Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

Bay area box Zhang Chengdong Xu Weiguo

In September 2016, a 3D printing product called "Creality CR-10" suddenly became popular on Youtube. In less than three or four months, there have been more than 10 million UGC videos sharing the product, while CR-10 sales have skyrocketed, with cumulative sales of more than 200000 units.

Soon, 3D printing enthusiasts and the whole creator circle at home and abroad noticed that the company that launched the explosive was a Chinese company-Shenzhen Chuangxiang 3D Technology Co., Ltd.

Since then, what has attracted a lot of attention is that his speed of development has been maintained. The new product is developed one by one, and it sells better and better. Another product line, Ender-3, set a record of 500000 units sold in one year. With the increase of stock users and the popularization of the concept of "Internet +", previous companies such as Xiaomi and DJI have begun to build their own creator ecosystem and membership system.

Why do you imagine that 3D can maintain rapid development for a long time? Why can they not fall into the plight of "the body is walking too fast and the soul can not keep up" in the rapid development, but let the management keep up with the pace of the business in time?

In September 2019, we took these questions to the headquarters of Creative 3D Industrial Park in Longhua District, Shenzhen to seek answers.

Two coordinate systems

If you want to have a complete understanding of the company, you can actually observe it through two coordinate systems.

The first coordinate system is to let the imagination three-dimensional calibration of his predecessor benchmarking enterprise-Huawei.

Also in Shenzhen, where Huawei was founded in 1987, Huawei gradually stood out from many electronic communications companies in the world by virtue of independent innovation and became the largest electronic communications equipment company in the world.

By contrast, the company is young. Apart from the time the company was founded (2014), the founder is young enough. The four co-founders of Creative 3D were all born in 1989. The four met at the first Shenzhen 3D Printing Exhibition in 2013, based on common hobbies and interests, and finally created Creative 3D through running-in for about half a year.

There are still few 3D printing companies in China in 2014. In the four-person founding team of Creative 3D, "two and a half belong to business personnel and one and a half belong to technology", so the team structure makes Creative 3D attach great importance to driving the development of the company from the user side and the business demand side from the very beginning. From 2015 to 2016, Creative 3D launched three products in a row, one more successful than the other.

Based on the increasingly perfect product line, imaginative 3D has gradually established a solid position in the 3D printing market. today, there are more than 1 million users, including 30% in Europe, 30% in the United States and 40% in China and other regions. It has been a global market layout from the very beginning. It is conceivable that along the take-off routes of previous companies such as Xiaomi and DJI, Imagination 3D is continuing to climb to new heights.

The second coordinate system is to let the imagination of 3D to the standard beauty group, pinduoduo and other Internet start-ups.

In the past decade, the tide of Internet entrepreneurship has been surging. Under this general trend, many enterprises take off and land safely in the capital market.

Huang Zheng, founder of pinduoduo, said in a recent internal conversation: "the rapid growth of Puduo has an element of teamwork, but we should be soberly aware that 70 to 80 percent depends on the transformation of kinetic energy between the new and the old in the new era. it is a huge thrust brought about by the release of the consumption potential of the broad masses of people. we should always be in awe and be grateful for this new era."

Similarly, at the beginning of the establishment of Creative 3D, it is to follow the rapid development of two major industries.

First, the entire 3D printer industry, which began to open source 3D printing technology around 2011 and 2012, took off rapidly after it was introduced to China; second, cross-border e-commerce in Shenzhen and even the whole of China also ushered in rapid development between 2012 and 2015. Imagine that 3D happens to be between the dividend opportunities of the two industries, the introduction of 3D printers to China, and from China to the world.

Taking a comprehensive view of the above two coordinate systems, we can find that Creative 3D is a technology-based enterprise that rises rapidly by independent innovation like Huawei; at the same time, it has achieved an extraordinary growth rate because it conforms to the general trend of the times.

From Huawei, to Meituan, pinduoduo, and then to Creative 3D, the unique development opportunities of these enterprises have brought them to a height beyond the reach of ordinary enterprises, but at the same time, they also have to show their abilities and use their own ways to solve the pains of development.

Old problems, new methods

The growth story of Huawei and Chuangxiang 3D spans nearly 30 years from 1987 to 2014.

