Hello everybody and welcome to another edition
of real world customer stories.
Today, I'm very pleased to welcome my friend
Brian Hodel
from T-Mobile. Brian,
welcome to the show and thank you so much
for sharing your story. Can you tell us
a little bit about T-Mobile and about yourself?
Hey thank you for having me,
Yeah. T-Mobile is a is a U.S.
subsidiary of Deutsch
Deutsch Telcom and it is
a one of the the leading telecom
in the country
and uh and I've been here for
a couple of years and it's
uh it's a it's a pretty fun company to work for.
And I'm really excited to hear
what your journey has been uh coming
into T-Mobile, like, so I
I've I've been through, I've been
through uh numerous positions, I uh started
uh my sort of continuous
improvement journey back at phillips
health care and I went through uh to
uh in an I. R. B.
And uh then I worked at Wind shuttle,
which has uh also sort of
a similar sort of forms and workflow
tools for a while.
And uh and then I I worked
at toy company Fun Seattle
Cancer Care Alliance.
And uh and now I'm at T Mobile
and as as you can see I sort of
I've built uh starting mostly
at uh at fun
but even before that I was using a lot of Microsoft products
but uh starting at fun, I started
to use the Power Platform first
with the uh Power Apps
and then I started moving into the rest
of the other platform and I've continued to grow
on that as I've moved through uh my
my various roles and
it sort of culminated here at
T-Mobile as uh as
this is my full full time role, whereas the other
roles were continuous improvement.
Uh my my full-time role as a Power Platform
developer now and I've
uh pretty much used every single piece
of the Power Platform in uh in in
production and uh and it's
it's just a it's a great great set
of tools that uh that
really uh I'm very passionate about
uh just from the my my technology side
but also from the continuous improvement side because it
just checks all those boxes
of uh of putting tools
in the hands of the users. Uh
that that that can solve the problems
which is one of the key pieces of
continuous improvement. But also
it allows the the ability
for pro developers like me to build
extensive solutions that are
very complex but uh simplify
and make uh more uh
more streamlined a lot of the
processes that the organization has to deal
with on a daily basis?
I have to say. I I'm very curious as to
what your you know, r. P. Experience was
like like how was the state
of the world when you were sort of doing
for example, like
Uh It it's definitely come a long way from
when I was a wind shuttle, pretty pretty
glitchy uh tools and
uh they were fairly limited so it was more
sort of toward the the legacy
SharePoint type of workflow designer.
So it was um it was not necessarily
as approachable for the tools uh
which which definitely is is the case
with the Power Platform
and um it through
the through the the the journey
of Power Automate
I sort of started with the the cloud work
flows and then went into um
the business process so
um uh the business
process flows and then
robotic process automation.
which uh which is has just solved a ton
of problems with our with our integration with Sprint
because we don't have to develop custom a. P. I. S. We
can we can use that R. P. A process to
uh just go right into the system and
uh especially for solutions that are sort of
a limited lifespan like this.
Uh you can uh you can really just throw
something in there that's working for a while and then
uh and not have to have to worry about the
complexities of a. P. I. S. And authentication.
Um from there, moving into
process analysis with Process Advisor,
which is, it's a great tool and it allows you to
gather a tremendous amount of
information very easily from users
to see what they're working on, how they're
doing their work, what the steps are and
uh it brings visibility to that
uh after that was uh a I.
Builder which uh which is also
another another great tool And
um it it it allows us to take
uh forms and import
them directly into records. So uh even
even as as as fast as T-Mobile
goes and as technology driven as we are, there are still
a lot of uh paper processes.
and 11
thing we can do is to take that paper, process
and and sort of acknowledge that it
exists, but also um
make it easier for users. So
say it's still gonna go, we're
still gonna have these Powerpoint decks, and in this case
uh we take that Powerpoint deck, the user
can just load it right in uh the a I
builder is going to extract all the data and build the records
uh chat bots, uh Fantastic
as well and uh that's the more more
of the recent thing that we've been working on is is
able to uh have
have chat bots that interact with users,
you can ask them questions, they can give you answers, they can
trigger workflows to assign licenses,
whatever needs to be done and uh and
they're working 24 hours a day, which
is great,
Uh And and nurture, certainly
putting the Center of Excellence together,
uh which which I've I've been helping with
uh but the organization has really put in a lot of resources
to get visibility into the platform and the users
in order to help them with their journey
It's very interesting to like hear how
you've been sort of automating and also what
I would say, like, you know, modernizing some of your automation
steps
uh through sort of chatbots over here and the
other sort of, you know, very interesting point
is like your whole uh sort
of you know, automation journey is sort of based
on this sick like as a core
concept, like how has that sort
of helped you and your automation journey like, you know,
having that background from a process automation
perspective, like what's your certification level as
well uh in a six sigma world.
