>> Hello everyone. I'm Dona.
>> I'm Sarah.
>> You absolutely cannot miss this week's episode of
LessCodeMorePower because we have a guest
all the way from Lagos, Nigeria.
>> Foyin. So if anyone doesn't
know this lady, she absolutely rocks.
She is a rock star.
You need to reach out to her and make her your friend right now.
So yeah, I'm so stoked to have her on the show.
>> Stay tuned.
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>> Hi there once again for
another LessCodeMorePower show. I'm Sarah.
>> I'm Dona. Today, we have a special guest
all the way from Lagos, Nigeria; Foyin.
She's joining us on the phone remotely,
eventually we're going to drag her in the studio,
and make her share her story.
>> This lady is amazing.
This is one of the most exciting show to me.
It's so good to hear all about
the amazing work that she's been doing in Nigeria.
>> I had the opportunity to meet her recently.
>> Jealous.
>> The way she's digitally
transformed her company is off the hook.
So Foyin, please, tell us a little bit about you.
What do you do for your day job,
and how did this whole Power Platform thing come about?
>> All right. So thank you once again for having me.
I'm so excited to be on the show,
and I'm sure I'm going to have a great time.
So I had previous experience automating using Info platforms,
and the SharePoint Designer,
but I have background in SharePoint and all.
>> You're at Sterling Bank in the IT department?
>> Yes, I am.
I'm at Sterling Bank in IT.
>> How many branches do you have all over Nigeria?
>> We have about 176 branches.
>> All right. So 176 branches all over Nigeria,
that's not even counting all the ATMs they have.
So she was working in the IT department for this bank,
three years you said?
>> Yes. Three years.
>> Sorry to interrupt.
>> No. I think that's an important context. Go right ahead.
>> Yes. So basically,
a friend told me about the Power Platform,
letting me know that [inaudible] was going to end of life,
and the Power Apps and Power Automate
is next thing for automation.
So that's how I basically started my journey,
and I started it in May last year.
I think that's was when I created
my first application that went into production.
I was so excited when I saw the finished work.
That's basically what started
my passion for Power Apps and the Power Platform.
About me, I love technology.
I have been in tech space for a long time.
It's been a great experience because
most of the time I usually find
out that I'm the only female in the room,
and I refuse to be intimidated with that.
I'm there struggling with the guys and trying to make it work.
So yes, it has been a great journey so far.
>> I love it. So Foyin did something pretty extraordinary.
She is too modest to say so by herself
but because of the Power App that she introduced to Sterling bank,
they are now saving.
They've gone from what,
how many hundreds of hours of work a week,
all the way to five minutes?
All of this paper transaction thing.
Her Power App was really interesting,
where it was all about looking at
the cash deposits that were made from the bank vaults into ATMs.
Someone would write them down in an Excel spreadsheet.
Not kidding. Then someone
would correlate them into big Excel spreadsheet.
>> So two Excel spreadsheets?
>> Yes. Then they would get centers to central pay,
someone would sign this document. Not kidding.
Of course, this would take hundreds of hours a week.
So Foyin said this is stupid.
She probably didn't say this is stupid,
but she said this is not efficient.
So she built a Power App where people just log the transaction.
They just say we're making a transaction now from vault.
>> That's amazing.
>> From vault to ATM. Now, you're
down to reduce all these people's work.
Now, they can actually do intelligent thinking for their day job,
which I found amazing,
the direct cost reduction.
>> That is so cool. But she decided, "You know what?
It's not good enough that I and
my bank or doing this digital transformation thing,
we need to give back to the local community."
So do you want to tell us about
the Nigeria user group that you just launched in December?
>> Which was huge, I heard it was huge.
>> Which was huge, yeah.
>> Yes. It was really huge.
So yes, we had our first meet up in
November and we basically just grew from just me to five people,
and 10, and 15, and then we exploded to 100 plus.
>> A hundred plus so now?
>> Yes. We have a group on
Kaizala in the spirit of loyalty to Microsoft.
