What does a truly agile office look like?
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat official account “GGV Jiyuan Capital” (ID: GGVCapital), author : GGV Jiyuan Capital.
It is said that the three classic dilemmas in the workplace are Party A’s death urge, boss PUA, and a lot of forms.
I believe that there is such a folder in the computer of every person working overtime late at night:
The same excel form needs to be modified N times, sent N+1 times, and has to be modified countless times in accordance with the principle of confidentiality, and finally changed into different versions suitable for sending to different levels, different departments, and different objects to hide sensitive data And the effect of information.
20-year-old He Junxuan felt that this kind of work was a bit clumsy and determined to solve this problem with codeless data reports. Treelab came into being.
What does a truly agile office look like? Here, we will explore together with the “Houlang” CEO and Mai Caiyao, senior investment manager of GGV.
He Junxuan:
Hello listeners of “Entrepreneurship Insider”, my name is Ricky, the CEO of Treelab. I am also considered as my second entrepreneurial venture. I was working on a track project when I was in high school. I took money from the Chinese government and applied for it. patent. We did this project because we saw that the cost of domestic logistics was very high. At that time, we set up a rail system to help solve this urban planning system. Then I went to Berkeley to study industrial engineering.
I returned to China one summer vacation to help the family business designI created a production management system. During the process, I found that users are very uncomfortable whether they use SAP or the software I designed. They still return to Excel and reports. This also means that user-defined requirements are very high. If you force a user to use a relatively vertical software, the cost of getting started is very high. So I decided to create a flexible platform that can be combined with the traditional ERP or MES architecture software in the domestic and Asian markets. Lily:
Excel is not easy to use. Customized software like Kingdee and UFIDA has been in China for many years. Why can’t it solve the problem? He Junxuan:
This is a very complicated problem. I personally like to say that Excel is the most commonly used database in the world. It is because Excel is more flexible than any other software, but its flexibility also causes it to have no process. Or architecture, so many companies may use Excel before, and now they may use automated software to better standardize their internal processes, but there is also a bottleneck in the process. A company may use many, many different software, and you may be financial Kingdee will be used and UFIDA will be used for office automation, so your data will be in many different places.
Suppose you need to make a special financial statement, but Kingdee does not have this function, what should you do? You have to export it from Kingdee and do the summary by yourself in Excel. If we draw an axis, the left side is flexibility, and the right side is structural. The company must make a choice. If he wants to have a structure and he wants a process, he will lack the flexibility of Excel, but if he chooses With flexibility, the management level will be more chaotic.
Microsoft has long seen that this market is flawed and that we want a program that can combine the flexibility and architecture of Excel. So there is a software Microsoft Access in the United States, which is like a low-code database. , But it has not been so successful outside Europe and the United States, because it has a very high technical content for users, and it is not possible to set up a database just by entering.
So we discovered why there are so many different customized ERP companies in China, because they want to productize one one passUse and flexibleThe software is a very difficult problem, whether it is from a user’s UI and UX perspective, or from a technical perspective, it is very difficult. This leads to the fact that there is no very good software to solve this problem in the middle of the market now. Or companies choose flexibility and use Excel and email to communicate, or they are like different vertical SaaS software. , Or a customized ERP system, giving up some flexibility. Lily:
Cai Yao, what is a data report without code? What is its current market and application prospects? Mai Caiyao:
First of all, let me mention that Excel is difficult to use. In fact, I think Excel is very easy to use. We have invested in many enterprise service companies, and many of them are using Excel, because the system they used before is more difficult to use. When they want to change some processes or logic, they cannot change it in the system. At this time, they will export the data and process it in Excel. The ease of use for them may not be the kind of interface you mentioned that the speed of operation is relatively fast. It is easy to use because it is flexible and allows people to achieve its effects the fastest. We also use Excel a lot in our work. If there is a software that compiles the financial information of a company for us, we will use a data tool like Wonder, which also has some data processing functions, but it is very rigid. At this time, if I want to compare the financial data of different companies very quickly, I will import the data into Excel for comparison.
But as a business management, if everyone is using their own Excel for management, Excel version management, collaborative management, automatic data update and storage, these aspects are quite big Problem, so Excel is still a product of personal tools.
We went to research some companies and found that they had thousands of Excel reports inside. In the past, when the CEO or manager went to any department to view the data, he would send an email or WeChat to the person in that department, saying that you would give me the data, and then the person would email Excel to the leader to see. Whether this data is updated or not, whether it is accurate or not, the leader does not necessarily know. At this time, there will be a lot of communication and collaboration problems.
The no-code data report made by Treelab is compatible with the traceability and real-time of the data in the database, but at the same time it is flexible. The effect it can achieve is that as a leader, he can see all the data from an interface in real time, but the person who makes the report can change any data or format at any time, and he can automatically change it in the database, so that he can At the same time to achieve flexibility and real-time, it is the combination of Excel and database. He Junxuan:
Yes, through our codeless datagramTables can standardize the workflow. It doesn’t mean that I need to export to Excel every time. You can display the data of different systems on this platform. In this way, the low-level users do not need to do repetitive work when they come into contact with the software, and the high-level personnel can also see the data in real time, without having to ask the low-level personnel for the data every time. Lily:
After you click in, you can see the data of other departments. This data can be added and multiplied in real time for various linkages. Does this involve some data security issues? He Junxuan:
This is a very good question. The biggest difference between us and Excel is in terms of security and permissions. It is difficult for Excel to set permissions. If you send this file, you give it all permissions. And because we are a real-time database, each table can create different pages, set different permissions, and share it with different people in the enterprise. You can set different permissions for each page. So you can say that this is a page for the manager, who can see all the data and change the data structure. For an entry person, you can share a page of the entry person, it may not be able to change the structure of the data, but he can view and record data in it, so everyone can have different permissions and different workflows . Lily:
Let me ask another practical question. What industry or enterprise size do you think needs the most codeless data report? He Junxuan:
Any company will have this demand, but we are now looking for more medium and large companies at this stage. Their customization requirements may be relatively high, and their processes require more of this type of software. Do this. So now the companies we are mainly facing are in the supply chain industry, because they used to rely heavily on reports for workflow, because traditional ERP software is very inflexible, and eventually they will export a lot of ERP data to Excel.
