March 31, 2025 • 34 mins
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FULL SHOW NOTES
https://www.microsoftinnovationpodcast.com/670
Join us for a captivating conversation with Rahan Arif, the dynamic CEO and founder of Lowcodera, who pulls back the curtain on his inspiring journey through the tech world. From the early days of building websites in university to navigating the impactful realms of Microsoft technologies and SharePoint, Rahan shares how these experiences paved his path to entrepreneurship. He also reveals how he balances this high-stakes career with the joys of family, food, and travel, and how these personal passions keep him grounded. Learn from his insights on the increasing costs of travel due to inflation and his memorable family trips to Europe and Dubai.
TAKEAWAYS
• Rahan's background in website development and early IT experiences
• Transitioning from SharePoint to a focus on Power Platform
• Identifying gaps in the functionality and appearance of Power Apps
• Launching Low Code Era to address these challenges with PCF components
• Introduction of the generative AI app-building platform for faster development
• The concept of "App in an Hour" and collaborative prototyping
• Revolutionizing how businesses approach and envision app solutions
• The future potential of low-code integrations and democratizing development
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Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mark Smith (00:01):
Welcome to the Power Platform Show.
Thanks for joining me today.
I hope today's guest inspiresand educates you on the
possibilities of the MicrosoftPower Platform.
Now let's get on with the show.
In this episode we're going tobe focusing on low-code and
(00:26):
pro-code and the app experienceof our guest.
Our guest is from London in theUnited Kingdom.
He's the CEO and founder ofLowcodera.
We'll get him to tell us aboutthat story and the setup in a
moment.
You can find links to his bio,social media etc.
In the show notes for thisepisode.
Welcome to the show,R ahan.
Rahan Arif (00:45):
Hey there, Mark.
Thanks for having me.
How are you doing Good to?
Mark Smith (00:48):
have you on Good mate.
Good, I always love to startwith a getting to know you
segment here, and that's food,family and fun.
What do they mean for you whenyou're not doing your day job?
Rahan Arif (01:00):
Nice.
Well, I think it's reallyinteresting.
I think on the family front, Ithink it's something that's
shaped some of my decisionmaking probably wish I was still
a consultant.
But yeah, I think family hasbeen a real inspiration and I
think, as the family's comealong over the last 10 years, I
(01:35):
would say I think, theimportance of that, especially
with any downtime, I think forme it becomes all the more
worthwhile and motivation fordoing things absolutely becomes
clearer.
And I think you valueespecially that time off.
We've had summer holidays herein the UK and just spending a
(02:00):
bit of quality time with thekids.
It's priceless.
And so, yeah, away from all thehustle and bustle of the grind,
I think it's great just to beable to switch off and, to be
fair, the only time I do switchoff is when I'm fully away with
the family somewhere, um, that'snot home.
I think that's yeah that's whatI've learned over the recent
(02:21):
years.
So holidays is the other sortof great hobby, if you want to
call it that for me, becauseit's the only time where I
absolutely can switch off and Imake a thing off absolutely
switching off, and when I'm onholiday, nice, where do you go
mainly?
uh well, that's become morechallenging with three little
ones.
Um, I think we were quiteambitious.
(02:41):
I think we traveled to Europemainly.
We seem to like Spain.
We went to Disneyland in Parisa few months ago.
That was nice.
The kids seem to take a likingto Dubai.
It's this great kind ofplayground for them, full of
water parks and theme parks, andit's pretty easy for us.
(03:05):
We just go rock up and theentertainment takes care of
itself.
So it's one we seem to go onquite a few times.
Mark Smith (03:13):
Interesting, is it reasonably priced in Dubai?
Rahan Arif (03:15):
Mate, it's crazy, I think.
Just like every part of theworld we're seeing inflation.
Some things you'll find arelike great value.
Like you go over there, thingslike water, you find like, wow,
that's, that's cheap gettingaround in an uber or whatever
they call it there locallyamazing value.
You wouldn't dream of using somany ubers here, um, but then
(03:39):
it's like packet of biscuitsthat you might buy for a quid
here in in the uk.
It's like five times the priceover there and that's um crazy.
And I think that's just got todo with with the way certain
imports um work.
But yeah, every time we seem togo we do notice prices going up
and there seems to be a bit ofa bubble there around property,
(04:02):
hotel prices, everything goingup.
But yeah, unfortunately theonly way you have a bit of fun
is by spending.
So yeah it's the way of theworld.
Mark Smith (04:14):
So true, so true.
Tell us about your tech storyand how you've set up your
company, moving from consultantto entrepreneur, as you say, and
I really want to understandthat journey for you.
Rahan Arif (04:28):
Yeah so where do I start?
So you know, coming out of uni,even prior to uni, what feels
like many years ago, probablyaround 25 years ago I already at
the time, even before uni, inmy early days, was I had this
website business on the sidefrom the 90s I was coding
(04:49):
websites and that's how I waskind of earning a living, if you
like to.
While I, while I studied, I wasbuilding websites for companies
, and this is before that wholemarket of website development
became saturated.
I think back those days it wasa really valuable skill, a new
skill, and a lot of businesseswere taking their first steps to
the internet and I think fromthere I already had this kind of
(05:12):
experience of solving problemsfor businesses using technology.
And then when I did start myfirst job after uni, again it
was in that sort of websitedevelopment track.
But it wasn't long before Ifirst got introduced to
Microsoft as a technology stackand I started dabbling for a
(05:33):
very short amount of time withProCode NET development and, if
I'm honest, I didn't reallyenjoy it too much.
It was fascinating for me atthe start, but after a year I
realized this isn't really forme Just the kind of level of
dedication it required to kindof go away and really harness
(05:56):
these skills.
It left me with no time to goand interact with the business
and understand what theirproblems were and what the
challenges were.
And that wasn't me.
I always felt like I was morecomfortable at that sort of
intersection between technologyand business and I moved into
senior management in my careerpretty early.
(06:16):
I think I was about 22 and I washeading up technology for a
market research firm here inLondon and I stumbled across a
technology called SharePoint,which we're all familiar with,
of course, and I kind of fell inlove with it very quickly
because what I realized was thatinstead of coding away and
building hours and hours andweeks and weeks of code which
(06:39):
just got me to a very basicpoint with SharePoint a lot of
the nuts and bolts were alreadythere and it was a case of
layering on solutions to solveproblems very quickly.
