Haniel Croitoru on The MVP Show

today's guest is all the way from ontario canada he works as an associate director and power platform practice lead he's in his currently in his fifth year going on six as an mvp he's author of a book called agile office three six five you can find them on twitter at h quatro welcome to the show Haniel Croitoru

thank you

did i

let's

pronounce

have you

everything right

you did

well very good very good

yes

not not too

most

bad

people

not

usually

too bad

just completely batter up my first name my last

oh

name and at which point it's like just call me whatever

uh

call me call me hey or

h

yo

oh

or whatever you want

i love it i love it so tell me what's your story

what's my story

m

what's my my v p story what's my

now what's your what's your what's your you now where did you come from how did how what do you tell us a bit about things that are not related to n v p not related to tech but tell me about

so

you know your work your fun

yeah

your play your family those

yeah

type of things

m

oh

it's a big one very diverse

oh

but i would say career wise i would have never thought i would

oh

be ending up as an m v p or as somebody who's working in the microsoph space

oh

when i was a new diversity

oh

originally i really wanted to go into engineering or architecture and then later on i was kind of hoping to go to medical field um and then while i was doing my indegrad i said you know what

m

medic and may not be at engineering is great but why and we just combine the two and i was actually looking at a field called by medical engineering and so i spent my first nine years of my career actually the masters

oh

in computer assisted surgery and then i spent nine years working in the field published four patterns specifically in the orthop space um and yeah that was really exciting and when i talked to people even today i left the field in two thousand and seven and even want to talk about it today with people they get very very interested very excited because i was literally doing augmented reality before the term was invented

well

augmented reality is something that i would say less than

yeah

ten years old right there was virtual reality but then the idea

oh

behind taking you know live imagery and then super imposing something that was really my term for it so so developing software where imagine you're taking

yeah

a city skin of a body and you're creating a three d model

oh

and you're able to navigate and virtually put an instrument into the body so you're you're putting it in but you don't have to cut the whole body open you make a small key hole in decision and a chose way you're and you're doing sub millimeter

yeah

accuracy when it comes to two

yeah

measurements like that it was quite ground breaking at the time

wow

so that's that's where i came from

that's crazy that's crazy and i just a couple of things that kind of prick my interest there the patent side of things

yes

what's the process around getting a patent oh

so i was working a research facilities so it was actually quite straight forward as long as the client is willing to sign that that they're you know

yah

participating in research study obviously under supervision of doctors that

oh

really is all that it took to get life patients for some of the

yeah

research we needed to work with cadavers

was a bit easier to really have to sign much

yep

um

uh

there was you know

yeah

certain individuals where they would sign ahead you know before their death they would say that they're willing to donate their

yeah

body for rest truce

yeah

was

so

that

what

was

about

it

you talked about was it three patents you got as part of that

for

process

yes

for patent so is that a very involved process

getting a patent is quite involved

ye

there is typically first there's a legal element where

oh

you have some legal lawyers search to find if there's anything similar that has been done and then you basically have to write the patterns and it has to be written in a way that can be easily

yeah

copied and if there is something similar then you

yeah

have to write it in a way that it will be still considered unique and not

yeah

obvious

hm well

yep

and and was it a long drawn out process or is it like is it a

yeah

three month thing a six month twelve month moti

probably

year

six or twelve months

yeah

six or twelve month typically for a patent yes and sometimes just the legal searches can take months sometimes

well well crazy so so that that's the industry you used to be in

yes

tell me how you how you crossed the bridge how did you come into into

oh

microsopt side of things and get into you

oh

know software things like that from what you

oh

were doing

so

yeah

so it was a bit of a change in so the company i was working for

yeah

the cnology was very expensive at the time i was working on silicon graphic machines of

i remember them

audience or a few if you remember those

yep yep

um so a system would typically go for close to a million dollars and

so hospitals don't have that kind of budget to spend um and orthobiti

oh

company often what they would say is the say okay will buy this will buy this computer

