The Culinary Tech Symphony: Pir Khurram Rashdi's Journey from Saudi MVP to CIO and Mentor in the World of AI and Supply Chain Innovation

Mark Smith: 0:37
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. Today's guest is from Saudi Arabia. He works at Ali Arrafi as the chief information officer. He was first awarded as MVP in 2023. He is interested in exploring new trends in technology, writing on social subjects, poetry and open source. He is a power platform expert with 23 years experience in technical and functional aspects with finance, sem, commercial retail, hcem, payroll modules. You can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Pir.

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 1:41
Thank you, Mark. This is my first time and happy that I'm with you in this session. Thank you for inviting me. I'm CEO in Arrafi. They call it Arrafi this is. Lebanese brand for nuts and coffee. They have the presence all over Gulf countries.

Mark Smith: 2:07
So it's really in the supply of food products, is that right?

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 2:13
Yes, they are in the processing of food products. They are in manufacturing and retail sector. They have stores all over Gulf countries.

Mark Smith: 2:23
Yeah, I was looking at the website and thinking that it was making me hungry seeing all the nuts and different varieties of spices, and what nuts. It was very, very good. I couldn't read any of it, of course, because it looks like it was in Arabic.

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 2:39
Yeah, Almonds, cashew, all type of a walnut, and coffee, turkish coffee, arabic coffee. Sometimes they call it Saudi coffee, but it is called Arabic coffee. So all are healthy food. All are healthy food.

Mark Smith: 2:56
Yes, yeah, very nice, very nice. Before we get started, tell me a bit about food, family and fun. What do they mean to you?

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 3:05
Food is basically an essential component for a human being, definitely, and I have been in retail sector retail and manufacturing, let's say, in garments, in perfumes, cosmetics and recently in food. I was in RFI back in 2012 as well. I was in Dubai. There we implemented also Dynamics from Dynamics GP to Dynamics AX at that time, AX 2009. And food is basically the essential component of everyone. So it is all a growing industry, especially once you are in manufacturing as well and you have the retail sector all over here. You have different food chains available. They have certain supply chain, your marketplaces where you basically sell your products and everyone they need, especially during festival. We run the campaigns using Dynamics 365 features and definitely it is all demanding. All the time it is demanding industry.

Mark Smith: 4:14
Tell me a bit about your family and what you do for when you're not working. What do you do for leisure?

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 4:20
Yeah, I do also photography. I have been in National Geographic your short, if you remember. They make it obsolete now but I was having a Canon camera. I was doing photography. It was hobbyist or you can say amateur photography. Also, I like driving, driving all over the landscape, especially in GCC. You will find desert, you will find camels and different landscape you will find here. There are certain areas which are mountainous and like Abha or Baha it is now snow is going on. So I like also traveling, visiting different places. Also meeting with different cultures European, indian, the subcontinent all over different culture people. I love to make friendship with them, especially in ERP. I train people. I run my own YouTube channel and I have almost, I think over 6,000 subscribers and mostly new graduates which want to learn ERP. Normally it is not available in different training institutes, so this is how I train them and many people they got also jobs after seeing my basic skills in dynamics. So I love to interact with different kind of people in different areas.

Mark Smith: 5:51
I did notice that you had quite a large following on YouTube and it is interesting because in that whole ERP space often there is not enough training and what I call training from the field, training from people that are doing it all the time. So I think it is fantastic that you are educating the market in that way. 23 years ago, how did you get into tech? How did your life bring you into a world of technology?

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 6:22
Yeah, actually it started when you were a child. You need to see how you inspire yourself and how you see the ones that you have grown where you want to see yourself. So at that time I had like my son also. Now what he is doing is basically de-assembling the things and again assembling it, so he is in an invention field. So same I was when I was a child and I was seeing how things work, like how bulb works when you connect different batteries, so this was my hobby.

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 7:01
Then I thought my uncle was an electronic engineer and I thought maybe engineering is a good field. But at that time I had different advices from my elders and I discussed with them and I thought now, because IT is an emerging field and every industry without IT will not work. Basically in this generation, especially now it is AI and robotics and different things are going on. So at that time, after discussion with elders and who were already experienced, I decided that I will go in engineering, but especially in computer engineering. So that's what I thought. And then I joined in one of the universities and then I started learning things in software as well as hardware. This is how I inspired this is.

