presentation that got that buzz going? I kind of want to find what's the catalyst that turns people from one being fearful, right. I heard an interesting quote and it was when Microsoft Teams went crazy. Right. What caused Microsoft Teams to go crazy? It was COVID. Right.

Mark Smith: 7:42
It happened not because of good marketing.

Mark Smith: 7:44
It happened because there was a global crisis and everybody stopped going to the office and working, and so Teams became that tool.

Mark Smith: 7:53
Where it might have been used for chat in the past, it became very much the front and center video tool right when it might have been used for chat in the past, it became very much the front and center video tool right for communication. The thing is, nobody feared that Teams was going to take their job, but now you've got this media that's saying, hey, we're going to see massive job cuts. You know we're not going to recognize the workforce in five years' time. So there's an element of skepticism from customers now going not customers from individuals, from people going hang on a second by me using this. Is it going to replace me? And so I'm interested if, going back to that session, what was that spark that people went from? A very security forward posture and not knowing much about AI, to going to you know what we need to get involved so, because I work at an organization where we're we're a value-added retailer, right, so we sell services and we sell product.

Chris Hinch: 8:48
Um, if you're if you're not on the rent turning side of things, you're in kind of a day of meetings, right, right, that's what you had your calendars, double book, triple book. I mean, it's not as much anymore because I use the technology, but people need that time back, and so I was telling them things like if you could create a PowerPoint in 25% less time, if you could be in meetings without having to recap it for you. Or if you need to send, like polish up what's hot in my inbox. Or polish up an email, like, instead of review, like you're writing it and then you're reviewing it and then you're tweaking it, you're reviewing and tweaking. What if you take some of that out? What if I can give you iteratively throughout your whole week? What if I could give you a couple hours back? Would that interest you?

Chris Hinch: 9:37
And granted, as we've used this more, we know it's more than a couple hours, right, but if you, if you just start showing them how it can trickle in, versus being a big bang, because nobody wants to big bang, like you don't want to move their cheese so far down the road. But if you can just show them. You're not looking at a blank Word doc, you're not looking at a blank PowerPoint. You're not looking at a blank email, like you don't have to even read, like you just got brought into a thread of an email. It's like crap, I don't have 20 minutes to kind of go all the way down and then read all the way up.

Chris Hinch: 10:08
It's like hey, summarize this for me so I know how to respond. Like if I can give you just iteratively throughout your day, pull, pull the parts back, would you want that? And then I showed them with some of the hype videos that microsoft has, and you kind of pair those together and and, as a company from our org, we were bought it, yeah, but then to the point it got a little scary. Right, who has access to my data? And that's where the where I really come in. And then I show people here's how you can do it safely and protect your data, and that's a whole other conversation.

Mark Smith: 10:36
Let's just drill into email just for one second, because I was listening to Scott Hanselman the other day on a video last Friday and in it he was like, if my prompt is going to take me a minute and a half to write, why wouldn't I just write the email Right?

Mark Smith: 10:51
When it says, you know, you jump into email and it says, hey, let's use Copilot to help you write this.

Mark Smith: 10:57
And then you craft a prompt and you're like, well, I could have written email in that time.

Mark Smith: 11:02
And he brought up an interesting thing what about when that email prompt, if you like, at that point has memory which of course we know is Cumbering in the platform, memory which of course we know is cum ring um in the platform and it can remember the last nine months of a conversation that I've had with you via email. So, in other words, not just taking context of the email today and let's say just what's in the immediate thread, but it has context of all our emails that you and I have had over that period of time. And let's say nine months is a nice window of size that you would understand what we communicate about if we're frequent communicators via email. Do you see that people are just like blown away that it helps them draft an email or coaches them on an email. Or is it enough yet that and I'm just talking about their co-pilot email experience at the moment, not teams and all the other type of great things that you can do with it- yeah, so I'm interested to see how that develops.