yeah

for the hospital as long as the hospital is committing to using so many implants

oh

for

yeah

you know at a minimum for their surgeries right so uh orthopedic implants are very expensive and and so every company tries to get there their their foothold into into a hospital

oh

right because they typically within or it's like several thousand dollars of just hardware that's being spent so for them to throw in you know a million dollars sometimes it's

oh

not a huge deal if you imagine how many of those surgeries they can do maybe six or seven a day

yeah

you know you multiply that by the number

oh

of you know days and how many surgeons you have working in parallel

yeah

um then the cost has come down significantly from s g s

ah

they went down to using p c s running on linix so the cost became you know a

oh

few thousands as a per post a million

yeah

um but there was some change and then there was some some company veoorcs and everything essentially the division i was working

oh

for was sold to a company in germany and so literally there was about her and fifty of us that were left out of a job overnight

wow

um so my choice was either to relocate to either the us or europe or israel which is where

ah

i'm from

uh

or or to to basically shift

yah

my career and i was just freshly married in toronto so picking up

a

and leaving was not a first option

so

and so

tell us tell us a bit about your family oh

so i'm married i got three daughters got thirteen year old twins and other eleven year old

well

so they're yeah there their handful my younger one my eleven year old she's very much interested in in the chnology and robotics and everything so she's taken after me she actually go presented with me at a conference one time

that's so

on

cool

her ninth on her ninth birthday yes that was quite exciting yeah

yeah

and then you know my my twins are very diverse day they love different things so

that's

that's

so cool

yeah

that's so cool that's so cold

yes

so tell us how did you bring us up to speed you're obviously in the power platform space now with microsop take it your

yes

m v p is in that area tell us little bit about that journey how did you get to where you are now how did you you end up you know five years ago getting your m v p what was

oh

that journey for you

so i've always liked giving back to the community and

a

and presenting an and the whole social element

yeah oh

of it um and i've been working with a number of people at the time and i was doing some blogging and i was

yeah

doing some presenting not a lot of it and it was actually a colleague

oh

of mine who at the time said hey you know you're you're putting out some good materials wanted you get your m p and i always thought you know n v p kind of its like for demi gods right

uh

it's not it's not for me i'm not you know i'm not that that caliber and i never thought of it of it and basic lee said no just keep

oh

it up and he introduced me to my my the c s m which is the community manager for

yeah

microsophic for the region m had a couple of calls with the individual and he basically says you know here's a cell fill it out with all your contributions and

oh

he says i want to see a few more by the end of the year on before new it i got my mvp

well

it was it

it's

was yeah

have you always been an n v p in

yeah

canada

yes

because

yeh

this is my experience right is that when i used to go when when we had in person vp summits the canadians

i

were just next level amazing with how they showed you know you're in

yeah

your red and white you had awesome jackets or some merch and it was kind of like the canadians were conceneas the pinnacle of the c s m was just like that as

yes

like the merchant stuff were you in in it when that kind of stuff was happening did you

yes

make it to some n v p summits

yes i went to i think three mvp summits before covid hit so yeah so if you actually look at some of those pictures and you'll see kind of front center i'm there

yeah i

so

actually

yeah the energy is just amazing

i crashed one of the canadian

yeah

photos there was a big

yeah

photos on the staircase and one of the food

oh

locations you know was an after he ve vent

yeah

on microsofcampus and yeah i just

i do

had something similar to what everybody was wearing so i just got in there and so there's a random key in the

oh

in the canadian group photo at one point so so what

yeah

area of technology do you mainly work with you no power platforms kind of a very broad collection of technologies what what have you really owned your skill on what area do you callin do you tend to be most focused on

so of the bar platform i spend most of my time in power auto mate and power apse

h

um

less so with diverse and part virtual agent

mhm

and i would say even within that space i'm focusing very happily on recently on governance what

