Revolutionizing the Chemical Industry with AI and Power Platform Under Akash Patel's Guidance

Mark Smith: 0:31
Welcome to the Power Platform Show. Thanks for joining me today. I hope today's guest inspires and educates you on the possibilities of the Microsoft Power Platform. Now let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Newark, delaware in the United States. He works at Chemours as an IT application senior specialist. He is currently leading the Global Power Platform Admin User Group. You can find links to his bio and social media, etc. In the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, akesh.

Akash Patel: 1:05
Thank you for having me, Mark. It's nice to have in this one.

Mark Smith: 1:10
Yeah, I'm excited to have you on and really there's a few things in the introduction I want to unpack with you. But before we get there, let's get to know you. Tell me about food, family and fun. What do they mean to you? What do you do when you're not working?

Akash Patel: 1:26
I came to US in 2011. So with my family, so my family is here with me Love to spend time with family For food. It's my Indian food that I would prefer to go for For fun, it's mainly on watching or playing crickets and volleyball. Those are my two things, two fun times which I spend time.

Mark Smith: 1:57
So the World Cup and cricket recently.

Akash Patel: 2:01
Yes, true, sad that India lost in the final, but probably the next World Cup, probably they will win.

Mark Smith: 2:17
I bet you that hurts every time you hear it. I even saw that Satya called out and I think he was very busy that weekend because that was a weekend the open AIS who happened and he would have been. I bet you're trying to watch the game because he's passionate with his cricket as well. You mentioned food. You said Indian food. Now that's like going you know how much water is in the ocean, right, like Indian foods are a vast array of choices. Let's narrow it down. What do you mean? What's your favorite dish?

Akash Patel: 2:51
Favorite dish would be Punjabi right. So there is a Punjabi foods, all the fast foods. So they call like Pani Puri, Dabeli, all of those fast foods. And I also like sweets, All the sweets you have in India.

Mark Smith: 3:13
Nice, nice, oh, I think I haven't eaten today because I'm feeling like eating now. Tell me about your career journey. Obviously, you said in 2011 you came from India, but tell me a bit more about your journey into IT, and even how that you know what's your current focus from an IT perspective nowadays and what was that career path for you? Step us through it.

Akash Patel: 3:38
So came in 2011,. Did my high school, graduated high school, then did the college degree, got my bachelor degree in IT and during my degree bachelor degree, I got my first internship in 2018 with Kamos. On that internship, I explored Power Apps in 2018. I got my second time internship with same company, kamos, and on that time I was a M365 specialist, so I explored it more.

Akash Patel: 4:16
On the exchange share point teams, we did the deployment of teams during my internship time and we did more focused on the Power Platform doing that because that was a part of the Office 365 doing that for us and end of my internship in 2019, I was hired with part-time as a contract based, got my and completed my degree and I was hired as a full-time employee in 2020 with Kamos organization. Since then, I was established the governance around it, owning the platform in Kamos organization. So I was the person who owned it, who delivered, drive the Power Platform in the Kamos organizations. Since then, I am owning the Power Platform in Kamos organizations, driving the governance, architecture, securities around the platforms, driving the maker community, citizen development and the pro-development in commerce organizations. We also have a dedicated team, automation team and commerce who works on the corporate level projects, delivers the value projects for commerce organization.

Mark Smith: 5:37
Awesome, awesome. So just tell me commas. What does commas do? What's, as the North American only business? Tell me a bit about the company.

Akash Patel: 5:47
So commas is a global chemical manufacturing company. So we mainly our products are based on TiO2, titanium, mining paint, business freon all of those are re-manufactured and it is a global company. So we have a plant in US, europe EMEA region is just specific and Latin America. So it is a global manufacturing company.

Mark Smith: 6:21
About. How many staff would you have?

Akash Patel: 6:23
We have around 7,000 staff, so commas has a 200-year-old legacy. Previously, commas was part of DuPont and commas was spent off from DuPont in 2015. And since then, we are more focused on chemical-based solutions. Right, right.

Mark Smith: 6:48
Okay, so that kind of sets the scene. Tell me now, about when it comes to the power platform, just some high-level numbers, like you know how many environment you know? Just again, it doesn't have to be exact, but like the number of environments, number of makers in your community, number of automation apps that type of thing are using chatbots are using power pages, kind of at a high level, what are the numbers that you're working with?

Akash Patel: 7:15
So we initially started with two power platform component was Power Apps and Power Automate. That is the highly used in our organization. Roughly total around. We have probably 2,000 applications and close to 6,000 to 7,000 Power Automates. We have it in our organizations. We are doing the POCs on the Power Virtual Agent, which is now called as a Microsoft Co-Pilot Studio.