And I faced a very interestingdecision quite early on in my
career there where I realizedactually maybe there wasn't too
much of an opportunity for me todevelop those SharePoint skills
(07:02):
which I was falling in lovewith, and so what I ended up
doing was I quit my full-timejob as a technology manager
which is a fair bit of Bob backthen for me, not too far off to
my university career, and Idecided to go on my own and then
, for the first time, become acontractor and in the UK I went
(07:22):
up and down the country for thenext probably 18 months, two
years, just taking on as manySharePoint projects as I could,
just to expand my experiencewith the technology and just get
as much exposure as I could.
And that was great.
It gave me a lot of confidence,a lot of exposure to projects,
and I realized after a littlewhile you know what I wasn't
(07:45):
really getting any of the bigprojects, the enterprise, great
stuff, just doing it on my own.
And so there was a company herein the UK called Agilisys and
it was an opportunity whichemerged to go in and effectively
found a SharePoint practicefrom scratch, and that's what I
did.
For a good few years Iestablished this whole
(08:07):
SharePoint practice and centerof excellence for this
organization and I mean thatgrew to something quite
substantial where we were doingdigital transformation using
SharePoint for a number ofdifferent organizations and at
one point the team that I hadgrew to about 30 or 40 resources
(08:29):
and actually it was at thatinteresting point where
Microsoft were beginning totransition the whole world onto
365 from the whole on-prem andperpetual licensing model, and
so I kind of rode that wholewave into what started off as
SharePoint.
My role became full stack M365.
(08:50):
And so I was doing M365 ledtransformation, which was more
than SharePoint for all theseorganizations and managing these
resources from project managersto architects to developers.
It was very exciting.
Around 2016, we started seeingthe first comings of Power
(09:13):
Platform, even though, of course, it wasn't called Power
Platform, but we started to seethe individual technologies
emerging, the first signs ofPower Apps and power automate,
and I always had this ambitionto with the family coming along
now as well.
At this point, my life as a sortof consultant traveling all
(09:37):
over the place, I think it wasgetting quite exhausting for me
and what I realized was thatthere was a lot of commonality
between the problems that I wassolving for different
organizations and I always feltlike there was an opportunity to
productize.
But unfortunately, one of thethings that I found is, in that
whole consultancy setup, theodds of sort of succeeding in
(10:00):
terms of setting up a productteam or a product led practice
in one of these organizations isquite challenging because the
dynamics of those organizationsare kind of all about time and
materials and they don't reallyhave the structures in place to
support you with that.
So it was only then, around 2016, that I decided to go it on my
(10:22):
own again, and that's where Iset up my own consultancy
practice and I made a decisionbecause I could see the
opportunity at that point tostart only specializing in power
platform or low code relatedstuff, because I could see this
thing was going to take off andit was very much aligned to my
(10:43):
ambitions.
And so ever since that point youcould argue I have been a power
platform consultant, first andforemost, solving all kinds of
business problems using the corepower platform stack of you
know, power apps, power bi,power automate, and and that's
been doing it on a global scale.
(11:05):
And for me, it was only aquestion of when do I go and
span beyond that consultancyworld and start focusing on
product?
It was only about two and ahalf years ago where I
established and started up LowCode Era, and that was after a
stint that I did for a globalproduct technology firm where I
(11:27):
managed to do the end-to-end ofgetting a brand new product to
market, and that was the thingthat gave me the confidence to
finally go and do it on my own.
And so low-code era was bornabout two and a half years ago,
and, as I'm sure I'll tell youmore about it in the course of
your subsequent discussion, it'sall about raising the standard
(11:48):
of low code and getting a higherquality of outcome for everyone
that's involved in this space,particularly in this power
platform arena, which we alllove have come to love.
Mark Smith (11:59):
So, when you say, raising so as a company, what do
you sell?
What is the product, what isthe service that you deliver?
Rahan Arif (12:06):
Yes.
So, having done all these yearsof Power Apps and different
solutions right, one of thethings that led me towards
founding Low Code Era was someof the challenges and obstacles
that I came up against indelivering these solutions for,
particularly around Power Apps.
One thing you'll find with lowcode, compared to pro code, is
(12:27):
that there's a relatively lowceiling in terms of what can be
achieved.
Traditionally, organizationswould hire pro code developers
to solve their digitaltransformation challenges and,
as we know, they're in kind ofshort supply and it's like
finding a good builder they'rereally hard to get hold of, but
when you do find them, you wantto keep them and retaining them
(12:47):
and they just move from job tojob.
Um, now, with low code when,when these platforms started
coming along like power platform, it's the equivalent for me of
like 90s websites.
When they came along, they havethis kind of very distinctive
like look to them and that's howI see kind of low-code,
especially where we've startedin recent years Compared to what
(13:07):
you see, a professionallydeveloped app which we might be
using in our personal lives overthe internet.
What a power app looks like inrelative terms is quite
primitive, and what I found wasworking with clients.
After a little while ofdelivering all kinds of
functional power apps, theywould turn around to me and say,
look, this is great.
(13:27):
I didn't realize we could dothese things so quickly.
But you know what?
Can we make it look a bit lesslike a power app?
I mean, this looks a bit clunky.
We were using things like Xeroor accountancy software, and it
looks like this.
Can you make it look more likethis?
And it's a bit of a challenge.
And the other observation thatI made was, um, that, working in
(13:52):
some of these otherorganizations who began adopting
these low-code tools and weretrying to roll it out, it was
still quite challenging for forthe wider businesses beyond IT
units to start taking on thesepower apps.
They weren't quite comfortableenough to move away from their
Excel spreadsheets to adoptinglow-code.
(14:14):
And today, it's still true, 70%of power apps are still being
built by IT pros in mostorganizations.
And so for me, with everythingthat I learned, how could I
begin to start solving some ofthese challenges?
And I think it was about 2018.
Microsoft announced somethingcalled the power apps component
(14:37):
framework, where they wereopening up this platform to
professional developers to goand basically say you can now
create your own Lego buildingblocks that you can bring into
Power Apps, that you canconstruct your Power Apps with.
And that was an immediate cuefor me to get going with
(14:58):
Locodera, because I saw thatimmediately as a route to hang
on a second, because I saw thatimmediately as a route to hang
on a second If we can make powerapps more powerful and hide
away all of the complexity inwhat can make it more powerful,
we can suddenly solve two corechallenges around power apps,
(15:27):
the two challenges being qualityand functional deficiencies.
Quality in when we talk aboutuser experiences where Power
Apps today, especially if you'rebuilding a Canvas app without
putting in a ton and a ton ofeffort and advanced front-end
skills, you're going to end upwith something really basic.
