What's New in Power Platform - Process Mining

 This is a continuation of my blog series - What's new in Power Platform for the 2022 Release 2. This time the focus is on Process Mining using the Process Advisor. I will discuss here the need for a business process review and how a tool like process advisor can be useful for the organization. There are some paradigms to reflect upon,

"That's how we have always done it"

Organizations have been running business processes for ages on their ERP / CRM platform of choice. The processes may get modified over time and there may be "process debt" which is some old process that is still leftover in place because that was the way the system was set-up. In fact I have asked many clients why they do it in a certain way and the most common answer was "that's how we have always done it here!!"

"We are special" 

Another common answer to the question is "we are special" or "our business is unique". Every client is unique in the way they want to operate their business processes and that can create an ego issue when recommending solutions. I have worked with Clients who have changed their Systems three times but they refused to modify their business process. It is always the systems fault!!

"You cannot improve what you cannot measure"

I normally look for quantifiable data to prove to the client the benefits of a process change. When I ask the Client for any measurement on their business process KPI's they are looking at me as if I am from another planet. What's the point of implementing a system whose performance you cannot measure? How do you ensure the process is working or not? How do you plan to improve??

 That is where the Process Mining can help. It may be time to re-evaluate your current CRM / ERP processes. This will help in -

1. Setting a baseline - How are we doing today? How fast do we complete a Customer support case? What is our Lead to Opportunity conversion ratio?

2. Identify process bottlenecks - What is the longest stage / step in providing a Customer quote? Where does the Case gets stuck the most? How many variants of the process are there?

3. Automate - Identify what can be automated? Provide a business case for automation? How much can we decrease the Call Center agent time by automating certain steps? Do we really need to wait for an approval for all Cases? 

4. Re-evaluate your process - Is it required? obsolete? What are the competitors doing? What can we improve? Are we in compliance?

 Microsoft has recently announced the public preview of the Process Mining capabilities with Minit and Power Automate Process Advisor. 

Process Mining - map and dashboard

Some of the new capabilities added to the Process Advisor are detailed here -  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/process-mining-overview

Highlights -

• Improved web experience 
• New Minit Desktop App for deeper analytics 
• Customizable reporting using Power BI and new pre-built templates

In order to get all the benefits of Process Mining you may require multiple licenses that includes - Power Automate per user, Power BI premium, Microsoft Dataverse etc. If you already have all the required licenses why not try and make use of Process Mining today?

I will write more about the new Process Mining capabilities in my future blogs. Till then let me know what is your thoughts on Process Mining and how it can help to change your business processes. Thanks for reading.

@mihircrm 

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Industry Cloud solutions using Dynamics 365 and Power Platform

As Cloud applications are now the global standard, there is a demand for building vertical industry specific cloud solutions that provide pre-built insights and intelligence, business processes and relevant experiences for the industry. Microsoft has introduced multiple Industry Cloud with Dynamics 365 solutions. This blog is to introduce the Industry Clouds solutions from Microsoft built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.

Currently there are 4 Industry Cloud solutions available and I am sure Microsoft is working on few more in the pipeline. They are as below.

• Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services
• Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare
• Microsoft Cloud for Retail
• Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit

Each Industry Cloud has the following - 

1. Industry specific functionality - For example the Financial Services Cloud consists of the following -

A unified Customer Profile (Customer 360) app, Customer Onboarding app, Loan Management app  Customer Engagement app etc.. The Industry apps provide tailored experiences for both the users and Customers. They help in better collaboration and decision making.

Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services 

2.  Each Industry Cloud includes specific components - Solutions, Apps, Templates and Services. It also includes data model built for the Industry Cloud. The data model can also be installed as a stand alone solution. For example The Retail Banking data model.

3. A Compliance program for Microsoft Cloud which enables the Clients to measure and control Risks and manage Industry compliance. This also includes specific architectural templates to help in designing and deploying Microsoft Cloud solutions for the specific Industry. An example for Financial Services Cloud Architectural template is shown below.

There is certain requirements that needs to be followed.

1. You need to have the specific licenses before you can deploy the Industry Clouds. 

2. There are pre-requisite that needs to be completed and after the Industry Cloud solutions are deployed there are also post deployment steps to be followed. 

3. Pricing - Each industry Cloud has a specific pricing template. The price for Financial Services Industry Cloud is approx $20k per Tenant. If you have 1000+ users this is a very reasonable (imho) price for the OOTB functionalities that the Industry Cloud provides.

Pricing for Financial Services Cloud

I would recommend to first do an internal analysis on the business processes and perform a proof of concept testing of the Industry Cloud solution. 

The Microsoft Industry Cloud are great examples of how to best utilize Microsoft cloud apps for your specific Industry. They come pre-built with the data model, AI apps and solutions that you can easily test and deploy. I am certain this will help accelerate your cloud transformation journey. 

