From Code to Low-Code: Community, Best Practices, and the Future of Tech Careers

Mark Smith: 0:19
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Sydney, Australia. He's a founder of XS Logic. He was first awarded as MVP in 2024. He's versatile and dynamic IT professional with vast experience in delivering multi-platform projects and solutions. He's an active community member and loves to give back to the community. You can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Zeeshan. Hi, Mark, Good to have you on the show. Sir, Tell me you're in Sydney, Australia, right? I used to live in Sydney. Is that where you're based?

Zeeshan Saeed: 1:23
Yes, I'm based in Sydney. You're right, nice.

Mark Smith: 1:26
Nice, Do you live on as in? Does your work take you across the bridge much, or under the tunnel?

Zeeshan Saeed: 1:31
Yes, a little bit. Yeah, not too much, but yeah, love Sydney, never been out of Sydney, so I'm basically back from Pakistan. So I've moved to Australia like 10 years back and since then I'm in Sydney. Yeah, so I've loved the fast life.

Mark Smith: 1:56
So, so good, so good. Tell me about food, family and fun. What do they mean to you?

Zeeshan Saeed: 2:00
Yeah, food. So family comes first. So I have two boys small family. One is nine and the other one is six, so you can imagine two boys. Raising two boys is sometimes really hard, fighting for everything. The territorial fights, yeah. And as a family we are a foodie family so we love enjoying different cuisines. So yeah, because we usually eat our traditional dishes at home, traditional dishes at home. But when we dine out we focus and we tend to try different cuisines, different foods, so that we can have different flavors, because Sydney is a multicultural society so it's never too hard to grab what you want.

Mark Smith: 2:59
So true. Tell me about how did you get into tech Cool? Why was that your career path?

Zeeshan Saeed: 3:04
Yes, so my career started 19 years back. So I've started my career as a website designer, like Flash and Macromedia, photoshop. So I've started from that side. And I've landed into NET development background so C, sharp, asp, classic ASP, net. So I've started my career as a pro code developer. I've done my master's in software project management. I know there are two different fields development and project management. So from the educational and academic background I am more focused on project management and scrum delivery lead positions. But from the tech side, I always enjoy loving tech. So I started as a dev. From the ProCode side. I landed up into a ProCode senior solutions architect position. Then I've tried, I think I've thought about like ProCode is. I've done a lot in ProCode right.

Zeeshan Saeed: 4:13
So around nine years back I've moved my paradigm to and focused on the CRM, the low-code side. So yeah, so when I started to be honest with you, when I started with my low-code journey, there was not a lot of motivation. I was getting right. So one of my close friends so one of my close friends, arafat Arafat Nassim, told me and suggested me to join the community. So I've joined the local community, sydney community and the online communities as well. And as soon as I got involved in the community. Oh my God, this changed my life, this boost of my motivation which I was lacking on moving from pro code to low code side. You can imagine like I've been into a few conversations with the pro codes as well that there's a change management piece which they need to move over. But as soon as I joined the community, I've got the support and you can't imagine within six months I've passed all of my certifications one star, two star and the third star one as well. So since then, I'm giving back. So it's more of like I've got from the community. Now it's my time to give it back. So it's more of like I've got from the community. Now it's my time to give it back. So I've started my own online community as well and started giving back. So, slowly and gradually, this thing happens and now I'm leading the Sydney BizApps community as well. Yeah, so that was pretty awesome.

Zeeshan Saeed: 6:02
The community, the change, the tech side, people are willing to help. It's heaven. And when you are in the community, to be honest, you get support, what you need. So even now, if I need some tech assistance and tech advice, I just to do a few calls and I got everything what I need. Same as goes for the other side as well. If someone needs it, yes, I need to jump in it's. It's the thing. The tech community side yeah, so yeah, I've been been into different positions as well. Now I founded my own company and started my own consultancy as well, so yeah, Awesome, awesome.

Mark Smith: 6:48
Tell us about the. Is it a user group in Sydney that you're part of?

Zeeshan Saeed: 6:53
Correct, so it's now called BizApps Connect. Correct, so it's now called BizApps Connect. So it's an in-person event which is held in every first Wednesday of the month in Microsoft's Sydney reactor Yep. So I, with my three fellow MVP members, run this show.

Mark Smith: 7:14
Who are the other MVPs?

