Hi, I'm Sally from a podcast team
and Microsoft today. I'm very
delighted to be joined by two special guests
from H & M to talk about how
they've enabled citizen development
across their organization.
Welcome Claes and Helena
thank you for having us
very delighted to be here.
We're gonna
tell tell all of you about
our journey which we did in
within H&M in
order to
set the Power Platform
center for enablement in show
So Helena over
to you.
Right so in in January
2020
uh H&M have been using
Microsoft 365 for about five years.
We had 30,000 licensed users,
Which means that we have 30,000
potential citizen developers
that had access full access to Power
Platform
and they had discovered their access
and started building solutions.
We did not however have any
kind of governance or idea
on how we wanted Power Platform to
be used or how we could get value
out of it.
So we identified some challenges and risks that
we were having.
Like I said, there were already
some legacy in place. I mean we had
1500 apps
when we did an inventory,
there was a risk that data
could be exposed both externally
outside of Vietnam but also that
people were building solutions in a manner
without attention to security,
which means that sensitive data could be exposed
also internally to the wrong users,
there was some use of a premium
connectors but we didn't have any oversights
which means that it could cause extensive
licensing costs.
Uh and we also have had the
risk that an app
could be built that could kind of evolve
into being business critical, providing a lot
of value to many users.
And then when the owner left the company
there was left with no support and no
maintenance,
but still users that use the app.
So it drives to kind of set this center
for enablement up running was
that we wanted to increase the knowledge
of the usage of the platform.
We wanted to have security control,
but equally important for us was that
we
we wanted to
improve our return on investment. We wanted
to encourage users to build
solutions on Power Platform to get the value
out of it
and we want to encourage them to build
solutions in a sustainable manner.
Yeah, so
we started off with the groundwork, we formed a team
with me and class. Remember
uh
we identified our audience, I mean
our primary audience is the
citizen developers,
but we also do have a dedicated
team doing customized solutions
on Microsoft strategic vibe.
So we do have some I. D IT pros and developers
also building solutions.
We agree that for us
it's equally important with the governance
security as well as the
creativity and to foster
an environment where people want to use Power Platform,
we ensure that our group had a mandate
of the strategy that we were allowed
to take decisions of Power Platform.
We did a lot of googling and a lot of thinking
because we're not the first one to to kind of set up
this kind of governance organization
and of course are googling
led us to
a lot of Microsoft information,
for example the Center of Excellence toolkit which
we installed
and then finally we decided that we
were going to call this our Power Platform center
for enablement.
So when the ground work was done
we can ready to start implementing
extra security and governance.
So what we did was we took this picture
which I think also is a Microsoft picture
where we can classify our apps
and flows into different levels.
So in order most
of them will be in productivity level,
a typical app that used for me
or a couple of my peers that provide
some business value.
But then if we have absent solutions
that are used by more people
on higher business value,
then we classify them as important
and then we need to kind of ensure that
governance are in place, they do have an owner
and so forth.
We also designed an environment
environment strategy based on this
and we turned off quickly turned off the
possibility for anyone to create an
environment
because we want to be in control over
the environment being created in our platform
environment.
And we also identified what kind
of productions apps do we have that doesn't
have an owner
and they will probably take some actions
on those apps,
so
our next step going forward, what we call
it working on, I would say we will probably
dive into
more getting to know our platform even
better.
So this is a screenshot of my favorite,
one of my favorite tools from the Center
Center of Excellence toolkit,
it's a Power BI report with
basically all the knowledge
that you could ever ask for.
So here we can see that
our trend in upgrading is still
going up.
The people are using the platform
that we have 37 apps in production,
which we probably need to
have extra attention to.
We can also do some analyzation
of the usage
if it it may be low in certain countries
regions and if it is we
should probably do targeted efforts of
getting the usage up
and telling them that poor platform exists and
they can use it to get business
value, some
something else that's also in our pipeline is to
implement some kind of archiving so
that we can archive old
unused apps and flows that haven't been used in,
say for a year
and then they're not needed anymore, so we kind
of get a kind of clean environment
right now. It's time for nurture and educate.
Yeah, thank you lena.
So the nurture and educate was
really something that was
really high on our agenda and
was really important for us to
actually set the stage for and
moving into nurture and educate.
The first thing we did
was basically set up and this
is actually a feature from the
the Centre of Excellence Target
where
you receive this welcome email in
which you can customize. So
whenever a new maker
enters the stage basically and
do their first flow, do their first
Power App,
they received this email and
and and we felt that
with a lot of links to
different communities, different
external links to youtube channels,
places to go where you
can find your content sources
basically in order to
getting started or
getting to the next level basically
and about communities.
The Communities for for
us was a very, very
important part of the game
and still is, I would say
so
for the for the community part, we
we used an already existing platform
and that is Jammer. I mean Jammer is
super, super great for
for a
for foster or finding
and inspire our
our makers or citizen developers.