We constructed, over a veryshort period of time, probably
the most advanced portfolio ofpcf components with a view of
(15:52):
really, when coupled together,you wouldn't even know this is a
power app at the end of it, andso we created these Lego
building blocks.
When you use them in theprocess of building a PowerApp,
you end up with results whichare on par with what you see in
these professionally developedweb apps around the world.
(16:13):
And the way we did it, and someof the patterns which we put
into it through all the R&D anditerations that we went through,
was to build them in such a waywhere these were super easy to
drag and drop on and configurefor end users or people with
low-code development skills.
And the second aspect was tolayer in advanced functionality
(16:37):
to plug gaps.
Like often I would get askedwhen I'm building power apps for
clients you know what?
We just want to be able to dragand drop something into our app
, for whatever reason.
Well, do you know what?
This grid experience is a bitclunky, and so all of these
little gaps or user experiencedeficiencies, another one being
(16:58):
hang on.
A second why is it that everytime I'm building a Power App
and I want to do anythingrelated to analytics, you're
sending me a link to go throughto Power BI or a third-party
dashboard software?
That's creating a break in theuser experience where I'm
getting confused.
And so we built some of themost advanced data visualization
(17:22):
components and some of the mostadvanced UI components a
portfolio for about 25 to 30 ofthese where suddenly we were
unlocking use cases for PowerApps which you just wouldn't
imagine Power Apps could do.
And that's where low-code erahas kind of really caught the
attention of the people thatknow about it, because they're
(17:43):
able to unlock some of these usecases that they otherwise
wouldn't be able to and,moreover, accomplish things in a
lot easier way than otherwisepossible.
And that's where low-code errorstarted from.
We've now gone on a lot furtherwith our AI story, which we'll
get into maybe in a bit.
Mark Smith (18:02):
So okay, this is interesting.
So, from what I take from that,would you say that you're a PCF
company and that you producethose for specific use case
scenarios as well, as I assumeyou're creating a library of
them?
Rahan Arif (18:18):
Yeah.
So this is where we started.
We created a whole library ofthese PCFs and where we've got
to now, mark, is that we'verecently launched our new
generative AI app buildingplatform for Power Platform on
top of this PCF library, and sofor us, it's all about
expediting time to value for ourcustomers, because what we
(18:40):
found along the way was that wehad many a person that spoke to
me that said rahan, do you knowwhat these pcf components?
We didn't even know what theyare.
Yeah, they're amazing, but youknow what?
We're still struggling withbasic power apps and we've got
skill shortages in terms oflow-code developers.
Do you know what?
Can you just build these appsfor us?
(19:02):
And it got me thinking.
You know what my vision here isto be product-led.
I don't really always want tobe relying on consultants to
deliver those outcomes.
How do we get to those outcomesfaster?
And that led to Genera, whichis our latest product.
Now we're using all of thesePCS components and, on top of
that, we've built our ownproprietary AI engine now where,
(19:26):
within five minutes, you can goin and articulate the use case
that you want to do, and this AIapp builder generates
application requirements and youkind of select your
requirements and you're takenthrough a wizard-like process
powered by AI and within fiveminutes you're able to get a
(19:46):
beautiful, highly polished appon the other side, using all of
that advanced PCF goodness bakedinto Power Apps.
And so it's this realaccelerator now where we're able
to see and expedite that value,and that's really the exciting
thing for us now combininggenerative AI with everything
(20:07):
that we've done so far, and sowe're now very much a platform
in our own right as well.
Mark Smith (20:13):
Wow, this is interesting and I quickly just
brought up your website andlooked at the components that
you have, which, as you say,they're visually stunning.
How have?
Because it's quite unique inthe way that you're not a
traditional Microsoft partnerbusiness and that you're not
focusing on the consulting piece.
(20:34):
How do you get customers?
Rahan Arif (20:36):
Great question.
So we've been quite fortunatein that, we would say, as an
organization, we've been quiteproduct and development led up
until now.
You know, 80% of our resourcesare still, if not more, our
development resources and we'vehardly had any massive exposure
(20:57):
or spend on marketing.
But what little we have done,whether it's through socials or
LinkedIn or through the website,has actually resulted in quite
a lot of inbound leads from allparts of the world, which is
quite interesting and that shows, and that's given us quite a
lot of confidence, that there isthis demand and need out there.
(21:19):
People recognize this challengeof yes, we've got power apps.
It's amazing we can do all thiskind of stuff.
We want it to do more, we wantit to look more shiny, we want
to it to be more functional, wewant to unlock outcomes quicker.
So we do get a lot of inboundleads.
Um, we're on app source.
That's helped where we're apart of various microsoft um
(21:41):
programs which also bring us inleads, and away from all of that
, we are kind of on this growthtrajectory.
We're bringing in more peopleinto the business to help drive
some of that growth, andespecially off the back of this
new product, junero, which isvery new, I would say.
As that becomes more mature andpeople realize the potential of
(22:05):
it, we're starting to see somereally unique opportunities open
up, and for us it's not justabout quantity anymore, it's
about quality.
We're working with some amazingpeople all around the world now
who are coming to us withproblems in specific domains,
and working with some of theseguys, we're now creating some
amazing IP together.
Mark Smith (22:28):
You know, when Microsoft first introduced PCF,
my thoughts straight away wentto Telerik and you know, with
your web background, you'llremember back in the day Telerik
had a set of components andtools that could create just
slick interfaces, you know, andyou could drop them in, you
could stitch them into the dataat the back end, configure them
(22:52):
per se and you'd have thesestunning visual controls.
And just looking at yourlookbook that you call it, you
can see these amazing componentsand you've met that kind of
expectation and I always thoughtthat someone would spin up a
business that just was aroundcreating these components that
(23:14):
could be used in interfaces.
Do you see anybody else in thespace, I suppose, because I
haven't come across anybody elsethat's doing this as a business
.
Rahan Arif (23:24):
I saw the gap right, and so the original idea was to
be the teller, if you like, forPower Apps right, and there's a
few other providers out thereand part of the motivation came
from.
Actually, I'd seen this beingdone with other Microsoft
products, for example, power BI.
We see a healthy ecosystem ofthird-party custom visual
(23:45):
developers right, and that'sbecome an established business.
In my career with SharePoint,we've seen all these companies
building web parts andcomponents because, you know, we
see things like the amazing PCFgallery.
(24:09):
But of course that's communitydriven and there's a level at
which you know you can'tnecessarily rely on that if
you're using it in a project,because it's just someone doing
it on the side as a bit of ahobby or whatever right to
enhance their skills.