Chris Hinch: 12:04
I was in the conversations when they were talking about the stored history. But the way how I've been telling people to use it is go ahead and respond, but don't send, and let it auto rewrite. Because if you just jot your notes down, maybe this is just how I work, like when I write an email I'm just going to type my notes down really quick, I'm not going to hit send and then I'm going to craft it into an actual email. So now I don't have to craft the email, I just jot my notes down on how I want to respond and then hit audit rewrite and then sounds like me and I'm done right, so done right, so it did like. Again goes back to that iterative thing. I took two steps out for me, because all I'm doing now is like how I tell people to build a powerpoint, I'm just outlining it and letting it do it for me. Because when you build a powerpoint, like you can go into powerpoint, say, create me a presentation on x, y and z, to be honest, it's not going to be what you want. But if you give it an outline first, then it's going to be what you want. So you're it, not to be like kind of um cliche, but it's when this was first coming out.

Chris Hinch: 13:04
He was listening to what jared said. Jared spitero, it's truly meant to be somebody sitting in the pilot seat with you like it's a co-pilot. It's not here to do your job, it's somebody to assist you with your job. So if you think about it that way, there's always going to be the scare task, except AI is going to take your job. It's always going to be there, but right now it's not innovative, right? So if you can and here's another term that I throw around, and this is what really helps people kind of think of how this can empower them. If you can get out of this mode where you're just kind of trying to make it by, you're just trying to survive, and you can move into this moment where you're actually thriving. So if you go from surviving to thriving because you purchased a tool, that's worth it, right? So now you can start accelerating and enhancing your business versus just trying to keep the lights on.

Mark Smith: 13:53
I love it. I love it that surviving, moving from surviving to thriving. And you know, I heard a lady say I don't need a tool to make me more productive, I'm super productive, like. The issue is is that my day is longer than I have hours, in other words, my tasks, my activities and so I like this word efficiency, right, makes me more efficient, if I can. You know she was saying don't make me more productive so I can get more done at work. Make me productive so I can finish work on time and go home to my family, right, and I was just like. You know the whole M365 story. Forget Copilot. The M365 story has been sold on productivity and I think people are wanting more than productivity nowadays, and I like that. What was that phrase you just had then around becoming super? It wasn't efficient. What was it? Supercharger productivity. No, you were saying something. You just said something that I said. I really like that phrase, which is oh, go from surviving to thriving.

Mark Smith: 14:58
That's it Surviving to thriving. I think that totally captures something that people are in the survival mode of work and they could go into thrive mode by enabling this technology. You know we're recording this in May and Microsoft is dropping a bunch of stuff this month for Copilot. What do you think Every week?

Chris Hinch: 15:19
Yeah, right, yeah, it's the velocity that they're adding things. I mean, even in the MVP channels it's just hard to keep up with the velocity that they're adding things. I mean, I'm glad that they are, I'm glad that they're investing in this technology no-transcript enterprise data protection because a lot of the things they're using the other companies, that is, is the, the prompts that they're using those to train, and my opinion, I'm glad that they're not microsoft, that is are there any things that you're kind of like?

Mark Smith: 16:17
I wish it did this, but it does this type scenario and I'll give you two examples that I have run into. I've only got two that are my kind of pet little peeves. Let's say I do a sales call and I've got transcription on. You know, I've said, you know, done the. Hey, is it all right if we transcribe a meeting, et cetera. And it's great, right, you get a summary. What do we agree, action items, etc.

Mark Smith: 16:42
I want to run a prompt that said hey, you're an expert sales coach and I want you to retrospectively look at this call. So this is after the meeting, right, where did I not do so? Great, and it's RAI kicked in and said sorry, I can't give you any advice. And I was like that's random, like I've asked you specifically to coach me on how I could have done this better, and obviously RAI kicked in.

Mark Smith: 17:10
The other one I did which ticks me off is I asked for a bunch of links, like so I say, hey, listen, give me a list of companies in Canada that are Microsoft partners, that are in the SMC space and a link to their website, just so I can go check out their website. It gives me a nice table in loop right and puts the company name, puts the URL and then within three seconds it removes the URL, redacts it all out and says sorry, to protect your privacy, I'm removing the URL. I'm like I just asked you for it. Now I don't need you to protect my privacy because that's it. I'm protecting your privacy, hence removing the URL, and I'm like you've now. That's frustrating to me.