Akash Patel: 7:51
And we are currently in. We are currently doing one project in Power Pages which is we are about to do the go live of that project. So that is a journey, one step into the Power Pages platform and hopefully next year we will planning to do complete the POC of the Power Microsoft Co-Pilot Studio.

Mark Smith: 8:18
Nice, so that's interesting. Co-pilot Studio obviously we're seeing a lot more customers excited about how AI can be applied to their business. In fact, Andrew Gaskins, who referred you to the show, we were talking about a very similar thing and how quickly things were changing. From an AI perspective, what are your thoughts on AI in the context of the Power Platform?

Akash Patel: 8:43
I think it will bring the value to all the organizations. Based on how the Co-Pilot is introduced in the Power Platform, we can see the productivity gain. Development faster helps the end user. We can bring the Co-Pilot inside an application. We can. Co-pilot can surface through any data which is connected to your application. So no more user has to go and look for what data is there. They can just chat and do the conversation with the Co-Pilot and Co-Pilot brings those informations to the end user so it helps increasing the productivity. On the development and the end user perspective, we have started to enable the Co-Pilot in our organization. So we have turned on for the Power Apps, power Automate for the Co-Pilot and I'm getting positive feedback on the Co-Pilot and how it's helping the end user.

Mark Smith: 9:50
Fantastic, fantastic. When you think about low code and the Microsoft Power Platform as a low code platform, I'm hearing more and more in organizations similar to your size that it's not just necessarily the only platform in place right Inside an organization. There's many different software solutions, etc.

Akash Patel: 10:12
Is it your core platform or are you using any of the other low code tools out in the market as well as part of your way of thinking about how you enable the organization so we do have other tools which we do use, called Ultrix, which is another platform we use for automation, and then we do have a platform called Amelia, which is more on the ticketing conversations chatbot perspective, where we can create the business process flow and to implement and do the chat conversations with Amelia Nice nice and you talked in your introduction about governance and setting up from a governance perspective.

Mark Smith: 11:05
I take it you're using things like the COE starter kit you've implemented. Are you the owner of that? Do you maintain it and configure it and use it as part of your role?

Akash Patel: 11:16
Yes, I own the COE starter kit and we do have implemented our own some of the governance capabilities for Power Platform and we do maintain and use the COE starter kit, mainly the core component which we use to gather the data about the component which exists in the Power Platform in our tenant. It helps us to see how many component exists and who owns it and what it did and give us the granular detail about the assets which exist in our tenant.

Mark Smith:   11:55
Nice. Do you have a strategy in place around making sure that you're on the latest version of that and making sure you know tell me about? Do you have daily interaction with the tools provided, the dashboards and the automations provided by that, or is it more weekly or monthly? How often do you think you and your role interact with that tool? A?

Akash Patel: 12:18
few times in a week, not a daily but we do go and look at it a few times in a week, so just to see. Okay, sometimes maybe it's hard to find some of the information from the platform level to search and navigate through where we leverage the COE starter kit to navigate through and find it easy and more convenient to find the information in the dashboard.

Mark Smith: 12:47
Yeah, interesting. Tell me about. You know, when you look at the ecosystem of the Power Platform inside the organization, what you know in Microsoft provide over a thousand connectors with that. Do you have a strategy around how you make and obviously the connectors are used for data access right generally to other systems used in the organization. We find with the enterprise organizations like yourselves that it's typically SAP would be in use in that environment, or a large EAP, maybe an Oracle ERP system. Have you, you know, explored and integrated those systems with the Power Platform so that your makers and also your pro developer community can build solutions based on data in those systems?

Akash Patel: 13:35
Yes, we do have a strategy around the connectors which is currently being used in our organization. So we don't open everything up. Of course we open as per what request comes into the admins and we evaluate, assess those requests and then we'll enable those connectors. But, yes, definitely we have some projects which are connecting to our ERP systems, legacy systems, on-prem, on-cloud systems. We have a couple of views, a few projects which are connecting to our SAP R3 system, which is a 4.6 version, which is like two old systems. So we have a few projects connects to the SAP.

Mark Smith: 14:31
One of the comments I come across from particularly SAP architects is the and actually and from perhaps the DevSecOps part of an organization right, which are, of course, very security conscious is the risk profile of you know allowing staff to access SAP. How is that discussion like? I was recently on a call, in fact on a podcast that went live today with AJ from Metro Bank and the Metro Bank security people right didn't want people accessing those secure systems and, he said, been through some rigorous training, they understood the implications of what they were doing and they made a criteria to engage in those data sets. Have you had those type of discussions and how do they work out with the security part of the organization being comfortable with you know accessing? I'm the power, using the power platform to access those external or not external systems but other kind enterprise systems in the organization.