So that was the immediate gapthat I saw.
I wanted to be the firstentrant into the marketplace to
do this properly, and aroundthat park came a load of
(24:32):
challenges, because we wereworking at the bleeding edge of
pcf, you know, and that involvedworking with product
engineering team at microsoft.
There was points at which theengineering team at microsoft
were like, wow, how are youdoing some of this stuff?
And they were looking at someof our patterns of development
and we were on calls with themand that was amazing, that
(24:53):
experience.
But you know what one thingI've learned is you know, like
any business, you're findingproduct market fit.
Like any business, you'refinding product market fit and
you know, I realized after alittle while just being a
component company wasn't goingto be enough, because,
ultimately, what customersreally care about when you're
(25:17):
talking about, they just wantoutcomes, they want solutions
being delivered right.
And there's a point at which,yes, if your target audience is
just developers, then great, butI think there was so much more
to be done in this space oflow-code in terms of really
(25:39):
democratizing app developmentfurther.
I'm a firm believer in there'sso much more to be done here.
This is these huge backlogswhich exist in these
organizations, and just havingthis confined to it pros isn't
enough.
So I talk to a lot of kind ofsenior leadership teams, it
leaders and people on theco-face, the business, and for
(26:04):
me it's always been a struggleto kind of get them over to to
to power apps and away fromthings like excel, and I've been
highly motivated to kind ofbring those guys along.
And so where we've got to now,mark is, you don't have to be
scared anymore of power apps,power platform, because it can
still be quite daunting.
There's so much functionality inthese platforms and Microsoft's
(26:26):
.
When it's a platform for allkinds of people and you add on
and layer on more features, itbecomes more and more
complicated and so it's notreally easy to pick up, and
that's why we're taking aslightly different approach to
how we're doing things.
You know, we're trying toabstract away all of that
complexity now with ai still gotall the power in the background
(26:48):
, but really the future for usis really bringing the business
users into the game, um,alongside all the traditional it
guys, because I think we're infor a really exciting next few
years and I think that it goesbeyond just what we're seeing in
this kind of low-code space.
I think AI is just going to behaving this impact.
Mark Smith (27:11):
And so I take it that's the motivation, as in
when you say it's an excitingfew years, it's around how
you're going to combine AI withwhat you have been doing in the
business to date.
Rahan Arif (27:22):
AI is going to be this catalyst, this unlocker for
what low code should havealways been.
You know all the, all themetrics where low code's going
to be 65, 70 percent of what isgoing to be doing as far as
application developmentinternally.
But I think those numbers areonly really going to be achieved
now that we're infusing in aiyeah, not just us, microsoft, of
(27:45):
course, and a bunch of othersas well into the mix.
I think this is the bit whichwill really finally democratize
app creation, because it reallydoes allow, if it's done well,
an abstraction layer to becreated which hides some of the
complexity behind things away.
I'll give you some practicaluse cases and some examples of
(28:09):
how we're really seeing itbecoming super powerful, right?
So, using our new generative AIplatform, I was in a workshop a
couple of weeks ago with across-functional section of an
organization.
There was five people in a room, maybe some ops resources, we
had a couple of C-levelresources, some from HR, finance
(28:30):
, marketing, great blend and weeffectively armed them with this
generative AI app buildingplatform and within one hour
they were able to envision allkinds of scenarios for their
business and, in some cases,really kind of obscure apps
(28:51):
which were particular to theirdomain, things we wouldn't even
imagine and it was amazing how,together with the AI, in one
hour they were able to churn out15 or so apps, right.
So we've heard of app in a day,right, we're calling it.
App in an hour is what we callthese sessions, and I mean, half
of them were pants, wererubbish, right, but then there
(29:13):
was like five in there where,wow, we didn't know we could do
this.
And that whole envisioningpiece has been a huge gap in
this power platform space andlocal space in general over
years.
Right, because one of thethere's a lot of research that's
been done in recent years.
One of the blockers to adoptionin in low code is that,
(29:34):
especially in in the enterpriseworld, is when you've got these
bas or people are responsiblefor going around to the business
, what, how can we use powerapps to solve some of these
problems?
That envisioning piece hasalways been quite difficult to
do.
You can kind of talk aboutthings, but when you're able to
show stuff and show it quickly,it's a lot easier.
(29:54):
So that envisioning use casehas been really powerful for us
and there's a couple of otherkind of personas which are
really benefiting from this.
So we've got bas andconsultants right who are
generating prototypes rapidly,working with clients almost in
real time, and the way in whichthat speeds up decision making
(30:17):
over.
Yeah, we should do it this wayversus that way.
It's unheard of compared to howwe've been doing things for the
last, last decade.
And when we talk about othermicrosoft partners, consultants,
consultancies, pre-sales we'refinding a huge revolution
opportunity here as well, right,because just imagine kind of
(30:41):
the level of resource currentlyor that it's taken to develop
prototypes and demos.
You go in okay, what do youwant?
Client.
You go back a couple of weekslater oh, is this what you want?
No, not quite.
I'll go back another couple ofweeks.
What we're finding now withpeople, some of our early
adopters of this, is this is amajor business development
(31:02):
pre-sales tool as well, beingable to show the art of the
possible.
More than that, a prototype isthis.
What you want is getting dealsover the line quicker and, in
fact, more deals as well, and sothere's many ways in which this
has a transformative impact onthis industry is what we're
finding.
Mark Smith (31:21):
This is incredible.
There's not many things thatstun me these days, but just in
your conversation, of course.
I've looked online as we'vediscussed.
I see on the top right cornerof your website you have the
ability to book a session,either as for a partnership or
an overview and demo, and Ihighly recommend people get up
there and go and book something.
(31:42):
I don't normally promote thingson my podcast, but this has
definitely excited me and whatI've seen and I you know my
first thing is man, I need ademo of this because it's uh,
it's pretty sick and amazing andum, and that whole use case
around prototyping, I think is athing that businesses are
expecting more and more, likespeed to visualization.
(32:03):
They don't want you to go awayand build, you know, even a
two-week, three-week demo, buildand then come back and show
them.
They're much more wanting thistactile experience in that
pre-sales.
You know process, and so Ithink Microsoft partners should
go check you out.
You know if you've got a powerplatform, you know practice
(32:25):
inside your business.
Go check this out.
This could be a way to reallytalk with your customers at a
whole and well, your customers,your stakeholders, at a whole
new level.
Rohan, thank you so much forcoming on the show.