We also use the Power Platform community
to uh
to educate and
inspire or
sending out, posting news basically,
announcement of there's new
features coming up to
within the Power Platform and
and how they
possibly can get used of those,
those new features and how they
can use them in their
in their solutions
or to support and inspire.
We are of course using
our global health disk,
where
to kind of the place to go to
as well. It's natural for
for users to call the
global health disk or email that
when when they have problems.
So basically if it's incidents
related
then of course they helped
us should should handle those
questions.
But as I think
most of the companies have
that kind of a problem or
the lack of knowledge within help
us, they cannot withhold
that information about Power Platform
tools. So we
encourage them to actually transfer
those users to or redirect
those users to our
general community, Power Platform community
in general. We also have
the on our Center for enablement
SharePoint page in a request
form. And where users
can request for for
example premium license
if they are in need of that. So
if they are building a solution
and need premium license to
either I don't know,
connect to uh
scale database or something
similar.
We also educate
and and
promote the are
the makers of the citizen developers to
visit the Microsoft
uh
huh in order to get
a better reach lawmakers throughout
the whole world
also posting on on ideas
on a Power Platform ideas if
there are
if there are functionality,
they are missing of course.
So, so so we have several
cases, I mean we're users
are using ideas
last but not least. We are
we are also hosting internal webinars.
So both me and liana and
and also another colleague who
is a Power BI I expert
we are in
and that could be everything from
building perhaps creating
flows
uh and creating
a visual Power
BI reports
and these are spread
out the whole the whole organization,
everyone have access to it and listening
in and ask questions etcetera.
So
now over to
to our success
stories and storytelling and
this is something we are extremely
proud of because these
these solutions are built
by our citizen developers
mainly and what we see here
is basically uh
just a collection of all
the success stories that we have, but
it really gives an idea on how it looks like.
So we we create these news posts
and and we share them to
everyone
to inspire people and to
share what others have done within
the within the H&M Group.
So people can actually take copy
and paste
or get inspired to create their own
solution for for a certain
matter. Um
one of these solutions are
is one that Marie Nordstrom
actually came up with,
so she's so need for
for better streamline a
very long and inefficient process
basically.
Uh it
contains everything from sending Excels
throughout the whole world. Uh
Excel copies and then collect those
using diagrams,
taking snapshots into Powerpoints
etc. In
order to set the business business
goals for production.
The result of this
was extremely,
extremely successful successful
in terms of saving time,
which is a huge money
saver to be honest
and also the
people that interacted and you
were using the app, they
were they were they become happy
because they didn't
they were taken away from
from using the Excel on sending that
Excel back and forth
and now over to another
success story and I think this
is your absolute favorite. It is
my favorite. Yes. So the flex
app started started as an
idea on a hackathon that you hosted.
So Elsi and Sofia built
the prototype of Power App
with a pretty simple idea. Used
a Power App that provides you the option
to everyday post
your whereabouts are you working from the
office today? Are you working from home?
Do you have occasion
then? You also have the option to kind of inform your
manager and two out a calendar or whatever.
Yeah, you can you can see the whereabouts about
your team or your favorite people
to know where you should be or maybe where you shouldn't be.
And they started small by releasing
it to their own team and then
we did a success story about it and world
kind of got around and more people and
teams wanted to use it.
It's pretty scalable. So it's very easy to just
add on more.
As of now we have about 1000
users in Sweden Turkey
and we're also rolling out in the Asia region as
we speak.
This also has been truly
successful and it also very good
looking since via is a graphical designer
right
now this is our last slide and I
would say it's the most important slide because
these are our key learnings that
you should take with you.
So my first part of the device is do
not wait start today
because as soon as your users
find Power Platform, they will
start building solutions on top of Power Platform
and it's much easier to
to handle governance and such
if there aren't already a lot of solutions
in place. So the sooner the better
make sure you establish a Center of Excellence
team with the right competence, so set
up a
good good mix of people
and make sure they have the correct mandate to to
kind of drive the work going forward.
You also declare idea on
what do we want with this, Why are we
even setting up the Center of Excellence
installed a Center of Excellence starter
kit, it's considered
like a smorgasbord
that could help you, you will probably
won't need all of it, but there's a lot of good
things that can inspire you and help you
to kind of set up governance and nurture
and everything really,
in many cases the drive
cannot start. The Center of Excellence come from
the IT department and they're concerned
about security,
but as I think you said earlier, it's super
important to remember that the value is being
created when you kind of empower
your end users,
so you will need a kind of a good balance
between those
learn from others learn from us for example,
talk to Microsoft, there
are a lot of best practices out there
that that you can find
And remember. Uh, this will never
be finished. I mean, Microsoft 365
will continue to involve, and so
should your center for excellence,
that's it from our side.
Yeah, Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you so much class that have enough for sharing
your story with us as we close
here. Let's play a short video
that summarizes all the elements of the
cfe.
Mhm.