right

i'm finding is there's a lot of organizations who are rolling out par platform and it's basically say let's turn on the switch and we're gonna have a whole bunch of citizen developers let them have fun let them let them innovate let them simplify and streamline their business process without any thought put behind it

yeah

what they don't realize is that you know cos you know give that example of spider man right with a lot of with great power becomes

uh

great responsibility

yeah

but it literally is

oh

like what what sometimes it fails to realize is that you are equipping your citizen developers with tools

h m

to achieve a lot in a very short amount of time you can delete an

oh

entire share point

h

environment in a very short amount of time right

yep

you can cause some

oh

serious damage if you don't know what you're doing you can create data laws if you're not putting the right guard rails in place there's a lot

yeah

of things that can go wrong if they're not properly governed and so i did a survey on line on linked in

yeah

two months ago just to find out you know who in new organization is actually managing the park platform and so i think it was about fifty per cent or so said that it was it

oh

um there was maybe around twenty or so per cent that said that it was business

h

small percentage said that there was a dedicated

oh

team and what was surprising is that thirty percent of companies there is nobody who is governing the park platform

well

it's

well

free for all and

so

so

what

this is where i just found that

yeah

it's it's

yeah

i don't want say it's an ice area i mean if you were to compare to other things like yeah it's not a sex it's not as exciting as actually building salut tion but there's a need there's

yeah

there's a definite need to to to help these organizations close that gap

yeah so true are you are you using pa as part of that story

r p is also part of that story absolutely referring to the parautomate dustopsolutions

yeah yeah yeah

yes

are you seeing any particular examples do you have any particular examples were seeing p in production use

um well i mean i'm seeing it when it's so i personally see r p as a stop gap if there is

yeah

a published interface

yeah

available

yep

then use

yeah

it it's faster

totally

it's more predictable

ah

you usually get better

ye

better through put you don't have the overhead of setting up another machine or another v m other accounts

oh

right and so either when you're working with a legacy environment

yeah

or if there's certain functional that is lacking i find that that's typically when companies are going to use r p solutions

yeah

um but once once there is a more favorable solution available

oh

through through direct access then that's how companies were typical like to go

absolutely absolutely

ah

so when you think of all the projects that you've been involved in over the years in the microsoft space kind of are there any three that rarely stand out on why

oh wow that's a that's a really loaded question i mean one particular one that we we literally

oh

took a

right

religious institution from the stone age to very serious little transformation was really looking at everything that

ye

to do which is used to be all on paper

uh

there was no moss no

h

computers being used at all to everything that they almost everything that they were doing was now being done online which includes also if somebody wants to become a minister

hm

the whole pathway to all of their studies and their certifications and their reviews and the like everything has

yeah

was all being done

yeah

through

uh

the platform and share point and other autobation too so it was kind of great to see how even in those kind

yeah

of areas technology still as a good

yeah

fit

m when

yep

you when you look

yeah

at are there any others that pop i mind

um other ones i mean not right now maybe if they come back later i'll

yeah

go back to that

is it in the when you look at the type of organizations you have worked

oh

with what's the typical um profile if you like of organizations that come to you to use your service are they you know do they have a massive challenge do they are they wanting to innovate are they are they like fully like a paper based like the one you mentioned or access heavy or

yeah

axel heavy or you know or is it now modernization program what are the reasons are coming to you

so there's actually i would say a few a few categories some of them are sorry i'm just getting a message to your low browser storage

that's all right don't worry about it let's keep going let's see if it stops us

um so i would say one category when we work with financial organizations they are inherently very excelled based and very manual process based

hm

so they come to us to say okay we need to do better we need we have a lot of people where all they do is just copying and pasting data between excells it's time consuming it's air prone it's not the

oh

best way so that's one i would say one category where we're actually working with c f s and financial and

yeah

accounting department or finance departments organizations to to digitize and optimize their business processes um another category that we have our companies who