Akash Patel: 15:33
We did run into some challenges on the security. Out of the gate they will not allow any. We did some training with the security. We did some POC's, we did demos with our security team. They did saw that there was few challenges. Which we ran is about sensitive to legacy system.

Akash Patel: 16:10
Implementing the SSO was little tough for us because there was a lot of changes needs to be happened on the SAP side. On our side, on the configuration configurations of the on-premise data gateway. We did one solutions probably came across was that okay to create some users on the SAP sites, leverage those users and then do the auditing perspective on the platform side To making sure that who touches the data, who does what informations? So all of those kind of things we implemented on the power platform site. Currently we are in the process on doing the POC of the SSO configurations. So when a user logs in, it asks for the user credentials instead of using the service account which is created on the SAP side, because eventually you don't want anything which is running off of the service account instead of the user contacts, because sometimes there is a chance that okay, user don't have actual permissions in your ERP system but now they have access to through the power apps application.

Akash Patel: 17:25
So that is that that is not a good implementations of the security. So currently we are doing a POC on how we can implement the SSO around SAP connector and the power platform.

Mark Smith: 18:27
Nice, nice. You mentioned you have a maker community and I really want to kind of get your views on a maker community and then your pro dev. You know part of where you're building solutions based on. You know probably a business unit requesting a solution to do something. First of all, tell me about your maker community. What's, how does it work, how does it function, how does it live inside your organization?

Akash Patel: 18:55
So we have introduced. We have a maker community introduce a couple different ways so we do communications differently Little bit. So we have Yammer community which we have created where we have set up some automations. So anytime when there is a blog comes out on the power apps or power automated power BI or Microsoft co pilot power pages related, we post those articles directly on our community right on the Yammer community. So at least our community, the citizen developer, knows what's coming in the in this power platform and if there is a way they maybe they can look at it and see the new features, functionality, which is because if you see the power platform in last two years, how drastically it has been grown and changed during the co it time and it's so powerful now. So we we post through all the blogs which comes available on the power platform and I suppose them into our Yammer communities.

Akash Patel: 20:03
Then we have a SharePoint site where we have created the training materials for our community. So there is like a beginner, intermediate and advanced courses we have posed and some of them are do go back to the Microsoft learns, depending on what path you are going for and you're making your advance and educate yourself. So we do those and then we do. We have weekly calls with our communities, so at least there we share the information with the community and community also shares the information they will share. Maybe they have explored something new, they have created something new on the power, using the power platform. So we do interactions with the community. We also have the pro developer community where we do with pro developer. We do bi-weekly call. So we have meeting with bi-weekly with pro developers where we'll do demos on how it is. We have done something cool, something new with using the platform, or maybe something they will share, that, looking at it, in exploring on the power platform, or maybe they are getting some hurdles and then everyone tries to help them out on how to resolve the issues.

Mark Smith: 21:39
Nice with the maker and your pro dev community. How do you handle things like minimum standards right? So, in other words, the login needs to be happening this way, the branding needs to be this, this color set, the fonts need to be this font set, the the kind of things that Make commas apps and solutions commas right, as in, so it's when staff work with them, things are where they would expect them to be right. Do you have any kind of either theming libraries, template libraries? If we take that a few steps further, do you have, like PCF control libraries that people can grab and you've already had them stitched into your system correctly, and so now they can just use those components as standard assets inside? How do you think about that?

Akash Patel: 22:37
Yes, we do any. Any projects we do. Corporate projects we do. We do take this seriously as a branding, as a commerce branding. We do have created a lot of components, like component library, which is used based on the commerce teaming. We did also share the commerce team color codes and the documentations on how to implement the commerce team so people to use reusable components or if there is something which is not meeting their needs. They do have also a guide on how to implement the commerce team and their applications.

Mark Smith: 23:25
Beautiful and you talked about components. Then, just off the top of your head, what are the kind of common or most used components that you've created that you find your teams using?

Akash Patel: 23:37
Mostly, we have created the loading components, headers, some of the, let's say, home screens or success screens, panels, dialogues. Those are the mainly highly used components in our organization.

Mark Smith: 24:01
Have you created a model inside your solutions that allow the end user of them to directly feedback? So I'll give you examples that I've seen. So, for example, built into the app is the ability to capture MPS score for that app. Right, Net Promoter Score. Am I happy with this app? Is it doing or, hey, I found a bug. Do you have a standard component that everyone can put in there that allows you to bug capture or feature request capture in the app so you can get a backlog of future development of any app or solution built on the Power Platform? Have you done anything in that area?

Akash Patel: 24:38
Not related to the component, but we do have established a process where, if a user finds a bug in the applications, or maybe there is a feature request they would like to see in the applications.