Rahan Arif (32:39):
No, my pleasure and really appreciate the chat.
And yeah, please do come online, mahat, and check us out.
It'd be a pleasure to give youa demo.
And yeah, stay in touch, myfriend.
Thank you.
Mark Smith (32:52):
Hey, thanks for listening.
I'm your host businessapplication MVP Mark Smith,
otherwise known as the NZ365 guy.
If there's a guest you'd liketo see on the show, please
message me on LinkedIn.
If you want to be a supporterof the show, please check out
buymeacoffeecom.
Forward slash nz365guy.
Stay safe out there and shootfor the stars.
Welcome to the Power Platform Show.
Thanks for joining me today.
I hope today's guest inspiresand educates you on the
possibilities of the MicrosoftPower Platform.
Now let's get on with the show.
In this episode we're going tobe focusing on low-code and
(00:26):
pro-code and the app experienceof our guest.
Our guest is from London in theUnited Kingdom.
He's the CEO and founder ofLowcodera.
We'll get him to tell us aboutthat story and the setup in a
moment.
You can find links to his bio,social media etc.
In the show notes for thisepisode.
Welcome to the show,R ahan.
Rahan Arif (00:45):
Hey there, Mark.
Thanks for having me.
How are you doing Good to?
Mark Smith (00:48):
have you on Good mate.
Good, I always love to startwith a getting to know you
segment here, and that's food,family and fun.
What do they mean for you whenyou're not doing your day job?
Rahan Arif (01:00):
Nice.
Well, I think it's reallyinteresting.
I think on the family front, Ithink it's something that's
shaped some of my decisionmaking probably wish I was still
a consultant.
But yeah, I think family hasbeen a real inspiration and I
think, as the family's comealong over the last 10 years, I
(01:35):
would say I think, theimportance of that, especially
with any downtime, I think forme it becomes all the more
worthwhile and motivation fordoing things absolutely becomes
clearer.
And I think you valueespecially that time off.
We've had summer holidays herein the UK and just spending a
(02:00):
bit of quality time with thekids.
It's priceless.
And so, yeah, away from all thehustle and bustle of the grind,
I think it's great just to beable to switch off and, to be
fair, the only time I do switchoff is when I'm fully away with
the family somewhere, um, that'snot home.
I think that's yeah that's whatI've learned over the recent
(02:21):
years.
So holidays is the other sortof great hobby, if you want to
call it that for me, becauseit's the only time where I
absolutely can switch off and Imake a thing off absolutely
switching off, and when I'm onholiday, nice, where do you go
mainly?
uh well, that's become morechallenging with three little
ones.
Um, I think we were quiteambitious.
(02:41):
I think we traveled to Europemainly.
We seem to like Spain.
We went to Disneyland in Parisa few months ago.
That was nice.
The kids seem to take a likingto Dubai.
It's this great kind ofplayground for them, full of
water parks and theme parks, andit's pretty easy for us.
(03:05):
We just go rock up and theentertainment takes care of
itself.
So it's one we seem to go onquite a few times.
Mark Smith (03:13):
Interesting, is it reasonably priced in Dubai?
Rahan Arif (03:15):
Mate, it's crazy, I think.
Just like every part of theworld we're seeing inflation.
Some things you'll find arelike great value.
Like you go over there, thingslike water, you find like, wow,
that's, that's cheap gettingaround in an uber or whatever
they call it there locallyamazing value.
You wouldn't dream of using somany ubers here, um, but then
(03:39):
it's like packet of biscuitsthat you might buy for a quid
here in in the uk.
It's like five times the priceover there and that's um crazy.
And I think that's just got todo with with the way certain
imports um work.
But yeah, every time we seem togo we do notice prices going up
and there seems to be a bit ofa bubble there around property,
(04:02):
hotel prices, everything goingup.
But yeah, unfortunately theonly way you have a bit of fun
is by spending.
So yeah it's the way of theworld.
Mark Smith (04:14):
So true, so true.
Tell us about your tech storyand how you've set up your
company, moving from consultantto entrepreneur, as you say, and
I really want to understandthat journey for you.
Rahan Arif (04:28):
Yeah so where do I start?
So you know, coming out of uni,even prior to uni, what feels
like many years ago, probablyaround 25 years ago I already at
the time, even before uni, inmy early days, was I had this
website business on the sidefrom the 90s I was coding
(04:49):
websites and that's how I waskind of earning a living, if you
like to.
While I, while I studied, I wasbuilding websites for companies
, and this is before that wholemarket of website development
became saturated.
I think back those days it wasa really valuable skill, a new
skill, and a lot of businesseswere taking their first steps to
the internet and I think fromthere I already had this kind of
(05:12):
experience of solving problemsfor businesses using technology.
And then when I did start myfirst job after uni, again it
was in that sort of websitedevelopment track.
But it wasn't long before Ifirst got introduced to
Microsoft as a technology stackand I started dabbling for a
(05:33):
very short amount of time withProCode NET development and, if
I'm honest, I didn't reallyenjoy it too much.
It was fascinating for me atthe start, but after a year I
realized this isn't really forme Just the kind of level of
dedication it required to kindof go away and really harness
(05:56):
these skills.
It left me with no time to goand interact with the business
and understand what theirproblems were and what the
challenges were.
And that wasn't me.
I always felt like I was morecomfortable at that sort of
intersection between technologyand business and I moved into
senior management in my careerpretty early.
(06:16):
I think I was about 22 and I washeading up technology for a
market research firm here inLondon and I stumbled across a
technology called SharePoint,which we're all familiar with,
of course, and I kind of fell inlove with it very quickly
because what I realized was thatinstead of coding away and
building hours and hours andweeks and weeks of code which
(06:39):
just got me to a very basicpoint with SharePoint a lot of
the nuts and bolts were alreadythere and it was a case of
layering on solutions to solveproblems very quickly.
And I faced a very interestingdecision quite early on in my
career there where I realizedactually maybe there wasn't too
much of an opportunity for me todevelop those SharePoint skills
(07:02):
which I was falling in lovewith, and so what I ended up
doing was I quit my full-timejob as a technology manager
which is a fair bit of Bob backthen for me, not too far off to
my university career, and Idecided to go on my own and then
, for the first time, become acontractor and in the UK I went
(07:22):
up and down the country for thenext probably 18 months, two
years, just taking on as manySharePoint projects as I could,
just to expand my experiencewith the technology and just get
as much exposure as I could.
And that was great.
It gave me a lot of confidence,a lot of exposure to projects,
and I realized after a littlewhile you know what I wasn't
(07:45):
really getting any of the bigprojects, the enterprise, great
stuff, just doing it on my own.