We meet virtually every Sunday by 7:00,
just basically for a show and tell.
Member of the community shows us an app and walks us
through how he or she created the application.
Yes. We're going to have another meet up in February.
>> I love that.
>> Yes, it's pretty exciting.
We're just basically supporting each other through
the learning journey of the Power Platform.
>> That is so cool. Then you have this group on Kaizala,
which I thought was very very interesting.
>> Yes.
>> Which is a Microsoft product
that a lot of people in emerging markets use.
I've gotten a chance to use it.
It's very very cool for exactly this, for a large groups.
>> Yes.
>> Constantly communicating, 24 hours a day.
So Foyin, you have to tell us about
the Sterling Bank, Citizen Devs Academy.
She's also created that because she's not busy enough.
>> Any word with Academy?
I'm so interested in because I just think it really creates.
It's almost like a merge between knowledge and community.
>> Right.
>> Because it really creates
this thing that just empowers everyone.
Yeah, I can't wait to hear about this.
>> Yes.
>> Yes. I basically thought
about it like we need to
empower people to do these things themselves.
But we don't want everybody defaulting
to the IT department when they want
to automate a simple process
or they want to create a simple application.
We need to enable people to do stuff themselves.
That was also the vision of our Chief Digital Officer,
Olayinka Oni, and also the human capital team.
So they have this future walk initiative going on now.
There are a couple of academies and I was able to sell this as
in Developer Academy to them also.
So that's added on us an academy.
We are going to run throughout the year,
we have a hundred plus people that have indicated interest.
We basically sent out one e-mail and we
had 800 plus people in less than six hours saying,
"I want to learn this, I want to know how to do this."
>> Eight hundred people?
>> Yes, 800 plus. So we're going
to have multiple streams.
I was starting in January. Yes, this month.
I'm going to kick off this month.
I'll send you pictures.
>> I can't wait to see this
because it's so rare to hear about this.
Because this was a joint project
between Foyin's team in IT and HR.
The human resources group got together and said,
"It's not enough that
only our IT department knows all the new tech,
we need to technically upskill all of our workers."
>> We want to know. What amazing thing I have in an organization
and with three very separate departments come together and say,
"We've seen what amazing stuff you've done.
Share it. We want to know."
>> What an investment and confidence
in the employees in the company to say,
"We want to upskill you, we want to retain you.
We don't want to take away your jobs.
We want to make sure that you're able to do
the next set of jobs that we're all going to have to do,
live in this digital world."
Move away from writing stuff on sheets of
paper to like logging stuff via this app.
>> In multiple spreadsheets.
>> Exactly. I think your Citizen Devs Academy is amazing.
We've been looking at
your curriculum and figuring out how do we
steal that for other companies.
So if you've got a company where you need
a Citizen Devs Academy, reach out to Foyin,
because she knows how to build one and there's now
a hundreds of people in her company
who are going to get tech up-skilled.
I think that's wonderful.
I think you mentioned you already have like three cohorts
lined up because there are so many people who want this.
>> Yes.
>> Wonderful. So we like to end each show
with having you show us something that you think
is interesting that the audience might benefit from.
>> Yeah.
>> Yes, it's okay. So we came around with
the Power Virtual Agent and we were having thoughts around,
I'm using this for our internal customers.
So basically this will be discussing point for statistics.
So you have an issue,
you talk to the boss and this
is going to increase our internal customer satisfaction,
because they do not always have to wait for someone to
respond to their e-mails before they get a response,
they can get a response real time.
So I built this Virtual Agents demo,
added my topic here,
it speaks to official documents.
So if I say, ''Hi''.
>> I love Power Virtual Agents.
>> This is so cool.
>> It's amazing, really good.
So powerful and it can be used in so many scenarios.
>> That's right.
>> Yes. So yes.
>> Well, so I can just ask questions.
Essentially, it's about having this available in the organization
and really just being able to help
how and give them some pointers on what to do.
>> Yes. So basic onset of the process.