Akash Patel: 24:52
we do have established our intake process forms. So all of the corporate applications which is being developed by automation team which is under me, we do intake process. So any project comes in, comes to our team, goes through the intake process forms and we evaluate the request. If there is a bugs it goes through our support team and if there is a feature request it's come to us and we evaluate those requests and deliver those requests to the business.

Mark Smith: 25:28
So what are your thoughts then? Like you mentioned support team there, at what point does an app become I T supported as opposed to community supported, right? So one of the feedback I've heard a lot and in in in dealing in organizations is that I T like, hey, we don't want a hundred laps that we now have to support and help desk right as an and we know nothing about this app.

Mark Smith: 25:53
you know, bob and accounting just created an app last week and now soon, hr is saying hey, bob's accounting apps not working and I want to raise a ticket and I T are going support desk is gone. We don't know what you're talking about, right? We haven't even heard that. How do you handle the? At what point does it become an IT supported app, as opposed to Go find whoever offered the app and tell them about the problem?

Akash Patel: 26:19
Yes, I, I have seen that many times. Right, where people like, okay, where does this app comes from? Right, and sometimes like, the P applications are developed by citizen community, right, we don't know as as admin that, okay, where does this applications come from? Who has developed? Right, that's where we leverage all the C always started to see who has developed where, what. Where which environment does it exist. But for us we only manage the applications which is developed by the automation team, right, right. So anything which is developed and deployed by the automation team that is supported by our support team, we do not. We may support the applications. Sometimes if it's an enterprise level which is impacting our business, productivity of the business. Those applications does come under our support team, but not not all the application which is developed by everyone in the commerce organizations. It will be a tough and difficult to manage all the applications, like 2000 applications in organizations to manage and support.

Mark Smith: 27:40
Yeah, totally makes sense. Tell me about, just to switch clears, the global power platform admin user group. Tell me about what that user groups about is. It is it an online user group and and you know what's been the history of that, because I understand you're involved in it.

Akash Patel: 27:57
Yes, I have recently involved in the global admin user group, so in that user group we do share everything which is related admin related. Right, it is an online based group. You can also, you can search for, you can Google it power platform user groups and once you go to the power platform user group, you can search for global admin community group and you will be able to find there is one group which exists. In that group we do have people comes from Microsoft, so product groups. So we start a kid manual. Can other like?

Akash Patel: 28:39
those people comes into the group, they do share they do share what's something which is recently shared Pro get feedback on the feature request. We do share how we have implemented, also in our organizations, the best practice. We have implemented how we do governance around the platform securities Best method. We have automations around the admin task. So those are the things what we do share in the Global admin community group nice, nice.

Mark Smith: 29:21
I like it it's. It's a. You know, if you're listening to this and you're not involved, go. If you just Google global power platform admin user group. It's a number one search. I just did it. That comes up and there's what? 309 members I see. So it's a large group.

Akash Patel: 29:40
It is a large group. Yes, it is a large group also. We at the power platform conference in Las Vegas.

Mark Smith: 29:48
We also did a live sessions directly from the.

Akash Patel: 29:52
Poplatrum conference and we also had people who joined it and asked Christians directly with the product group on how the admins governance will be change, what's coming new and what was announced In the poplar in the conference. So we had a fun sessions to a live. Yeah, first time we had a live sessions directly.

Mark Smith: 30:17
So good, so good. Before I let you go, just in wrap up, is anything else you'd like to add?

Akash Patel: 30:24
Firstly, thank you for having me in the podcast. It's a first time podcast. It's been a fun, so it's my pleasure of having me here in the podcast. It's a journey of the Power Platform. It's a journey when I started my career, so Power Platform became my career. It's my resume now.

Akash Patel: 30:55
So I'm attached with Power Platform. How it has been evolved, low code to the pro code enterprise applications. We have built income or organizations. We have delivered so much. We have built our automation team community inside the organizations. How we do governance differently, implementations, adapting the new technology which comes in the Power Platform or even outside of the Power Platform.

Akash Patel: 31:26
So we are not limited to the Power Platform. In automation team we use Azure's logic apps, love storage all of those things which we leverage in Power Platform. So it's a fun platform. It's a growing, evolving platform. It's a mature platform where enterprise applications could be built and replaced. We have done that. We have proven that to replace the legacy system with the Power Platform it's more efficient, cost saving, manageable, giving opportunities to your organization's employee to explore, automate their task, organization's task. So it's a fun journey for me. I hope everyone else who's listening to this podcast they are more involved. They are using Power Platform. If not, I'll recommend them to at least explore, see how the Power Platform works, what it can do through application and to end processing. You can build using the platform. So I would hope and wish everyone is using the Power Platform.

Mark Smith: 32:52
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If there's a guest you would like to see on the show, please message me on LinkedIn. If you want to be a supporter of the show, please check out buymeocoffeecom. Stay safe out there and shoot for the stars.