Be More Penny-wise with Actionable Insights

At the moment I’m reading IT by Steven King. I know Stephen King isn’t very highbrow, but his stories are AMAZING. IT is also a motion picture, as are many Stephen King books; like Stand by Me (which isn’t the name of the book,) and the two books about prison which were exactly the same.

This blog will hopefully begin a series of podcasts discussing “what if?” Microsoft product scenarios in 80s movies.

What if The Ghostbusters Had Power Virtual Agents (no Janine Melnitz ?)

What if Gordan Gekko had Power Bi?

What if The Breakfast Club had an Xbox connected to John Madden NFL? (How cool would Emilio Estevez look in his sports jacket and a HoloLens?)

As I said, I wanted to go a bit more sophisticated and talk “Defeating Nihilism with Data Insights and Dostoevsky,” or “Allen Ginsberg talks Using Voice Recognition to Write Howl,” but it’s not as fun, is it? ??

For those who don’t know IT, it’s about this clown called Pennywise who goes round wreaking havoc in the drains and sewers of the fictional town of Derry, Maine. Basically, he eats children after scaring the shit out of them. He scares them by appearing as the target's worst psychological fear.

IT is a shape-shifting creature known as a Glamour. IT can morph into any other human animal, nonhuman animal or object (including combinations thereof). This ability is useful for appearing as the target's loved ones, or friends, to manipulate them or lure them into a trap. A lot of the kids get tricked by IT pretending to be their parents and stuff… it’s an emotional nightmare.

Disclaimer: because IT is a shapeshifter, there aren’t currently any Microsoft products I’m aware of that can detect if a person has been possessed by a demon so, to be honest, this blog could be a totally moot point.

In Microsoft’s words: “Engagement insights in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights enables individual and holistic interactive analytics over web, mobile, and connected products customer?journey touchpoints. Engagement insights expands to multichannel analytics over?data from other channels for richer customer?analytics, downstream actions, and?optimizations.” ?

What does this mean? In short, you can gather data externally with Customer Insight Connectors, manage that data in Customer Insight’s lovely UI, manipulate that data and build reports in Power Bi and present it back, full of rich, intuitive information, to your customer(s) through emails, applications or web portals.

Now, how would we defeat Pennywise today if we could sell Microsoft Dynamics and Power Platform to the Derry Police department??

First off- by using Dynamics and Power Platform’s web analytics, measuring data location on apps and on forums where the clown is mentioned, through news articles mentioning murder and death (sorry, I’ll try to keep it lighter ??) and following hashtags on twitter and social media through social listening tools (not available directly from Microsoft anymore but plenty of good IP on AppSource.)

So, to cut a long story short (take note Stephen King) the police now have all this data.

“Right, guys, there's been another suspicious killing down by the river. We have the exact location; we’ve scoured the web for search analytics and hashtags; so, what can we do now?”

“Jesus Christ!!! It says on Twitter that people are dying!”

“Who is he after next?”

“Ok, first plan: Let’s get some Police out around the bloody drains and sewers…All day and all night!!!” ?

“Actually Chief, we’ve looked on Power Bi and we can see that the people are only getting killed at night. The data on the Power BI dashboards says at night only, so guess what? We can save loads of police resource and money now, because we know we only have to send officers out for patrol at night.”

“We’re really being PENNY-WISE, now, aren’t we?”

“SHUT UP MALCOLM!”

This was set in the 80s. Customer Data Insights weren’t even out then, not even on Amstrad. Computers weren’t even out then, I don't think…. Maybe? nearly? They had Ataris and Commodores but you’re not gonna catch a murderous clown while playing Frogger, are you?

Another thing the Derry Police could have done, using AI Builder to send Customer Insights (in this case, public information) through Power Automate to a Power App (Uber ITS, get it?) or Power Automate to a Mailbox, is send personalised content to the townspeople of Derry- to not just increase their engagement with the public but provide real-time updates while building trusting relationships. Feedback looping, hey?

In the book, it’s alluded to that the police go door-stopping. With Power Platform, you wouldn’t have to. As soon as the reports come in you can get them sent, via Power Automate, directly to your mailbox contacts- either that or you can set the emails up automatically as a draft, so you can employ more of a personalised touch to certain contacts.

e.g., “Dear Mrs Uris. Take a look at these Killer Clown stats. If Stanley doesn’t walk home with his pals from school tonight, then he may die!”

You could even maybe build a Power Apps Portal to gather witness statements and present the public with FAQs. ?

I won’t go into much more detail but, if the Derry Police department had Actionable Insights and Power Platform, they’d have been able to stop PennyWise by about Page 350- saving us all a bit of time to read something more intellectual like, ummmmm, War and Peace (or, as I like to call it Tol Stoyry)