So welcome everyone. Good morning from Spain. My name is Maria B and it's such a pleasure to participate in this global conference, this Woman Tech Global Conference.I'm really thankful to be part of this event and the chance that I have today with you to share my knowledge and to have this small talk in order to understand what does it mean? Democratic Technology and how we approach that using the law code before to continue, I would really like uh to introduce myself. So as I said, I come from Spain, I'm currently based in Spain and I work as a business application, technical architect into the international KPMG uh specialist team. So I define myself as a really passionate uh of bringing technology to organizations transversely transforming the proper organization by implementing complex business solutions. So all trying to build and to set up complex solutions based directly on um Microsoft products. So you can find me on social media, Marian Beam. I also have a technical blog unfortunately is in Spanish and I also a member of the Woman for Technical Talks. That's an Spanish initiative where we are mentoring young and not so young.

Woman that have a technical background, we encourage them to, to take their first steps doing conferences and we mentor them in order to, to yeah, to encourage them um to be part of a of a technical event as well. And last this year, I've been awarded with the most valuable professional by Microsoft in business application in the business application category. And that's a really um big um big uh award in terms of expertise and also in terms of uh knowledge. So now I'm moving smoothly to to the topic itself and to introduce the topic, I would like to present some numbers that we will bring us closer to the context itself. So the first number, it is 35% and this is the total amount of people working in the US companies that are millennial as I am. So this number is not so high at the moment, but in the next five years, it will become the 65% of the total employees. So why these millennial people are so important because they are really and workers, they expect to have technology very close to them because they self develop and they grow up with the technology, they cannot understand um how a successful organization does not adopt the technology in.

That's the key because these different generations are bringing the change um into each organization. Um In contrast with this first number, we have um a very high number, but it's not uh good enough and I wouldn't say it's not good at all. And is the more than the 85% of the current organizations worldwide, they are still facing difficulties analyzing internal data. What does, what does it mean? It means that they don't have neither the necessary ar but also they don't have the, the experts, the technical profiles that are necessary in order to analyze this data. So they know that this is uh a current challenge. They know that they have to move on that direction. They know that the market is moved by the data and you need to analyze your current state. The problem is that they are facing difficulties. And the number link to the third number, our third number, it was introduced by Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft during the last uh Microsoft inspire. And currently there are more than 1 million demanded developers worldwide. So it means that many organizations are ready to adopt, the technology are ready to transform the processes, but we need people. And what does it mean should the people be directly uh taken from the universities?

It means that we need exactly 1 million front end developers back end developers and data analytics. No, it means that we have a really big gap of people in order to continue with the digital transformation of our tech of our organizations. And that's um a really huge demand and we can't forget this number at all. So these third numbers are just uh an example, everything is currently working in our world and how everything is expecting and depending of the technology itself and because the market, the society is developing by leaps and bounds. And the latest COVID situation has shown that we need our organizations to adapt quickly to the change. Um This is where I'm bringing the concept of democratization of technology, what does it mean? So technology is no longer a vertical. So it is not department in our organization is neither horizontal, is not an it team supporting us every day. The technology is something transversal. So it is a need, an internal need of each profile of each department of each project in order to quickly adopt and quickly our processes efficient, more um productive and low effort, low cost prepare.

So the democratization of technology is what allows the societies, our employees to have the same opportunities in terms of usage and in terms of benefits. So we have to make the technology accessible and make it ready to use. And what I'm saying is not that you are already using your smartphone. And because uh you're working from home or from an office, you are working with a laptop technology is more than that technology is bringing everything that could improve our processes to something tangible, to something real.

So we need somehow to ensure that everyone is adopting the technology. And I really love that because adoption it means empowering. So coming back to the previous these million developers worldwide needed, does it mean that I have to wait till someone show me how I can transform my process that someone's in order to transform my own process? No, I need somehow to be empowered to have the chance and the need and the tools to transform by myself. Everything of my daily life that was democratization is about. So we need to create internal communities within our organization. We need to leave uh workshops, we need to encourage our users and even reward these users who have decided to step out from the comfort zone. So somehow is more than just bringing the technology if you just enable the technology on your organization, um how you ensure that using it and everyone is adopting it. And the most important question is how you efficiency efficiently, sorry achieve this democratization. And I think that that's the biggest challenge because everyone knows that data is important. Everyone knows that um this COVID situation show us um how far away of our main goals we were but how we bring that. So how we empower our users? OK.

We, we understood that that's, that's really important but how we do that we can achieve it through the low code. What is low code, low code is bringing technology closer to the society is to show that it's not necessary that you have a technical expertise, a technical background to start transforming an entire process to start developing your own applications, to start automating your own processes is an employee worldwide that if you have a need, you can transform it.

