Power Platform | Rise of Business Technologists

Just had the pleasure to kick off the Power Platform 24 community event with my good friend Chris Huntingford aka Maker Man – a 24hours of Power Platform content delivery from experts around the globe talking D365 and Power Platform. Well, it wasn´t planned to kick off the event, but our session has been selected to do so. And what happens if long-time friends meet for having a chat?

They start first sharing news and what they´ve recently came across – in this case an article about Business Technologists that was published by Gartner the other day. And while continue having a chat around the background of being known for Maker Man now – it starts escalating quickly, a new session is born and Fusion Fellow joins the super hero family to explore a new terminology and share findings with the community.

1. What or who is a Business Technologist?

Did you know – 4 out of 5 Technologists working in business areas outside of IT and according to Gartner research 41% of employees can be described as Business Technologists already. Gartner´s definition of a Business Technologist can be found here.

Does it allow of a hypothesis of saying almost half of our community members can be called or described as Business Technologists?

Chris Huntingford, Power Platform 24

Well numbers might vary by industry, but nevertheless it should be obvious that Business Technologists surround us, if we cannot call ourselves for being one. But maybe it´s easier to understand, if we think about some typical examples.

In this case sharing with you typical roles that can be found in Manufacturing industry and that can be described as Business Technologists, depending on their primary job entails or is done through technology work.

2. What drives a Business Technologist?

If we do want to better understand what key drivers a Business Technologist has, I would encourage everyone to have an interview with one of them. Obviously, calling yourself one it could be fun activity to collect your Wants & Needs, same as your Challenges.

At Power 24, we introduced you to John and we were outlining his Bio, the typical projects he´s been working on. Furthermore, we added his Wants & Needs – one of them being to balance customer service commitments with the right inventory levels and mix at the right place to reduce costs. We added some of his Challenges as well, in this case naming the lack of ability to identify supply chain risks and inability to effectively track and trace products and raw materials through the value chain.

3. Where´s the difference in being a Business Technologist?

As Chris and I outlined during our session, a Business Technologist would use technology to implement changes. They won´t except the fact of missing technology to better address their Wants & Needs. Neither they would think about there won´t be solutions to their challenges.

We´ve highlighted a couple of Power Platform usage scenarios by roles we´ve introduced earlier. Business Technologists using low-code tools to design solutions for their business problem, deploy them in production or act in a co-development with others to finalize their solution for production readiness. This rapid development plus the lowered costs to it, is what drives business innovation and digital transformation.

In a follow-up article, I am going to continue talking about the importance of Business Technologists. If you couldn´t attend the meeting, I hope you´ll find some time for re-watching it. Thanks to 365.training for hosting the live event and recordings. If you´re interested in the deck we´ve been presenting, please find it here. Until then,…