oh

are using the microsoph stock today they're interested in getting into automation they're not doing it yet so they're they're more

yeah

cautious i would say so for them they would say let's build a governance first before we start

h

building any solutions because want to make sure that we're doing it right

yeah

so for them they would start with you know establishing the governance and establishing the rules of how things are going to be shared who can build how they build how do you approve something

oh

and all of that um then we have another category of company which are more kind of cowboyish which is

you know everybody is using it and then

oh

one day they wake up because some sort of an incident happened an they don't know what's going on and they say can

oh

you help us out and we say sure let me start with

yeah

doing an assessment and they will often say we're not really using the power platform

oh yeah well oh that's right good for refreshment end urejustumso i'm just going to ask you the question again around what's kind of po file um that you're seeing and then i think you're up to about the cowboy one okay and then we'll i'll splice it an impost production is that okay okay that's all right that's all right it should be it should be okay because it's saying it's still uploadis completed on your side okay so so you were looking at profiles of customers there typically and

we have these cowboy companies who just love to you know

yeah

they need to see a new tool nice and shiny they just roll it out and hope everything is going to go well right and

yeah

then after a while they realize something goes wrong or somebody's having an issue

yeah

and then when to start putting

oh

the breaks on and they call us and say oh you know something is happening we don't know maybe you can help success the situation and you know usually we'll do an assessment they say we don't think it's being used very

yeah

much and then they're sometimes shocked to find out just

yeah

how much the proliferation of the platform

yeah

had has taken roots in their company right because because it is easy right

yeah

it's easy to build a solution it's easy to automate and then if they want to they really when you want to put the breaks on and take a step back they realize okay that's a problem now because now organizations departments have become dependent

yeah

so if you want to say stop using it now what do they do they can't really they can't

ah

just say okay

yeah

start it will roll back so that becomes sometimes a bit trickier you have to almost like do do a micro surgery to to pin point exactly

oh

the source of these problems and and then fix them

makes sense makes sense

my

well this has been really

well

interesting talking to you and seeing you experience just to wrap up tell us what impact

yah

achieving n v p has had on your career

um definitely it helps in terms of exposure so it's herds of clients for

oh

example when they hear that you're an m v p they are sometimes more

oh

inclined to listen to your opinion especially

oh

if it's a tie breaker right if one person says one thing and

oh

you say something else they're not exactly your having that v p gives you the advantage of something and not always right you know but it does come on give an advantage as somebody who has more in depth knowledge who is better connected with the microsoff team right so

oh

while as an m v p i cannot tell you certain information that microsoff tells me i can guide you in a certain directions right so as a client

oh

for example as as recent as two years ago i could guide clients who said okay we want to do this you know this big customer solution on skye is like

yeah

maybe you look at teams instead right without calling it out until it was actually announced

yeah

we couldn't really just tell a client gyp is dead

yeah

right so that's just

oh

one simple example but there's other solutions you know you mentioned our pa before so when the the solution was actually purchased by

oh

you know we mention

hm

and integrated into the park platform

to

again it was something that i've known about

yeah

and when clients would say about you know what is microsoff's answer to r p a i would say well you know i'm sure they're working on something

oh

stay tuned um you know don't hedge your bets on the competitors because there may be something there because it is it is part of a full solution of a you know for all the matin solution so having something for our is definitely there um so again without going into the details that

oh

is something that i find is very valuable

yeah

as well as just building a great network of people like for me personally s i love to travel and so actually took my wife to just before ovid took her to portugal for our for her further birthday

yeah

and actually met up with an m

yeah

p and she took us around and showed us certain parts that normal tour i would never see because it's not something that's in the tourist books per se

oh

so for me the social aspect is a really important part it's not about the it's not all about

yeah

the contribution an it's not all about the busne so a lot of it is also personal

and they'll thank you so much for coming on the show

my pleasure