Chris Hinch: 17:57
Yeah, yeah, so one of the. So there's two things that come to mind One that they did at least finally announce and so it's coming out, and the other one they haven't fixed yet. But if you go to some of the other designer the images that they create, you don't have to worry about the trademark and the spelling of things. The other designer apps out there actually get it right, and because Microsoft has the copyright protection right, anything that it creates it's going to stand behind. So it can't use some logos and it can't use some full-on names, and so when you try to create an image in it, you can't use it unless you drop it into, like canva or something. Uh and yeah, so you have to take that. So that's annoying. I wish that, that I understand why it's annoying. So then I go to the other one that I don't have to do that, uh, and then, um, so I can say this, because it's been released and it's actually it came out in wave two, so Copilot notebooks came out and I've been wanting that for a while, because the other one I almost said that the other one had projects which was super slick.

Chris Hinch: 19:03
I mean, it's like exactly what you need. It's like you can save some chats, you can upload some documents. You can reason against, like this subset of data where, yeah, copilot can do it across the whole graph or you can designate it to a whole SharePoint site, or you can designate it to just one document, but you can't collect a bunch of different artifacts, and that's. That's been super helpful. Now I don't have it yet, but doing it in the other one it's. It's going to be as one of the posts that I put out there last week. It's going to be as one of the posts that I put out there last week.

Mark Smith: 19:34
it's going to be game-changing in my opinion. Yeah, it is, because what I'm finding I'm doing prompts that go over the course of a month to six weeks. In other words, I've done something, I come back to it, I do some more work on it, but I don't want to kind of reset all the context that I've already given it. I do some more work on it, but I don't want to kind of reset all the context that I've already given it. And so that idea of having what are they calling it? Is it projects?

Chris Hinch: 20:00
No, that's what the other one calls it. It's called Cabal notebooks.

Mark Smith: 20:03
Notebooks, notebooks, that's it. Yeah, yeah, it's very interesting because it even comes with an audio feature like Gemini, right it?

Chris Hinch: 20:10
does, it does.

Mark Smith: 20:13
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's interesting times. I love the speed of change. I love the new UI that it's going to. I think that's cool getting the confusion out of what's on the right-hand side of the screen, having that structure on the left. I just man it's. Yeah, I'm looking forward to everything that lands in my tenant, hopefully in the short term. Final questions How'd you become an MVP?

Chris Hinch: 20:35
So at a previous company I worked with two different MVPs. They were on staff, they reported up to me and I never really gave much weight into what it was to be an MVP, but I did get a lot of impact on what those two individuals did being an MVP, which being the community effort that you get from this. I'd always been super product knowledge, relevant. People always came to me as an expert on this solution or this product kind of thing. But I never really did the whole evangelism type thing. I did evangelism as my company right. I was like, yeah, put me in front of anybody, I'll talk to them about whatever you want to talk about. But then I guess, if you take it to transitioning it into the conference world like I never really thought it was useful for me as an individual to speak at a conference, but then I did it, it and it took me back to the college years when I was on stage in bands.

Chris Hinch: 21:33
It's like, man, this is nothing. I can talk in front of people drunk in a bar. I can talk to people at a conference as long as I feel confident about the topic, then let's go, kind of thing. And then that turned into being able to curate the content and set myself apart. Where that actually helps me in my world, where it's the I don't sell things, I educate people. So it's been how I've always done.

Chris Hinch: 21:59
It is just educate people on what the products out there and the challenges and the hurdles that they can overcome, and so I use the term that I tell a lot of people I sell through education. Right, I'm not here to sell you a box. I'm not here to sell you a license. I'm here to help you solve a problem. Tell me your problem and I'll educate you on how you can do it. And if you want me to help you do that, then I'll do it right. And so it's helped me kind of elevate myself in those situations where people hear me speak at conferences now and they hear me speak on podcasts and they hear me speak in video blogs that I do and other things that we put out there. And it's one of those things I come into the conversation without having to prove my worth, like they already have it. So that's the kind of why I wanted to do it after I saw that you could get with all that. It was a long-winded answer, sorry about that. It's good man.

Mark Smith: 22:47
It's been good. It's been good. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Chris Hinch: 22:50
It's been great talking to you, yeah absolutely Appreciate your time and thanks for the invite.

Mark Smith: 22:57
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time. Thank you.