For example, there are several apparel supply chain companies using our software. In the past, customers would send an Excel or PDF to this factory. This may be a contract or information about an order. He will ask many people to record the data into its ERP system. ERP will realize part of the company’s functions, such as the optimization of the first-level production of procurement and order management, but the business needs to do financial summary, or other For some management, he still has to export it from ERP into Excel. After using our software, it does not need to have two data sources in ERP and Excel, it can realize these two functions in one software. So after the order data comes in, We have a function that can do the data conversion, we can directly import the PDF and Excel data into our system, and start to complete the financial summary and order processing in this systemmanagement. Mai Caiyao:
Just now Ricky said that Treelab products can be used in all scenarios. This is also one of our optimistic points about Treelab products. For example, for example, I usually manage the projects I watch every day, or if I read the news and think that there is a project that is good, I want to write it down. In the past, I might use an Excel to manage it myself. We and other colleagues I will conduct frequent project exchanges, and I will show him what projects I am focusing on recently. At this time, I just passed Excel to him, saying that the project I recently looked at was this thing.
In this scenario, I can use Treelab’s products. First, I can put all company-related BP, news, and even meeting minutes into Treelab and put them in the same line. Second, I can share with my colleagues in real time, and they can see in real time what projects I’m watching recently, and I can set some permissions, for example, my intern can be responsible for adding projects, and maybe some projects he Will not see. If I use Treelab products, I can add more functions to collaborate and store more things. This is a very small scene of my own.
When we invested in Treelab, the research found that whether it is HR recruiting people to manage resumes, sales people to manage examples, or financial management reimbursement, if you used Excel to do these things in the past, you can use it. Go to Treelab. One day we hope to see that not only China, but also a certain percentage of people from all walks of life in the world are using Treelab products. It’s just that the first step is to build some large companies, because their usage is heavier, they can give more feedback, and then make Treelab’s products iterate better. Lily:
Yes, when it comes to personal use, I immediately have a lot of scenes in my mind. For example, we have a baby-caring team in my family. If I also have the Treelab tool, I might say that the baby-caring team has three early education classes this morning. At the same time, I can keep track of what content should be in class at the corresponding time. Ricky, have you ever thought of to C? He Junxuan:
Although we will go to to B in the early days, we will always do it for to C in design and at the product level, so on the issue you just mentioned, why do we also attach great importance to the mobile version , Because we also hope that our to C users can interact on this platform very easily. Maybe the scene you just talked about every day does not necessarily mean that you need to do this on the web. You may be able to do it directly on the phone in the future. Go up and finish. Mai Caiyao:
GGV attaches great importance to the C-end user experience in investment enterprise services. C refers to individuals within the enterprise. For example, we invested in slack in the United States and in ChinaI invested in WPS, boss direct recruitment and Kujiara, they are all very successful SaaS companies, but in terms of user selection, often individuals choose to use them first, rather than enterprises The leader said that the people below you must use this thing, but they put it on the Internet for brand advertising. At this time, everyone knows that they or recommend them to friends after using them. After using them, he will find that this thing can indeed solve some of my personal problems, and it can also solve my internal team communication problems. At this time, I will give The leadership push will be smoothly used by the entire enterprise.
We feel that in this era, the right to speak of each individual within a company is more important. It’s not as long as the leader finds it easy to use, but everyone below is very painful to use. In this era, if the end user feels It’s not easy to use, the products of this enterprise service are very difficult to use, and in the end, the leaders can’t see the value.
So we feel that the boundary between to C and to B is relatively blurred, and the final result is to make each user feel easy to use, and then make managers valuable. Lily:
What are the promotion channels of Treelab? He Junxuan:
In the early days, we will still go to medium and large companies because our products have very network effects. When a company starts to use it, it needs to share this data with other companies, such as inviting other companies to come in and take a look at the data. Then other companies need to register and use our products. ThenWe will spend a lot of energy to make it easier to share, and promote our products through word-of-mouth effect and the interaction between enterprises and enterprises. Lily:
In other words, in an industry, if I got it and several leading companies and industry chains It’s basically all through, right? He Junxuan:
Yes, in the early days we chose to supply The chain line industry is because we found that they rely heavily on Excel To communicate with e-mail, Excel and e-mail are an intermediate generalized data interaction tool. If we break into a large-scale supply chain company, there may be many downstream and upstream companies that have to do it through email and Excel. In this way, we can introduce multiple customers through one customer. Lily:
Why did you choose SaaS to start a business? He Junxuan:
SaaS is the future trend. I believe that the advantage of SaaS is that enterprises can apply a very powerful and cost-saving tool at a very low cost. The traditional enterprise software may be privately deployed or may have to download local software. , These things will lead to a very high process of enterprise iteration, and its cost is also high. The advantage of SaaS is that as long as you have a computer with a browser, you can use this software, so I believe this is a future trend. Mai Caiyao:
The fact that SaaS has become a global trend is reflected in the ultimate customer perception. There are many SaaS listed companies in the United States, with high revenues and good growth.