Mark Smith: 7:53
This is so good, so now fast forward. When did you first get exposed to dynamics AX? I suppose it would have been back then I. Did you do anything with Navi's in as well, or in AV?

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 8:09
No, not Navi's in. I was involved in 2008. Basically, I was also in Air Force. I was in information technology branch where we were using Oracle technologies at that time, oracle developers, suite forms Reports we were working on, and dotnet was also new crystal reports, sql server we were developing our own software. Then I got retirement from there and in 2008 I I was involved in one of the companies.

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 8:39
I don't know whether I can name the company or no, but I joined the company where basically Microsoft they outsource their features. They were basically working on eggs 2011 at that time. Then it was delayed, so they name it to 2012. So I was working at the back office on the different features which were which were outsourced. I was part of prepay and wising and settlement. I was developer throughout this feature as a vendor company, as a ISV. We were working on these and there was one company in America which was engaged with Microsoft and we were working with program managers and Getting getting through SDLC software development lifecycle throughout. So 2008 was the year when I got involved into dynamics for first time. So as a software engineer, senior software engineer, I was involved from this year.

Mark Smith: 9:36
Wow. So so you're definitely been in a good wee while. What? What were the steps that you took in your career as you learned the technology? Did you stares a software developer? Did you move into management or other roles? What's kind of been your journey? And this is just so that people listening can kind of, when they think about their career path, they can see you know what you did and maybe it'll apply to their life in some way.

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 10:03
Yeah, basically, when you work you know when you struggle in your life. When you work hard, definitely you progress into your career. It is not like when you join in certain designation you will remain all in that one throughout your life. So I also enjoyed being a software lead and then also I transformed myself from technical to functional area, because Once you are technical or software engineer you don't see the application of the software or ERP in the real world. So I was much interested because we are developing certain features or we are Stabilizing the software, but how it is basically implemented in the industry.

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 10:45
So this drive me into the functional area or Implementation area. So during the same company I, I also transform myself into functional functional guy and Imple I implemented into multiple companies. Later on, once I joined other end user side and At the end user side you had you have the edge that you learn the business process basically. So before once you are in software company, you basically you are exposed to a certain extent how it is working. But once you are in industry and end users are coming to you to for their issues, then you know how to map those requirements into the software and how to help them. So this is how it motivated me, and then I gradually go into project management side. And also implemented in multiple companies and GCC especially.

Mark Smith: 11:45
And so you're the CEO at the moment. Is that right? Yes and that's quite a different hat, right. So that's in the, the executive layer of an organization. How, I suppose, when you look at the future and we've just come off a year that was very much dominated by AI and the effect that generative AI is going to have when you look at the supply chain and AI, how do you see supply chain and AI coming together?

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 12:18
Yeah, basically AI now in every industry. Ai basically is assisting those industries. So AI definitely in different areas, especially in supply chain. Also, before we were using, for example, master planning, forecasting in order to meet your requirements based on your historical transactions. Planning also was important because you want to basically plan for next festivals how it was done in past and how you can better perform, especially when you see the COVID time. Covid time if some industries they did not exist digitally or you can say e-commerce wise, so they were failed definitely because physically movements were restricted and things were not done. So it was enforced, the digitalization was enforced.

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 13:14
And now AI in every aspect ERP as well as in other areas. It is assisting essentially because this is the next need. Now you can say it is the next need. Without this you cannot work. There are many, many lengthy procedures, lengthy procedures where I can see there is an application of AI which is not basically from the human perspective or workers perspective. It will bring more efficiency. So, decision making, you can say, or you can say business analytics. You, based on the business analytics, you can make a better decision, especially in today's very fast growing world and very fast growing businesses.

Mark Smith: 14:00
How was your journey to becoming an MVP? What was involved in that for you? How did you hear about the MVP program? How did you get nominated? What was that process for you?

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 14:11
Yeah, basically I never thought about MVP. I was working on my own self. During the COVID time I did many trainings which I before. After I graduated, I thought that I will become Oracle certified, I will become SAP certified, but it was very costly, and thanks to COVID also, because it is said that blessing in disguise, so COVID brings many blessings. So there were many free certifications and many things and we had ample time while working from home. So I did my SAP certification and Oracle certification as well. So your question I forget, sorry.