And so there was a company herein the UK called Agilisys and
it was an opportunity whichemerged to go in and effectively
found a SharePoint practicefrom scratch, and that's what I
did.
For a good few years Iestablished this whole
(08:07):
SharePoint practice and centerof excellence for this
organization and I mean thatgrew to something quite
substantial where we were doingdigital transformation using
SharePoint for a number ofdifferent organizations and at
one point the team that I hadgrew to about 30 or 40 resources
(08:29):
and actually it was at thatinteresting point where
Microsoft were beginning totransition the whole world onto
365 from the whole on-prem andperpetual licensing model, and
so I kind of rode that wholewave into what started off as
SharePoint.
My role became full stack M365.
(08:50):
And so I was doing M365 ledtransformation, which was more
than SharePoint for all theseorganizations and managing these
resources from project managersto architects to developers.
It was very exciting.
Around 2016, we started seeingthe first comings of Power
(09:13):
Platform, even though, of course, it wasn't called Power
Platform, but we started to seethe individual technologies
emerging, the first signs ofPower Apps and power automate,
and I always had this ambitionto with the family coming along
now as well.
At this point, my life as a sortof consultant traveling all
(09:37):
over the place, I think it wasgetting quite exhausting for me
and what I realized was thatthere was a lot of commonality
between the problems that I wassolving for different
organizations and I always feltlike there was an opportunity to
productize.
But unfortunately, one of thethings that I found is, in that
whole consultancy setup, theodds of sort of succeeding in
(10:00):
terms of setting up a productteam or a product led practice
in one of these organizations isquite challenging because the
dynamics of those organizationsare kind of all about time and
materials and they don't reallyhave the structures in place to
support you with that.
So it was only then, around 2016, that I decided to go it on my
(10:22):
own again, and that's where Iset up my own consultancy
practice and I made a decisionbecause I could see the
opportunity at that point tostart only specializing in power
platform or low code relatedstuff, because I could see this
thing was going to take off andit was very much aligned to my
(10:43):
ambitions.
And so ever since that point youcould argue I have been a power
platform consultant, first andforemost, solving all kinds of
business problems using the corepower platform stack of you
know, power apps, power bi,power automate, and and that's
been doing it on a global scale.
(11:05):
And for me, it was only aquestion of when do I go and
span beyond that consultancyworld and start focusing on
product?
It was only about two and ahalf years ago where I
established and started up LowCode Era, and that was after a
stint that I did for a globalproduct technology firm where I
(11:27):
managed to do the end-to-end ofgetting a brand new product to
market, and that was the thingthat gave me the confidence to
finally go and do it on my own.
And so low-code era was bornabout two and a half years ago,
and, as I'm sure I'll tell youmore about it in the course of
your subsequent discussion, it'sall about raising the standard
(11:48):
of low code and getting a higherquality of outcome for everyone
that's involved in this space,particularly in this power
platform arena, which we alllove have come to love.
Mark Smith (11:59):
So, when you say, raising so as a company, what do
you sell?
What is the product, what isthe service that you deliver?
Rahan Arif (12:06):
Yes.
So, having done all these yearsof Power Apps and different
solutions right, one of thethings that led me towards
founding Low Code Era was someof the challenges and obstacles
that I came up against indelivering these solutions for,
particularly around Power Apps.
One thing you'll find with lowcode, compared to pro code, is
(12:27):
that there's a relatively lowceiling in terms of what can be
achieved.
Traditionally, organizationswould hire pro code developers
to solve their digitaltransformation challenges and,
as we know, they're in kind ofshort supply and it's like
finding a good builder they'rereally hard to get hold of, but
when you do find them, you wantto keep them and retaining them
(12:47):
and they just move from job tojob.
Um, now, with low code when,when these platforms started
coming along like power platform, it's the equivalent for me of
like 90s websites.
When they came along, they havethis kind of very distinctive
like look to them and that's howI see kind of low-code,
especially where we've startedin recent years Compared to what
(13:07):
you see, a professionallydeveloped app which we might be
using in our personal lives overthe internet.
What a power app looks like inrelative terms is quite
primitive, and what I found wasworking with clients.
After a little while ofdelivering all kinds of
functional power apps, theywould turn around to me and say,
look, this is great.
(13:27):
I didn't realize we could dothese things so quickly.
But you know what?
Can we make it look a bit lesslike a power app?
I mean, this looks a bit clunky.
We were using things like Xeroor accountancy software, and it
looks like this.
Can you make it look more likethis?
And it's a bit of a challenge.
And the other observation thatI made was, um, that, working in
(13:52):
some of these otherorganizations who began adopting
these low-code tools and weretrying to roll it out, it was
still quite challenging for forthe wider businesses beyond IT
units to start taking on thesepower apps.
They weren't quite comfortableenough to move away from their
Excel spreadsheets to adoptinglow-code.
(14:14):
And today, it's still true, 70%of power apps are still being
built by IT pros in mostorganizations.
And so for me, with everythingthat I learned, how could I
begin to start solving some ofthese challenges?
And I think it was about 2018.
Microsoft announced somethingcalled the power apps component
(14:37):
framework, where they wereopening up this platform to
professional developers to goand basically say you can now
create your own Lego buildingblocks that you can bring into
Power Apps, that you canconstruct your Power Apps with.
And that was an immediate cuefor me to get going with
(14:58):
Locodera, because I saw thatimmediately as a route to hang
on a second, because I saw thatimmediately as a route to hang
on a second If we can make powerapps more powerful and hide
away all of the complexity inwhat can make it more powerful,
we can suddenly solve two corechallenges around power apps,
(15:27):
the two challenges being qualityand functional deficiencies.
Quality in when we talk aboutuser experiences where Power
Apps today, especially if you'rebuilding a Canvas app without
putting in a ton and a ton ofeffort and advanced front-end
skills, you're going to end upwith something really basic.
We constructed, over a veryshort period of time, probably
the most advanced portfolio ofpcf components with a view of
(15:52):
really, when coupled together,you wouldn't even know this is a
power app at the end of it, andso we created these Lego
building blocks.
When you use them in theprocess of building a PowerApp,
you end up with results whichare on par with what you see in
these professionally developedweb apps around the world.
(16:13):
And the way we did it, and someof the patterns which we put
into it through all the R&D anditerations that we went through,
was to build them in such a waywhere these were super easy to
drag and drop on and configurefor end users or people with
low-code development skills.