You don't have to wait for one of one of the 1 million developers um needed or demanded worldwide. You can do it by your own. But how you achieve that. So how a person that is not familiar enough with the technology in terms of coding, in terms of uh designing, how you achieve that. And that's the biggest revolution that low code is bringing to us. Even if I'm working with Microsoft technologies, that is not something um related only to Microsoft. So you you find low code everywhere. But um I think that Microsoft is one of the leading leading organizations here. So low code is about acceleration is about to boost up your processes.

So if you know that something could be more efficiency just for your own. And the most important thing is about development without any line of code that you could create your own dashboards that you could create your own applications, that you could automate everything without knowing how a database is working, how um a data model is created or even if you have no design skills at all.

So the low code is to make someone capable to transform and to perform advanced data analytics, to perform advanced solution um development to without having to worry about performance resources cost and all of these things that um normally we the technical profiles we have to deal with.

So that's what low code is about and also you don't experience. So my main goal and what I do on my deal, uh my daily life, um I'm not only working as a technical architect, I also help people to understand how the law code is working because there are millions of people, we are already more than 35 million of people working with the power.

That's the next topic I'm going to introduce. And because there are many people that as for example, Excel, you have no clue about the formulas you get used to because it's not so complex. You don't have to think about how long it takes to calculate something on Excel or you don't need to understand if um the table that you have created on Excel or on your access database is um yeah, is a well performed database. That's the same approach on low code, but in a bigger approach. So in a bigger approach, if we talk about data lake analytics, if we talk about huge automat stations and even robotic process automation and just f uh finishing my, my talk, I would like to introduce the Microsoft approach of the low code and this is the power platform. Power platform is not something new. It's something that is coming from a really um deep transformation of the Microsoft Business Solutions on the cloud. So these four services are bringing the democratization of to any organization. So if you feel comfortable with Microsoft teams, if you feel that you can manage some documents on sharepoint, I really promise to you that these four services won't have a secret for you. The first one is power automate.

So it is an easy process automation and it includes also for robotic process automation. So we have um 400 connections. And that means Sap that means Google, that means any service on the cloud. And you can even create your own custom connectors using API S. The second one is power apps. Um Power app has two approaches. You have a really canvas app where you can build everything from scratch. So any application that is within your imagination can be create using power apps without any line of code. If you feel comfortable with powerpoint, that is something really similar. And also we have really huge. Um The second approach of power apps, it is um they are the the model driven apps that you can really build um amazing um department applications using just um a couple of of, of clicks. Then we have Power Virtual a Power Virtual A um help us to improving the communication and also the external communication and this is about ready to use chatbots. So if you have no clue what is a chatbot and how a chatbot is working. Um Don't worry because Power Virtual a has a really ready to use um interface that honestly um I must say that from the four. So from it is the the the easiest one to use and last but not least.

And I think that this is the the most one it is power bi so you can create professional dashboards using uh really complex data analytics without any clue what is happening on behind. Of course, all these four solutions can be used by tech people in order to create um huge and complex solutions. So if you are a data analytic uh or a data engineer, you know that Power Bi I can be really connected with our analytics with your data lake storage and really uh run amazing analytics but even from a non tech user that can be achieved as well. And yeah, I think that we we are running our last five minutes. Um If you have any question, please just feel free to, to ask me. Um you can connect with me, you can find me on social media as well. Um You, if you have any question related with power platform, I would be more than than happy to to solve that. And one thing I have to say and that's uh one personal opinion based on my experience is that the first time that you present power platform in the low code, it seems like a promised dream. So something that that looks really great.

Um But you think that perhaps on the background will be really difficult to use. And I must say that the most important thing process because as I say, the democratization doesn't work if you don't bring the current and the correct process to that democratization, if you just deploy some data storages, if you just deploy technology in your organization, but you don't help the people uh to make them own, then will be really difficult to adopt it.

And for sure, um it won't meet the, the initial requirements or the initial vision at all. So that was my, my explanation. Um Also the last conclusion and the last opinion from the, from this vision of the low code. Also we we had some encountering because the tech people think that the low code is just a way to substitute a technical profile and that's nothing more than bringing the technology closer to the. And also um I think that is a really good way to um have low efforts and low and low cost if you are developing your first um MBP or, or your first POC, so you are bringing the power to your users to create something by their own. And if the solution becomes something really complex, then you can have the technical profile who is analyzing all of the architecture on behind. Because everything from the power platform is connected to Microsoft 365. If you are familiar with, I'm talking about teams, I'm talking about onedrive.

I'm talking about sharepoint, but also I'm talking about outlook in Asia. So the power platform itself can be extend. So at the end, what we are having is a platform where everyone can work together and everyone can transform together. Thank you so much for your, I will be more than happy to answer any question and please feel free to contact me. Enjoy The Woman Tech Global Conference as I am doing. Um I must say that um It's been awesome so far. So keep safe and enjoy it. Thank you.