Mark Smith: 14:52
So how did you become an MVP?

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 14:54
MVP? Yes. So I started during COVID time also self learning, and I thought the best idea because sometimes self learning becomes very boring. So I thought, why not to create a YouTube channel and start training other people? Also, while I am learning, why not to spread the knowledge? So at that time I started from this. I never thought that I will become MVP. So after one year or so, somebody from the friendship they advise that why not become MVP? So there was one of my friend in Microsoft. He recommended me and then, after even one year, they decided that okay, I am eligible for MVP and they awarded me. Into 2023 year I become first time MVP. This is how it happened, but it was natural flow. I am still, even without MVP. I would still continue my spreading knowledge or training people, especially the new students which are graduated and they need ERP skills. So I will still continue on even without MVP.

Mark Smith: 16:05
I love this because you know a lot of people go if I am going to create a YouTube channel, what do I do it on? And I love that. You decided to learn yourself and then you recorded your experiences, your learnings and, of course, so many other people find that valuable, right. They find that they, they can learn that way, and so I think it's a brilliant. You're a really great example of of that process. That the MVP wasn't the goal, it was a byproduct of.

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 16:36
And and you won't believe that now you know, I forget many times. Many things I forget when I'm going through at that time later on so many things are Because in ERP you have so many modules, you have supply chain, you have finance, you have manufacturing, you have payroll or HR. So once I do the training at a certain time later on maybe I forget it. Then I see I watch my own videos and to recall my memories. So it is also helpful my for myself, not only for others, but also for myself. It is very helpful that that was also intention and to make it quite interesting, so that people are also basically putting their feedback or their questions Over my videos and I'm answering to them. It makes me my knowledge also, you know, expanding my own knowledge. It is not that it is limited, only I will learn and later on I will forget. No, they, they are also engaged with me, so it also helps me to Increase my knowledge into that area as well.

Mark Smith: 17:39
Yeah, fantastic, I love this. I love this. Final, final question what? What do you recommend to other people aspiring to becoming an MVP? What recommendations do you have to them based on your experience?

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 17:56
So, mark, I would recommend that the same like me, and that they they should be self-learning. There are different features which Microsoft is launching. They by day on the cloud, because now it's in dynamics. This five is on cloud, so they need to just learn this and I Think they should not make it as a goal. Rather, they should make their career or or to spread knowledge or training people or training themselves as a goal. So MVP will be as a byproduct. It will come and there will be many achievements you will get Even it is an achievement if somebody they got job and they appreciate you that because of your videos we learn those things and we pass the interview and now we got the job. This is itself a big achievement, similar like MVP. So I would say that don't make objective of MVP, rather, learn and also spread the knowledge and engage with the people, with the community, and help them. So definitely many rewards will come in as a byproduct, as you mentioned.

Mark Smith: 19:01
That's. That's brilliant. I know I said it was the last question, but I have another last question for you. You mentioned SAP. Are you, do you do a lot of, do you integrate SAP and Dynamics 365? Finance or are you using SAP in the power platform or power apps together, or power automate? Are you doing anything in that space?

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 19:22
No integration. I am not doing, I. I actually I am not a qualified, you know, finance guy, but throughout implementation of ERP learning with finance departments or other departments, I learned finance. So because all the ERP, definitely the basic principles are same. So I passed SAP, sap S4 HANA, financial accounting Certification because I am also certified in the dynamics. So mostly things were, things were same. Even SAP S4 HANA now has a very good interface, very good user interface. So now, because everything is going on cloud, browser based normally. So I loved the interface and I thought maybe I sometime I also engage in there. But it is very difficult to, you know, put your feet in two ships. So it's better to continue with dynamics because so far, 13 or 14 years, I'm in dynamics world.

Mark Smith: 20:18
So good. Pierre, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Pir Khurram Rashdi: 20:21
Welcome. Thank you very much for giving me time and opportunity To tell about my experience.

Mark Smith: 20:29
Hey, thanks for listening on your host business application, mvp Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ 365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out, buy me a coffee. Comm Ford slash NZ 365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time. I you.