And the second aspect was tolayer in advanced functionality
(16:37):
to plug gaps.
Like often I would get askedwhen I'm building power apps for
clients you know what?
We just want to be able to dragand drop something into our app
, for whatever reason.
Well, do you know what?
This grid experience is a bitclunky, and so all of these
little gaps or user experiencedeficiencies, another one being
(16:58):
hang on.
A second why is it that everytime I'm building a Power App
and I want to do anythingrelated to analytics, you're
sending me a link to go throughto Power BI or a third-party
dashboard software?
That's creating a break in theuser experience where I'm
getting confused.
And so we built some of themost advanced data visualization
(17:22):
components and some of the mostadvanced UI components a
portfolio for about 25 to 30 ofthese where suddenly we were
unlocking use cases for PowerApps which you just wouldn't
imagine Power Apps could do.
And that's where low-code erahas kind of really caught the
attention of the people thatknow about it, because they're
(17:43):
able to unlock some of these usecases that they otherwise
wouldn't be able to and,moreover, accomplish things in a
lot easier way than otherwisepossible.
And that's where low-code errorstarted from.
We've now gone on a lot furtherwith our AI story, which we'll
get into maybe in a bit.
Mark Smith (18:02):
So okay, this is interesting.
So, from what I take from that,would you say that you're a PCF
company and that you producethose for specific use case
scenarios as well, as I assumeyou're creating a library of
them?
Rahan Arif (18:18):
Yeah.
So this is where we started.
We created a whole library ofthese PCFs and where we've got
to now, mark, is that we'verecently launched our new
generative AI app buildingplatform for Power Platform on
top of this PCF library, and sofor us, it's all about
expediting time to value for ourcustomers, because what we
(18:40):
found along the way was that wehad many a person that spoke to
me that said rahan, do you knowwhat these pcf components?
We didn't even know what theyare.
Yeah, they're amazing, but youknow what?
We're still struggling withbasic power apps and we've got
skill shortages in terms oflow-code developers.
Do you know what?
Can you just build these appsfor us?
(19:02):
And it got me thinking.
You know what my vision here isto be product-led.
I don't really always want tobe relying on consultants to
deliver those outcomes.
How do we get to those outcomesfaster?
And that led to Genera, whichis our latest product.
Now we're using all of thesePCS components and, on top of
that, we've built our ownproprietary AI engine now where,
(19:26):
within five minutes, you can goin and articulate the use case
that you want to do, and this AIapp builder generates
application requirements and youkind of select your
requirements and you're takenthrough a wizard-like process
powered by AI and within fiveminutes you're able to get a
(19:46):
beautiful, highly polished appon the other side, using all of
that advanced PCF goodness bakedinto Power Apps.
And so it's this realaccelerator now where we're able
to see and expedite that value,and that's really the exciting
thing for us now combininggenerative AI with everything
(20:07):
that we've done so far, and sowe're now very much a platform
in our own right as well.
Mark Smith (20:13):
Wow, this is interesting and I quickly just
brought up your website andlooked at the components that
you have, which, as you say,they're visually stunning.
How have?
Because it's quite unique inthe way that you're not a
traditional Microsoft partnerbusiness and that you're not
focusing on the consulting piece.
(20:34):
How do you get customers?
Rahan Arif (20:36):
Great question.
So we've been quite fortunatein that, we would say, as an
organization, we've been quiteproduct and development led up
until now.
You know, 80% of our resourcesare still, if not more, our
development resources and we'vehardly had any massive exposure
(20:57):
or spend on marketing.
But what little we have done,whether it's through socials or
LinkedIn or through the website,has actually resulted in quite
a lot of inbound leads from allparts of the world, which is
quite interesting and that shows, and that's given us quite a
lot of confidence, that there isthis demand and need out there.
(21:19):
People recognize this challengeof yes, we've got power apps.
It's amazing we can do all thiskind of stuff.
We want it to do more, we wantit to look more shiny, we want
to it to be more functional, wewant to unlock outcomes quicker.
So we do get a lot of inboundleads.
Um, we're on app source.
That's helped where we're apart of various microsoft um
(21:41):
programs which also bring us inleads, and away from all of that
, we are kind of on this growthtrajectory.
We're bringing in more peopleinto the business to help drive
some of that growth, andespecially off the back of this
new product, junero, which isvery new, I would say.
As that becomes more mature andpeople realize the potential of
(22:05):
it, we're starting to see somereally unique opportunities open
up, and for us it's not justabout quantity anymore, it's
about quality.
We're working with some amazingpeople all around the world now
who are coming to us withproblems in specific domains,
and working with some of theseguys, we're now creating some
amazing IP together.
Mark Smith (22:28):
You know, when Microsoft first introduced PCF,
my thoughts straight away wentto Telerik and you know, with
your web background, you'llremember back in the day Telerik
had a set of components andtools that could create just
slick interfaces, you know, andyou could drop them in, you
could stitch them into the dataat the back end, configure them
(22:52):
per se and you'd have thesestunning visual controls.
And just looking at yourlookbook that you call it, you
can see these amazing componentsand you've met that kind of
expectation and I always thoughtthat someone would spin up a
business that just was aroundcreating these components that
(23:14):
could be used in interfaces.
Do you see anybody else in thespace, I suppose, because I
haven't come across anybody elsethat's doing this as a business
.
Rahan Arif (23:24):
I saw the gap right, and so the original idea was to
be the teller, if you like, forPower Apps right, and there's a
few other providers out thereand part of the motivation came
from.
Actually, I'd seen this beingdone with other Microsoft
products, for example, power BI.
We see a healthy ecosystem ofthird-party custom visual
(23:45):
developers right, and that'sbecome an established business.
In my career with SharePoint,we've seen all these companies
building web parts andcomponents because, you know, we
see things like the amazing PCFgallery.
(24:09):
But of course that's communitydriven and there's a level at
which you know you can'tnecessarily rely on that if
you're using it in a project,because it's just someone doing
it on the side as a bit of ahobby or whatever right to
enhance their skills.
So that was the immediate gapthat I saw.
I wanted to be the firstentrant into the marketplace to
do this properly, and aroundthat park came a load of
(24:32):
challenges, because we wereworking at the bleeding edge of
pcf, you know, and that involvedworking with product
engineering team at microsoft.
There was points at which theengineering team at microsoft
were like, wow, how are youdoing some of this stuff?
And they were looking at someof our patterns of development
and we were on calls with themand that was amazing, that
(24:53):
experience.
But you know what one thingI've learned is you know, like
any business, you're findingproduct market fit.