Right, Yeah, that's true. I I have a I have a lot
of experience in six sigma, the the certification
that lives in green belt uh but I've I've been
working in six sigma doing six sigma projects
for well for 10 years and
um and and and that definitely comes into play.
That's one of the things that I really like about the the platform
is that you can
uh go the sort of six sigma route which
is standardizing processes and removing the variability.
And uh and then with the the newer
tools like uh the process advisory,
you can sort of analyze those and and
bring in the lean tool set to
uh see where you can uh reduce
or eliminate waste in that process,
so standardizing things and then making
them more efficient.
got it,
this is the sounds very, very interesting, I like
I'm very excited to talk to you because you know, you're
the first person I'm talking to actually has six sigma
like background and and r. P of background
and and and now has sort of gone through the whole
art
uh in in the pop platform, So what
was the first sort of use case that you started
up uh in in the platform over here?
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah, the first R. P. A. Scenario was it
was it was really around the the integration.
It was a it's a big big thing, it's been going on
for quite a while so we had some ability to plan
and so it's really exciting that the R.
P. A. Tools came out about that time.
And and once we once we sort of got
things together, we were starting to see these
these sort of breaks in the process where
uh there were lags and data being updated.
So even though even though we had indicators
to say ok go and go and create this in
the in the legacy side, the the yellow side
Um we we still needed
a way to to bring that to more of a live
data feed because in order for
us to work across the organization
in a in a real time way we need a real time data
access and the R. P. A scenario
allows us to to do that.
uh it was it was a very manual process so
there were they would pull reports, see what's changed,
go in there, pull up and either create or
update the records of the legacy system.
Uh So there's data entry errors, there's
certainly a lot of time that's that's taken with that
time commitment. and uh and
like most processes that are repetitive things
ended up batching, so it it sort of moved to
more like every couple of days and then you know, once
a week they would update things. And so there
was there was definitely a latency of of
uh the data which is um which is really
challenging when you have to work on
things that are moving as fast as they do
in this world.
it seems like uh it's a big challenge
and generally it's I think it's a very common scenario as well
to see in the M and a space where you have two
systems sort of coming together and you
know, each enterprise will have its own version
of the system, the back end systems, how they're tracking
sort of H. R and the processes and you want to sort
of keep this running. So it's a a traditional
R. P. A uh sort of use case. And and
how did you solve it? Like what did you build uh to
sort of, you know automate these manual steps?
What was that like
It was a it was actually very very
simple. Uh We we we first
tried to go down the route of building a P.
I. S and doing the programmatic approach
but it was just it was just really really complicated
with the authentication to the platform as
well as uh figuring out a P. I. S. There was
very little documentation for the system we were integrating
with uh so we we we
we pulled up the which was new at the time, the R. P.
A robotic process automation for
um a Power Automate desktop, we've
been using a lot of Power Automate cloud flows
for a long time. And so desktop was a new feature
and uh and and really
within a very short period of time we were able to
to get the the most
of that process working without any
without any real you know, within any
training or anything. So it was very quick
uh and it allowed us to not have
to worry about authentication and a P. I.
S. And programming. Uh It was a very
it was a very natural sort of process to develop and use
the tool. And how were
these uh sort of desktop flows like
executed? Like what was the integration
like uh with the the orbits app
So it's uh there there are a few different ways but
the majority of these are are back
end workflows. And so cloud flows
will actually run, they will go through decision points.
And when certain criteria
is met in that cloud flow then
it kicks off the R. P. A uh to
go in to search and to
search for see if the record existed
and uh if not then then it would
uh it would create that new record. Um and
or update the old one. So uh it's
it's it's a pretty great process.
Got it. And so now that you have this system
running uh in the production, like what
were some of the the benefits that you
saw uh out of this uh solution
It's it's definitely uh reduced the
the latency. So they're live
updates. So as as soon as the records
updated in orbit, it's
uh the the the flow runs and
it's updated in the legacy system so it keeps
them on track, they get notifications and
uh it really helped them to not have to force
the um the the switch over to
our systems. Uh that that
is is planned but not for a while.
and how did you solve your
data sort of quality challenges
that you were talking about earlier as well? Like
Well, certainly by by having the this the
programmatic approach to this. So the
the um the R. P. A. It's pulling
the actual data in so we're we're limiting
the what's you know, we refer to as a fat finger
mistake of typing things in over
and over again or copy and paste.