In my future blogs I will explore some of the Industry Clouds and write more about it. Thank you for reading and let me know about your experience with the Microsoft Industry Cloud.

@mihircrm

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Making your digital transformation a successful journey with an Enterprise App Adoption Strategy

 Many organizations have embarked on their digital transformation journey with new cloud native enterprise apps like Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Power Platform. They want to ensure that they are able to achieve the goals initially set for the new business app and also get a return on their investments. Planning and preparing a enterprise app adoption strategy is essential for the operational success and future of the business. 

The enterprise transformation journey may have started as a pilot project. In an agile driven world the pilot may be implemented in a particular country / region or for a department to test the results of implementing the new app. The successful adoption of the new app will determine the next steps in the journey for the eventual implementation in the enterprise. It is at this critical juncture that the adoption playbook needs to be run to ensure the success of the project. 

As organizations venture into new cloud native apps there are many challenges. 

1. Technological change - Cloud apps are new technologies and are constantly evolving. This was not the case earlier when the on premise legacy enterprise apps rarely had changes and had worked pretty much the same for the past 10-15 years. The new cloud apps will change periodically months and will need a constant learning culture for the business.

2. Business environment change - As the past 2 years have shown "business as usual" cannot be taken for granted. The business environment can change any time, many of us could be working from where ever and still supporting our customers. We need to be ready for future business environment changes. Successful adoptions of the new apps are necessary fir business to thrive in new digital world.  

3. Employees needs change and the enterprise needs to be agile to provide the support needed for the employees. Employees want proper guidance and nurturing in the new apps they have to use. They want to be trained and empowered for success. When organizations do not support their employees with the new tools and training needed, the digital transformation may not be a success.

The above are some of the factors that an Enterprise App Adoption Strategy is required. 

Microsoft has provided a Dynamics 365 Adoption guide that can help customers implementing Dynamics 365 to have a successful application adoption. The below pic shows some of the highlights in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 App adoption guide. (link) 

The Enterprise App Adoption Strategy should also change, be relevant and useful as future enhancements are made to the app.  The focus is on making sure the employees adopt and customers are engaged and the app is getting better business outcomes.  Hope you have an Enterprise App Adoption Strategy and do let me know your thoughts on it,

Thanks for reading. 

@mihircrm

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Azure Synapse link for Dataverse - Introduction

Microsoft has recently announced that the Data Export Service (DES) will no longer be supported after 1 year (Nov-22). This may come as a surprise to many of the Clients who are using and depending on DES for their data extraction, integration and analytics. DES was one of the main tool used to extract and store data from Dataverse for analytical processing and integration purposes with other systems. 

There is a new option to get data from your Dataverse environments, store the data in a data warehouse and perform analytical and machine learning processing using that data. This is the Azure Synapse link for Dataverse.

So what is Azure Synapse? - In Microsoft speak - "Azure Synapse is an enterprise analytics service that accelerates time to insight across data warehouses and big data systems. Azure Synapse brings together the best of SQL technologies used in enterprise data warehousing, Spark technologies used for big data, Data Explorer for log and time series analytics, Pipelines for data integration and ETL/ELT, and deep integration with other Azure services such as Power BI, CosmosDB, and AzureML."

The main benefit of using Azure Synapse link for Dataverse is to get near real time insights on your Dataverse data. 

The below diagram shows the architecture of Azure Synapse. 

Azure Synapse Architecture

There are other benefits of using Azure Synapse link for Dataverse - 

1. You can utilize Synapse SQL, a distributed query system for T-SQL that enables data warehousing and data virtualization scenarios and extends T-SQL to address streaming and machine learning scenarios.

2. Enable Big Data and ML using Apache Spark for Azure Synapse - deeply and seamlessly integrates Apache Spark--the most popular open source big data engine used for data preparation, data engineering, ETL, and machine learning.

3. Use SQL and Spark together with data in your Azure Data Lake 

4. Built-in Data integration engine to ingest and create ETL pipelines at scale

5. Perform near real-time log and IOT stream analytics using Azure Data Explorer services

6. Use Azure Synapse Studio to build solutions, maintain and secure your data with a unified experience

Some of the challenges that you may need to consider -

1. Existing integration with external systems will need to be re-designed

2. Investments in non-Microsoft analytics and ML solutions may need to be evaluated against the above benefits.

3. Change management - The data engineering and analysis team will need to update their skills to be able to move to Azure Synapse.

4. There could be some cost benefits analysis that you will need to make to consider moving to Azure Synapse. Planning and budgeting for the move to Azure Synapse link for Dataverse is going to be critical for enterprise clients. 

To overcome some of the pain points and ease the transition from DES to Azure Synapse link for Dataverse, Microsoft has also provided a playbook. (link is here)  

Hope the above gets you started in planning to move from Data Export Services to Azure Synapse and do let me know about your experiences.

Thanks for reading.

@mihircrm

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