Like any business, you'refinding product market fit and
you know, I realized after alittle while just being a
component company wasn't goingto be enough, because,
ultimately, what customersreally care about when you're
(25:17):
talking about, they just wantoutcomes, they want solutions
being delivered right.
And there's a point at which,yes, if your target audience is
just developers, then great, butI think there was so much more
to be done in this space oflow-code in terms of really
(25:39):
democratizing app developmentfurther.
I'm a firm believer in there'sso much more to be done here.
This is these huge backlogswhich exist in these
organizations, and just havingthis confined to it pros isn't
enough.
So I talk to a lot of kind ofsenior leadership teams, it
leaders and people on theco-face, the business, and for
(26:04):
me it's always been a struggleto kind of get them over to to
to power apps and away fromthings like excel, and I've been
highly motivated to kind ofbring those guys along.
And so where we've got to now,mark is, you don't have to be
scared anymore of power apps,power platform, because it can
still be quite daunting.
There's so much functionality inthese platforms and Microsoft's
(26:26):
.
When it's a platform for allkinds of people and you add on
and layer on more features, itbecomes more and more
complicated and so it's notreally easy to pick up, and
that's why we're taking aslightly different approach to
how we're doing things.
You know, we're trying toabstract away all of that
complexity now with ai still gotall the power in the background
(26:48):
, but really the future for usis really bringing the business
users into the game, um,alongside all the traditional it
guys, because I think we're infor a really exciting next few
years and I think that it goesbeyond just what we're seeing in
this kind of low-code space.
I think AI is just going to behaving this impact.
Mark Smith (27:11):
And so I take it that's the motivation, as in
when you say it's an excitingfew years, it's around how
you're going to combine AI withwhat you have been doing in the
business to date.
Rahan Arif (27:22):
AI is going to be this catalyst, this unlocker for
what low code should havealways been.
You know all the, all themetrics where low code's going
to be 65, 70 percent of what isgoing to be doing as far as
application developmentinternally.
But I think those numbers areonly really going to be achieved
now that we're infusing in aiyeah, not just us, microsoft, of
(27:45):
course, and a bunch of othersas well into the mix.
I think this is the bit whichwill really finally democratize
app creation, because it reallydoes allow, if it's done well,
an abstraction layer to becreated which hides some of the
complexity behind things away.
I'll give you some practicaluse cases and some examples of
(28:09):
how we're really seeing itbecoming super powerful, right?
So, using our new generative AIplatform, I was in a workshop a
couple of weeks ago with across-functional section of an
organization.
There was five people in a room, maybe some ops resources, we
had a couple of C-levelresources, some from HR, finance
(28:30):
, marketing, great blend and weeffectively armed them with this
generative AI app buildingplatform and within one hour
they were able to envision allkinds of scenarios for their
business and, in some cases,really kind of obscure apps
(28:51):
which were particular to theirdomain, things we wouldn't even
imagine and it was amazing how,together with the AI, in one
hour they were able to churn out15 or so apps, right.
So we've heard of app in a day,right, we're calling it.
App in an hour is what we callthese sessions, and I mean, half
of them were pants, wererubbish, right, but then there
(29:13):
was like five in there where,wow, we didn't know we could do
this.
And that whole envisioningpiece has been a huge gap in
this power platform space andlocal space in general over
years.
Right, because one of thethere's a lot of research that's
been done in recent years.
One of the blockers to adoptionin in low code is that,
(29:34):
especially in in the enterpriseworld, is when you've got these
bas or people are responsiblefor going around to the business
, what, how can we use powerapps to solve some of these
problems?
That envisioning piece hasalways been quite difficult to
do.
You can kind of talk aboutthings, but when you're able to
show stuff and show it quickly,it's a lot easier.
(29:54):
So that envisioning use casehas been really powerful for us
and there's a couple of otherkind of personas which are
really benefiting from this.
So we've got bas andconsultants right who are
generating prototypes rapidly,working with clients almost in
real time, and the way in whichthat speeds up decision making
(30:17):
over.
Yeah, we should do it this wayversus that way.
It's unheard of compared to howwe've been doing things for the
last, last decade.
And when we talk about othermicrosoft partners, consultants,
consultancies, pre-sales we'refinding a huge revolution
opportunity here as well, right,because just imagine kind of
(30:41):
the level of resource currentlyor that it's taken to develop
prototypes and demos.
You go in okay, what do youwant?
Client.
You go back a couple of weekslater oh, is this what you want?
No, not quite.
I'll go back another couple ofweeks.
What we're finding now withpeople, some of our early
adopters of this, is this is amajor business development
(31:02):
pre-sales tool as well, beingable to show the art of the
possible.
More than that, a prototype isthis.
What you want is getting dealsover the line quicker and, in
fact, more deals as well, and sothere's many ways in which this
has a transformative impact onthis industry is what we're
finding.
Mark Smith (31:21):
This is incredible.
There's not many things thatstun me these days, but just in
your conversation, of course.
I've looked online as we'vediscussed.
I see on the top right cornerof your website you have the
ability to book a session,either as for a partnership or
an overview and demo, and Ihighly recommend people get up
there and go and book something.
(31:42):
I don't normally promote thingson my podcast, but this has
definitely excited me and whatI've seen and I you know my
first thing is man, I need ademo of this because it's uh,
it's pretty sick and amazing andum, and that whole use case
around prototyping, I think is athing that businesses are
expecting more and more, likespeed to visualization.
(32:03):
They don't want you to go awayand build, you know, even a
two-week, three-week demo, buildand then come back and show
them.
They're much more wanting thistactile experience in that
pre-sales.
You know process, and so Ithink Microsoft partners should
go check you out.
You know if you've got a powerplatform, you know practice
(32:25):
inside your business.
Go check this out.
This could be a way to reallytalk with your customers at a
whole and well, your customers,your stakeholders, at a whole
new level.
Rohan, thank you so much forcoming on the show.
Rahan Arif (32:39):
No, my pleasure and really appreciate the chat.
And yeah, please do come online, mahat, and check us out.
It'd be a pleasure to give youa demo.
And yeah, stay in touch, myfriend.
Thank you.
Mark Smith (32:52):
Hey, thanks for listening.
I'm your host businessapplication MVP Mark Smith,
otherwise known as the NZ365 guy.
If there's a guest you'd liketo see on the show, please
message me on LinkedIn.
If you want to be a supporterof the show, please check out
buymeacoffeecom.
Forward slash nz365guy.
Stay safe out there and shootfor the stars.
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