Got it. And I think you also had some email
steps as well. So it looks like some requests were coming
over from email which were then sort
of also getting copied into the system. So
that's that's probably another point. Um
Very very interesting. So now
it looks like you've saved some time,
uh what's next uh brian and your journey
for automation?
What did you do next?
Yeah so uh one
of the things that that uh I mentioned is is is
uh the change request or or one of
the things that's new is the change request automation.
So uh that's and that's
that's been been great. So that's
really automated. A a very heavy
um email driven process email
and Excel, uh where where a user
would have to go in there, see that they needed to change
uh send an email out to
the steering team, they would have to review it,
make a decision on it, log it,
send another email off
to another user who would then review that
and they'd have to go in. And there was just a lot of
this repetitive process of going in
and and using, you know, emails
and and Excel. And it's just a very manual process,
very slow, hard to keep track of
and and how did Process Advisor like
how did process I fit into this
uh into this scenario?
process Advisor was was was key
to understand how it was because there was some variability
with different people doing that. So what it
allowed us to do is is to not only see
what the steps were uh but what order
they were doing and how long they took
and what the variation was uh between
users and then even just different
runs so it able to to grab
that data and to analyze it and see
what was going on. Uh so that we could
design a process to be most efficient
and implement that.
And did your
s six sigma sort of background help here?
Like were there ways you were able to leverage
that those data points much better in
terms of the outputs of Process Advisor?
Yeah. Uh Certainly it was
one of the the exciting things when I started using it and
then saw the the outputs that are
in the graphical outputs and
uh and and and it showed you exactly
what that what that variation was, what the average timing
was, what the individual timing, you could investigate
what the steps were if some users were doing
additional things or or skipping steps,
uh give it, gives you visibility to that Uh But
it also uh allowed me to gather that data
without having to be the sort of person
looking over the shoulder. So typically
when you gather this this sort of information from
processes you are the
you know, the the continuous improvement person
or whatever your role happens to be, you've got
to go watch what they're doing. It's very
common for people to say this is what I'm doing
and this is how I'm doing it. But um not a lot
of people have the visibility to that to say actually
what they're doing. So you end up looking over someone's shoulder
which is not a great feeling this does it all automatically.
And uh with with really no uh very
little user uh intervention
interesting. And how do you think
uh you know folks like you in the process sort
of analytics and or like you know process
automation space could benefit from
uh tools like Process Advisor,
It's gathering information
about about what's going on because uh it
it's it's the the Gamba concept of
of go to see and and
uh it really that's that's one of the key
pieces of of process improvement is to
go to where the work is being done.
and uh if you do that, you
see what's going on uh definitely not
a not a full replacement for
uh going out and looking
at the work, but this certainly allows you to get
a better data set and
uh and and more reliable too, because you're
not looking over someone's shoulder and
uh and there's always sort of an impact when somebody he's watching
you interesting.
So what happens next? Right,
let's see the the uh
but well is moving into
uh the the A I space
the a I builder scenario. Uh There
was uh there there's a there's
a piece of the process where the
as I mentioned before the the paper
uh meets the technology and
uh up until we had this in place,
users would actually have to go in and
uh copy and base copy and paste over as you
can see. And then the process is a lot of steps
left fields that already existed. And the
data was already existed in in this case a Powerpoint
presentation. So uh with the new process,
they actually what they do is they just go in and they
they load uh they say go into
the orbit and and uh uh click
a button, attach the document, it analyzes
the document automatically creates a draft
initiative for them.
and and then they then they're notified when that's
done but they don't want to just wait and
then they can go and review the data, add a few more
data points that they need and then submit
it. So it saves them a lot of time and a lot
of data entry mistakes.
how did you build this solution? Like
what components did you use to uh sort
of stitch it together?
It it's uh there's there's there's several
uh so it's it's triggered out of the canvas
app. So the orbit being the the prime
interfaces canvas app, so it's triggered out of canvas
app. Uh Once the user uploads the
document it's fed into a cloud
flow that goes through and
and then calls the uh A. I.
Uh reform processing
what was your experience like of
uh sort of using a I. Builder to build this
model
uh it's very intuitive uh super
easy. And and really again,
no, no training. And and and we're
able to build out uh the majority
of that process with without any issues.
It's a very drag and drop very quick.
Uh It's a great, great experience. It's just
so much power in that that that tool,
Do you have any machine learning experience
or or any of those sort of background?
