Andrew Welch Discusses the Significant Impact of AI in the World of Business Processes

These days, artificial intelligence (AI) is significantly impacting marketing, particularly in how companies can more effectively target and engage with customers.

One key way AI is being used in marketing is through chatbots and virtual assistants, which are used to enhance customer service and provide more personalized experiences for consumers.

AI-powered chatbots can help businesses respond to customer inquiries more quickly and efficiently while providing personalized recommendations based on customer data.

In our segment Influencer Insights, we invite leading industry professionals to speak on Microsoft Business Solutions and current technological trends. In today's chapter, we will speak with Andrew Welch about the capabilities of AI and the advantages of implementing Power Apps and Microsoft 365.

Let Us Quickly Get To Our Expert's Point Of View

Question 1- What, according to you, are some of the top Microsoft technology trends to watch out for in 2023?

Unless you've been living under a rock, you have likely noticed that AI and Microsoft's infusion of Open AI technology through seemingly the entire stack is sucking almost all attention away from everything else right now, so let me first address the elephant that's sitting in every room right now by quoting a bit from a recent essay I published…

"Put another way; we're seeing the truly meaningful impact of what humans can do moving from performing activities to understanding, constructing, and building systems of strategic value. Something like moving from assembling information to creating a framework to understand as-yet-unknown information or moving from building an app to architecting an ecosystem. The real action is increasingly in working with a sense of strategic imperative to assemble pieces of value across whatever system in which you are dealing."

Let me try to abstract this from the "AI everywhere" answer that I think would be top of mind for many. In that abstraction, I see two really big trends within Microsoft technology and the cloud technology industry as a whole.

The first is that wave periods between major, transformative innovations are shortening. For example, if we consider the advent of the commercial Internet, the "Web 2.0" era, and the rise of the Cloud, we can note that there were between eight and ten years between these waves crashing on the beach. However, since the rise of the Cloud, we've seen platform-first and now AI come in much quicker succession, with about 3-5 years between waves.

This leads me to the next big trend, the shift from activity-based to system-based value. We could also call this the "ecosystem trend." For a long time, the industry has been really obsessed with implementing workloads by whatever name, e.g., building apps, implementing Dynamics, etc.

Though these are still quite valuable, we're at a point of real misalignment in the market around this. We have many talented technologists implementing workloads, lots of customers putting huge amounts of energy into implementing workloads, and lots of consultancy partners competing with one another to implement workloads.

At the same time, it is this activity that is:

1. Most likely to be eaten by AI.

2. Most readily insourced or re-shored.

3. Most easily transferred—at least at the productivity tier—to self-service by citizen developers using some of the Power Platform services.

Question 2: What are some opportunities you would be looking at this year?

The opportunities follow the trends. To me, the less time my clients, my colleagues, and I spend talking about workloads and the more time we spend architecting strategic foundations and building platform ecosystems atop those foundations, the better.

The trend is that forward-thinking customers and partners are increasingly focused on building the platform ecosystem. Successful partners and customers are moving from workloads and governance to ecosystems and strategy. I expect to be out front leading that trend.

Everyone will soon see what Microsoft has in store to support this significant evolution. Still, the technical services I am most interested in are those that help us knit together application and data estates in ways that set organizations up to catch the next wave. Expect AI—like Cloud before it--to be a real game changer in how quickly you must be prepared for those successive waves.

Question 3: Would you like to share some tips on Power BI implementation?

My advice here is pretty predictable if you've read what I've had to say above. But, listen, Power BI is a great arrow in Microsoft's quiver, but I find the idea of "Power BI implementation" nowadays to be a bit bizarre.

Sure, we can stick Power BI into a scenario or even roll it out across the estate, but
(a) many organizations have already done this, and
(b) at any rate, doing so only scratches the surface of capability in the Azure data platform and with Power Platform.

So my advice on Power BI "implementation" is not to do it in isolation, to couple it with investment across the cloud ecosystem, including the adoption of modern data platform architectures and cutting edge "under the covers" capabilities from Microsoft, and of course, accelerated app modernization and building activities. Don't leave value on the table.

Question 4: What is the potential for Microsoft Partners in the UK?

Significant because almost zero Microsoft Partners are doing this correctly. See my previous thoughts on "workload implementation, " which most partners are still obsessed with. It's one thing to recognize that there are other things to do out there, another thing to understand what those things are, and an entirely different thing to be organizationally prepared to seize those opportunities.

There will have to be some severe adaptation of the partners' space over the next several years, with the partners who can only make this leap with a little pressure from those who do.

Question 5: How can we leverage Microsoft 365 and Power Apps for improved collaboration?

I have a massive pet peeve about people littering my Teams with extra teams. In the past, I have been invited to join teams set up for a single meeting (we have chats for that, folks).

But in all seriousness, the most impactful guidance I can offer on this topic is that organizations need to be leveraging Microsoft 365 and Power Platform (and, indeed, the entire Microsoft Cloud) in the context of the whole Microsoft Cloud.

Using M365 and Power Platform in the context of the rest of Azure leads to better results. Organizations with things like Dataverse or investing in proper data platforms can remove the ridiculous notion that SharePoint is an appropriate place to store data for critical and essential apps. Rather we can use SharePoint for the excellent purpose with which it is intended—document management and collaboration—and we can use proper data services to underpin our apps.

I could go on here, but the guiding principles here and across the Cloud must be the ecosystem's priority, the interconnectedness of technical services, and data-first approaches.

Get to Know Our Influencer

What is the best event that you attended recently? What were your key takeaways?

This year's MVP Summit was first-rate. Given the three-year hiatus from the in-person format, it would have been difficult not to be, but Microsoft organizers did a fantastic job. My key takeaway is that the shortened wave periods and the ecosystem phenomenon where we're transitioning from activity-based to system-based value are both authentic. This is happening, and most people need to catch up so that they will have to scramble to catch the wave.

What's your success mantra?

I think of it as "what does 'good enough' look like" because "good enough" can sometimes be elusive for us all… Be rested, joyous at the world around you, full of enough energy to love your family without feeling exhausted, and intellectually top of your field without having sold your life away in exchange for it. Treat others decently, even when you disagree. See good in the world, even when challenged by it.