So all the regular common questions that people ask
us everyday in technology and we are
repeating the same answers everyday,
you are giving the same access to different people.
So what we want to do, is we want to pull all of
those questions and all of those answers and then
build them into the Virtual Agents
and then just basically launch out.
So if you have questions,
ask the both and get immediate answers to them.
So we then have enough of space to attend
to real core technical issues and technical initiatives.
>> I loved that. That is so-cool, this is new.
This did not exist when I went to visit Foyin.
So how long did it take you
to learn to do this and to actually make the spot?
>> That's a good question.
>> Actually took me less than two hours.
>> Wow.
>> Less than two hours.
>> So is anyone got two hours in
a day or even a week? You can make a buck.
>> Yes, you can make a buck.
>> Very quickly.
>> It's [inaudible] impossible, and a very useful buck too.
>> I mean, I think what I love
about it the most is on a bet for you,
and you can relate to this sense
and probably see this in your organization,
is that, it just makes people happier.
One of the things that I really hate is trying to
dig around for finding out how to do stuff.
No one has time for that. No one's got time for that stuff.
>> That's right.
>> Everyone is got stuff that they would
rather be doing even if they do have time for that.
What I love is just that I can just go there and I can just ask,
"Hey, how do I do this?"
It just makes up transaction easier
because it's one place for lots of different things.
It's that how the organization has taken it,
how your company's taken it?
>> Yes. That's the plan to just one stop for
all of your technical related questions
and you get immediate answers to them.
So anything that is complex will come to us to give answers to.
So that's the plan.
We're also looking at the RPE.
>> Oh, cool.
>> Also. Yes. We mentioned the fact that we wanted
to check out the RPE for some of our processes.
Yes. So we started the conversation with [inaudible] ,
was going to have a demo next week
where he's going to show us how it works.
We going to try and match that into our requirement,
and basically hopefully do a PAC from this quarter.
>> That will be insane.
Once you have that working,
you're definitely coming back on the show.
>> Yeah. We want to see how this app grows.
It's really funny that we've seen on
the show lots of different demos and lots of different scenarios,
but what I found the most is that once someone gets
into the power platform, it's so snowballs.
>> That's right.
>> So they see this PVA,
and I know that wasn't your first bit into,
your first entry point.
But even if it was, and it will be for a lot of
people suddenly now you've gone to RPA,
suddenly you're going to be going to lots of other things.
I think that's where part of the power is.
>> Yeah. Because there's so many things that
you can do stuff with once you discover,
oh, this actually easy, I can use
the same data to build something totally else.
>> Exactly.
>> Which I love. All right, Foyin.
So before you leave us,
what is a call to action you have for the audience?
What is something you'd love for everyone to go and do today?
>> So I have a couple of call to actions.
>> I love it.
>> [inaudible]
>> Homework.
>> So the first thing is get into a community and be active.
I have had an amazing experience since we
started the community here in Nigeria,
and we got connected to the global community.
It's been wonderful.
Everyone's helping you and
you also have the opportunity to help others.
So get committed, you lookup community
today and you can start up the Citizen Developer
also in your organization because it's not enough for you to
know everything and then you're the one solving all the problems,
to not to enable each and every employee to be able
to solve their own problems by themselves.
Then finally, I want encourage every female out there.
This is really cool.
The Power Platform is cool.
It's not complex at all.
So it's something that we
should stop learning because we have very few.
I mean, for community,
I have less than 20 females out of the 100 plus.
So I really want the ladies out there to
get on Power Platform and become power girls.
>> I love it.
>> That's cool.
>> Become power girls.
>> Power girls.
>> Go power girls.
>> Yeah. That's awesome. I mean, it's so important.
It's so accessible to everyone.
Those are really two amazing cool factions.
>> I love it. Thank you so much for being here with us Foyin.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> We'll see you on West Africa Power Platform tour.
>> Yes. So we thank you for tuning in to the show.
I hope this was an amazing episode.
>> Yes.
>> There's some amazing call to actions and amazing content there.
So stay tuned.
>> Less code.
>> More power.
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