Uh No, not really.
in the next segment we'll learn about T-Mobile's
implementation of Power Virtual Agents
and more
Nice. Uh What's next?
uh Power Virtual Agents uh as as
as we've as we've grown as a as
a organization with the merger with
uh with with Sprint. They uh we're
we're now have a larger geographic
uh area. So we have a lot more people on the East
coast and and other that we our headquarters
for for the alternate headquarters is
there. and um
uh so so we have a wider user
base and of course a lot more users that are using the platform.
So we're utilizing our virtual agents
to go and
uh and and not have to have this sort of
person sitting there to answer questions,
especially things that like access questions
and stuff like that or where where I going, what do I do?
uh so things that are a lot repetitive, we've been able
to utilize the Power Virtual Agents
to automate the feedback.
So now users no matter where they are
are getting instant feedback, getting instant
answers and uh and then
that P. V. A. Can also
uh kick off workflows.
And perform tasks like
assigning licenses or
um or or sending out notifications
to somebody that needs something. So depending
on where you're at in that process, they can do a lot of that
for you, which is great.
and what was the process like of uh building
a chatbot in uh Power Virtual Agent.
It was kind of fun. It was uh it was very
intuitive as well. Uh so it's one
of the nice things about the whole platform sounds
repetitive, but it it it really was, it's a drag
and drop and it goes through, but it was fun to play
with it because you kind of have to um
think about what what users would ask, right?
So it's it's that sort of uh what was designed
uh but versus what users
were were actually doing in there
and um any developer knows that there's
a big disconnect in there, so we
we put some put some like, you trigger
phrases in and then had to ask the users
and they're like, but this is how I ask it and oh, I
I had no idea if the
syntax of of uh language is
always complex,
but uh but it was a lot of fun.
Nice. And what was the impact of
uh sort of rolling? How did you roll out the chat part?
Uh
Do do you do you do sort of your your
users as well, like?
Yeah, it's uh it lives in in teams of those
websites links that we can have. Uh and
I I think the next steps would be to to actually
put that right into the app so that we
can utilize it there. Uh But
uh but yeah, it sort of just shows up and people
people start using it and playing with it and um
and and we've seen we've seen a big drop in user
requests going directly to
email to ask uh the support
team for questions and stuff like that. So
it's it's been good,
there's been sort of this consistent theme
as you've been talking about all these use cases and how you've
been able to sort of through these
use cases save time and
then, you know, these analysts or citizen developers
and experts have now have time to
do something else. So it's a good thing to
uh sort of see through all these use
cases come across. Uh then how
did you build these automation? Uh brian
what was the sort of some of the key design principles?
Yeah, so it's um it's
it's it's it's a lot of planning, so
going through and designing
to do those really describe to
you have to discover it first, so going
through and finding out what they're doing currently
uh to design the next steps and that's
that's really a key piece is understanding what's
going on, uh what is the best
way to do it and um
it's it's through that um that
that sort of investigation that you find. um
things that you may not have assumed. So
it like the like the syntax for
language uh different people do different ways,
so going through and investigating
how things are being done leads into
the the designing the best way to
test out and then to to build it so that
we can dry it out with the users.
What what were some of the common developer
patterns that you used uh in your
automation
um well, we we certainly have
uh a lot of
uh
the application, life cycle management,
so A l m going through there, so
we have a test, U a T
and dev, and then that's been
uh been really, you know, standard model,
but that works really well for us because we do
we certainly do a lot of U A T testing and
it's not always the same group, so it kind of fluctuates
um
But really, you know, you look at look at usage patterns,
frequency severity, uh
you know, analyzing those different things to find
out what's what's going on and to test
it out with a with a wide audience so that when we
do actually move into production, uh we
are we're successful with that
And what would you say like
in in terms of, you know, when should somebody
pick U. I. Versus A. P.
I. Automation like what's your perspective on on
that space?
It's
You know, i i it it's sort of a it's sort
of I guess what what your your abilities
are, which is is is certainly a a con
contributing factor.
Um
uh A P. I. S can can be a lot
more complex, uh especially when you have to deal with different
education platforms,
Um But but you can
uh but but the the R. P.
A. S and and the the automation in the
Power Platform are are very intuitive, very quick,
very fast to learn and it really
is a sort of like recording a macro
in an Excel for instance,
and you can go through and just click click click and
it records it.
And even if it's a stop gap measure where
you're just gonna do this before uh before
you go to a more robust solution,
Uh But uh it's fast, it's
efficient and it runs uh very very
reliably for us, so there's
really no reason to even uh to consider
trying to develop the A. P. I. For what
is essentially a very very complex system in this case.