Zeeshan Saeed: 7:16
Yeah so, mano Mani I think you've interviewed last time Mano Mani, dharitharan and Abby, which Abby as well, Abby Kong. So Abby Kong is not an MVP yet, but she gives back to the community a lot. Yeah, so we have a group of four maybe in the event yeah, superb, superb.

Mark Smith: 7:39
That sounds epic. What are you seeing from the? Let's talk about the job market in Sydney at this time. Are you seeing? Is it buoyant? Is there lots of opportunity out there? Is it quiet at the moment? Some people say recession. You know is kicked in. What's your feeling of the economy at the moment? Some people say recession. You know is kicked in. What's your, what's your feeling of of the economy at the moment, and particularly for people in? You know either the power platform or dynamics yeah.

Zeeshan Saeed: 8:08
So if I talk about specifically, specifically around power platform and dynamics, the market is always hot. To be honest, yes, the market is cooled down a little bit because december, november and december and january is always hot. To be honest, yes, the market is cooled down a little bit because December, november and December and January is always quiet because people are going on leaves and there's not much hiring at the moment. But, overall, if I see recession didn't hit the dynamics market yet, I can say that there are quite a few jobs out there. So, yes, there are always concerns about jobs out there. So, yes, there are always a concern about, like, okay, permanent jobs or the contracting jobs. They're two different options, but I can see A lot of options are there. But it's a cool time, so I think it should bubble up again in February definitely.

Mark Smith: 8:59
Why did you start your own company and go contracting?

Zeeshan Saeed: 9:03
Okay, really good question. Because I'm involved with Microsoft MVP side and everything. I'm always used to explore more options in the tech side, right, um, because I don't want to start stuck to only sales marketing. I want to explore field service, right, finance and operations, right, so, um. So I started my own consultancy to to tap into the other side as well and basically the thing was to provide more support to the market and learn more.

Zeeshan Saeed: 9:45
Obviously, that's one thing, but what I find in the market which have a gap is there's no, no one's offering a lot of best practices in the power platform. It's governance side and everything. So my aim of my consultancy is like provide best practices because you can adapt power platform, anyone can adapt power platform, adapting it to a right approach, have a right mindset, because when we adapt the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 environment together and implement it together, things can go really, really wild. You can say, because if there's no proper governance, if there's no proper practice in place, you end up doing a lot of things. So I'll give you an example I've seen a lot of implementation of D365 sales. In sales, they're only using accounts and contacts and they're modified and they customize the entire thing. On top of it. They're modified and they customize the entire thing on top of it.

Zeeshan Saeed: 10:55
So my approach is when you adapt a particular application or a particular product, use it with maximum productivity. Needs, right, which comes out of the box, like accounts, contacts, opportunities, everything, for example. If you're not using that, what I see, the customer is wasting a lot of money on the customizations and not getting big bang for the buck. So my aim is to implement a best practice and utilize out-of-the-box feature instead of creating customized options on top of it. So it will benefit both of the parties, right Microsoft using the Microsoft product entirely end-to-end stack, and the customer as well, like they're not paying more and getting maximum benefit out of that particular application itself. Yeah, so right now, I'm more of like focusing on the real-time marketing migration which is happening in Customer Insights Journey and data, which is super cool. The new features in Customer Insights Data which we can tap into external data sources is awesome. So, yeah, I'm currently involved in that particular project. So, yeah, enjoying it Nice, nice.

Mark Smith: 12:15
What's the biggest project you've been on?

Zeeshan Saeed: 12:19
So the biggest project is end-to-end portal implementation of D365 PowerPages portal, including Dynamics 365, sales and marketing, and taking one step more and integrating it to the data warehouse using Data Lake, azure Synapse and Azure Data Factory. Yeah, it was like a three-year project. So we started with a one-line requirement we need to build a portal. So and adapted to that particular situation because in some companies, like the environment, the requirements are not final, not polished. So, yeah, I started with one-liner and then adapted to that particular situation. So in that particular project, I led like around 20 devs solution architect.

Zeeshan Saeed: 13:13
Yeah, so it was a massive, a big one. Yeah, so implemented well and till the data warehousing. So it's a yeah, and it's still going through. That was the first biggest project in Dynamics 365. The other big project which I am still really proud of is an ERP, end-to-end ERP and it's a custom NET application ERP for automotive dealers. So I've started this when I started my career, so I started as a dev on that particular ERP. Then we revamped as I become a solution architect for that particular application, I've revamped the entire ERP and it's running since last 15 years in five different Toyota dealerships.

Mark Smith: 14:12
In Australia, in Pakistan.

Zeeshan Saeed: 14:13
In.

Mark Smith: 14:13
Pakistan In Pakistan. Okay.

Zeeshan Saeed: 14:15
Yeah, so it's still working, still alive. There are this team of five developers actively modifying and upgrading, enhancing that particular application. It's a web-based application, so it has end-to-end implementation of three years dealership Parts, spare parts, service, sales, after sales support as well, including the insurance part as well. So massive application. Yes, really proud of so, because I'm now in the dynamics and power platform world, so my more focus is going on adapting to low-code approach as well in the same particular application. So the application is there. It's 15 years of work. It's there right. So the new modules and the new enhancements, what we are doing, we are introducing Dataverse and a Canvas app to that particular application and plugging them and providing a really interactive situation.

Zeeshan Saeed: 15:19
So if I give you an example AI Builder, power Platform, ai Builder so there's a huge, huge gap in auditing. You can imagine, like dealership, automotive, dealership parts warehouse it's a massive right. So with small bolts, the bigger bolts, nuts and everything, with the bumpers as well, the big car bumpers as well. So it's a nightmare to audit these sort of things manually audit. So what we have done, we have built up and trained the AI builder on top of that. So now parts manager can, or inventory manager can go inside a warehouse, take a snap. It will count all of the items and feedback into the DB so that we can do the auditing really easily. So these kind of cool features AI related really easy to implement. And Power Platform gives us a support of tapping into SQL as well. So no brainer. So yeah, loving that particular feature product, I can say, and I'm really proud of it.

Mark Smith: 16:26
Nice, nice. Let's just go back to the data lake one. What industry was that in?

Zeeshan Saeed: 16:33
So it was for a government client.

Mark Smith: 16:35
Government agency.

Zeeshan Saeed: 16:36
Government agency. Yeah, so we have pushed the data to a data lake and get the reports out of it.

Mark Smith: 16:43
yeah, what was the split to users as in, like, internal users inside the government agency as opposed to external users that might have been a citizen, for example, needing to consume services Like kind of what type of volumes are we talking about?

Zeeshan Saeed: 16:59
Yeah, so internal users. So this is particular to a selected audience. So the user group was not that big. Yes, external user was like around 300 or 400. But the internal users was like more or less like around 200-ish. Yeah, so the volume of the users are not that big, but the data is pretty sensitive. I can say that. Yeah, so we need to be really vigilant on the data and how we're handling the data itself as well.

Mark Smith: 17:32
So, yeah, I've observed in the last year, I suppose, 18 months, maybe more and more consultants that either work for Microsoft partners and or in customers seem to be going freelancing more and more. You know, you've got your experience. You got you know. Seven plus years under your belt uh, why do you think that is happening?

Zeeshan Saeed: 17:54
I think it's a. It's more of like a tech implementation, um, a pushback, I can say that or um, because I've seen few organizations like when we talk about AI, they said no, no, ai, we don't have a policy yet, right. So more of like because tech is going really fast. Then the implementation and the adaptation itself. So I think that's causing a major shift to the freelancing world. Causing a major shift to the freelancing world Because, if I take an example, if person A is doing their permanent job and that particular job he is really, he's a shining star, right. And when he tries to adapt to a particular new technology and if the organization is not ready to implement, he can just learn but he cannot implement. So I think that's the reason that people are going more for learning curves, because people can learn right from videos with tutorials and from the courses as well.

Zeeshan Saeed: 19:04
But the real challenge and real thing comes up when it's about implementation. Right, if you don't have a use case, a live use case, it's hard to implement, it's hard to make an experience out of it. I think yeah. So I've seen a few organizations like turning off co-pilots because they don't have a policy yet, so they need to adapt to a policy in order to adapt to the particular thing. Yeah, so there's a little gap there, but few organizations, as compared to the ones like smaller startups, are getting full benefit of it, which I love to see. Yeah so, yeah, that's what my thinking is like, why people are moving to the freelancing and the consultancy.

Mark Smith: 19:56
Zeeshan, it's been great to have you on the show. Thank you for coming on.

Zeeshan Saeed: 20:00
No worries, thanks, mark.

Mark Smith: 20:14
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application mvp mark smith, otherwise known as the nz365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash. Nz365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time. Thank you.