Got it, got it. And, you
know, as you've been sort of building all these
uh scenarios and you sort of have these
uh you know, design principle, which I'm assuming
is driven by your six sigma background,
this whole idea of that you're discovering
and you're sort of quantifying
what the impact of this automation should
be uh like how have
you sort of rolled these automation out in your
organization, like can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, it's uh we we really focus on
the the C. O. E. Is has been a really important
aspect of that so that we have visibility
to who's working on
different things, who's creating apps or workflows
or or any different pieces
and uh and and as that C.
O. E. Has been getting stood up, that helps
us to be able to. um
see who those people are and reach out contact
them to see if they have any questions uh as
well as uh governance controls around
things like environments. So you can have
uh data loss prevention aspects of that
and and people working in different environments
have different permissions and different D.
L. P. Policies so people can get
what they need so without restricting
their tool use but also not to put them
in a place where they might get into trouble through
um through leaking data or something like that.
got it.
And in the beginning I I remember sort of as you
were walking through your journey through the other sort
of a P. U. Tools, you talked about
a little bit on, you know, having less visibility
or the whole notion of shadow I. T. Like, you know,
what's your perspective on on on that
uh where you are with T-Mobile.
Moving moving into the
the the single platform definitely
uh reduces the number of programs
and applications that you're using.
Uh But uh moving it into the Microsoft
ecosystem I think is always is a good good
measure because of of course a lot of other things
we use Azure for sequel and and just
all kinds of different things in the the Microsoft
uh stack we use. And so moving this
back in there even gives more visibility
and a single place for say audit log reporting
for I. T. To go. And so it's um I think
it's it's really the the furtherest you can get from
Shadow I. T. In my opinion
Got it and
and I think like, you know, like you probably
had also mentioned that
the the fact that you have sort of, this
rich community of makers, you know,
it's a good
Uh Testament that the platform
has been adopted with enough
guards in place to be able to nurture
sort of more and more uh makers like
versus sort of having having the shadow
ike approach where you know we're going rogue
somewhere on the side
so it's good to see the sort of structured motion at scale
uh happening happening over there.
Yeah certainly certainly having a community of makers
and one of the the important things in in
in lean six sigma is to give people
the tools to do what they need. Uh Which
is great. Uh when shuttle certainly
is one example where people are solving big problems
by themselves. Uh But
uh that's that's the that tool is the very definition
of Shadow I. T. And so um
so moving moving in this direction gives them the guard
rails that they need which is which is great for
the organization and helps them as well.
all right.
You know, this this has been a fascinating
like brian what message would you like
to leave our listeners with
Uh I I I think definitely
uh look at the platform and
and all the different tools there are always new
tools coming out there there are new capabilities,
new features. Uh 11
of the the things I would suggest is to to go
in the the different uh you know like like
uh uh app and day or
you know the workflow of the day power behind a day and
you can go through those or dashboard in day and you
can go through those and learn a lot but using a lot of the
templates so if you go to to Power Automate
and you you click on the templates and you say
here you know create this out
of the box sort of template and there's a ton of them. Which is great.
uh go in there and and that's the best
way to learn. I think if you have no no no experience
with it, just go in there, create a template and then start
playing around with it and change things and modify
them and get in there and uh and and
it's it's you're not gonna break anything but
it's super super powerful and
uh and there's really there's just there's really
no end to what you can do with this platform
because of the the wide variety
of tools that it offers,
That's awesome. Like I I I do
remember that you are you're very good
at baking cakes and how how
does that fit it over here? Right.
Yeah that's what they are the analogies I I use so
there's there's the sort of the the the
pro developer there's the the entry
level. Uh But then there's the
the the middle which is where the Power Platform
from lo code. So the the example
would be if you're you're going through and you just
go to maybe go to the store and you buy a cake
uh You know or you buy a You know a box cake
and you you just put like water and an egg
in there. Uh that's pretty entry level
or you can go the other thing and you can you can go source
you can build you know go get all the raw ingredients
and you can do everything you know 2030 different
ingredients in a cake. But really the low code you
can start in the middle and you can kind of jump in from from
any of those spaces and still get that done.
But um it it's it's really
it it puts the the tools
in the hands of users and and allows
everybody to get in there no matter where you're at. And the
the the Power Platform being in the middle uh
allows you to sort of that that flexibility to
go either way and uh and certainly to
to to go either way once you get into
which is important
wow. Like I I I
completely mind blown. Like
I think this is like a fascinating story,
like just I I'm just fascinated
that, you know, coming from a six sigma process,
automation sort of R. P. A. Perspective
and kind of the steps that you have gone through
has been sort of incredible. And I hope our our sort
of listeners uh
you know enjoy watching this video
uh as well, so thank you so much uh brian
for sharing the story with us today. Thank
you, thank you for inviting me. It was a lot
of fun