To be fair, the problems encountered by Creative 3D are no different from those encountered by companies such as Huawei during the period of rapid development in the last century. Both are geometrically progressive. However, it is worth noting that the problem-solving methods of these two generations of enterprises are not exactly the same. After Huawei encounters problems, the most important action is to buy consulting services from companies like IBM, McKinsey and Accenture, and then change the process and system according to the solutions offered by the server. Products such as SAP and Oracle have temporarily become important roles in the IT construction of Huawei, Lenovo and other companies. In contrast, the three-dimensional generation of enterprises is more simple and direct, directly using the system to promote the process, using the process to solidify the management.

In this regard, Chuangxiang 3D general manager Chen Chun said: "We did not contact consulting services in the early days, we want to manage through digital, system to promote management."

The question is, why do you think 3D can do this directly? There are two reasons.

First, enterprise users are more receptive to various management concepts. More than a decade ago, both enterprise users and software companies may still be busy accepting a variety of management ideas and solidifying various management processes. The two levels of ideas and products are input almost at the same time. No matter enterprise users or suppliers, from acceptance to use, the management gap and IT gap are relatively deep. However, more than a decade later, whether it is to imagine three-dimensional these enterprise users, or software companies such as Zhiyuan Interconnection, there is no gap in the basic management concepts, and there is almost no need for heavy "consultation" to brainwash enterprises. This situation is actually very common in today's communication between digital suppliers and enterprise users. Enterprise sales only need a little bit of product concept and development trend, and the position of enterprise users is often "I understand everything you say / the idea is fine, let's see how the product hits the ground."

Second, the "products" that solidify the management concept have also been upgraded. More than ten years of IT construction has passed, ERP, finance and other software tools are no longer new. Previously, the information construction of enterprise users mainly focused on sales, finance and other important nodes, but now focus on the full-link management and control of all business processes. In the past, those basic software tools gradually sank and became the underlying applications, while the products oriented to "Zhongtai" have become more urgently needed tools for enterprise users.

In the specific practice, Chen Chun and other founding team first combed the company's current digital business basis and the main problems.

First of all, on a business basis. Creative 3D has more than 800 employees, mainly based in Shenzhen, including R & D team, sales team, operation team, as well as an independent factory and a cross-border e-commerce company. In addition to the companies and employees in Shenzhen, the company has more than 20 subsidiaries located in Wuhan, Shanghai, Beijing, Dongguan and foreign countries.

'when our personnel are doubling or even growing several times every year, everyone's idea is different from his implementation, 'Mr. Chen said.

Secondly, the main problems faced at present.

On the surface, to put it simply, each department cannot be connected together, resulting in a particularly high cost of communication between the company. As a general manager, Chen Chun can only stay in the company for a long time and cannot go out. Research and development, production, sales, after-sales, and promotion often occur in the whole chain. As a result, his main job in the company every day is to judge everyone.

Then look at the company's approval process. It turned out that it was all transmitted through paper files or QQ, but there was no data record, and I don't know what stage it is now. For example, whether a complaint has been dealt with or not, in the early days, sometimes I made a complaint and immediately forgot it. As a result, a month later, the client told you that you hadn't finished handling that matter for me, and then I remembered that there was such a thing.

The root cause of this is that there is no way to synchronize the data.

Before 2017, imagine 3D all data, including finance, is done through excel tables. When the company has nearly a hundred people, it is still using excel forms to do warehouse and sales data. All these data can not be connected together, everyone is independent, there is no convergence, and they are all communicated through a shared folder.

Under such circumstances, Chen Chun proposed that it is necessary to go to the system. "the founder is in the company every day, and he has no way to leave the company. How can he make this enterprise bigger and stronger?"

Starting from 2017, the road to 3D digitization can be divided into two stages.

The main task of the first stage is to go to the system. "the core goal is to use relatively few and streamlined systems to help us solve more management problems quickly and help me straighten out this business process." Founding 3D selected two sets of systems, one is Yuyou, the other is Zhiyuan interconnected collaborative management system, the two systems are integrated. It will be put into trial operation in 2017 and will focus on implementation from the end of 2018. Imagine that this "system package" launched in 3D, with users at the bottom and remote interconnection as the middle platform, taking into account the support of the bottom tools and the full-process business support of the middle and upper layers, managers basically do not need to enter the underlying applications such as ERP, but at the same time they can interoperate with the underlying data in real time.

Through these two systems, imagine 3D company's internal R & D project process, sales customer management, as well as some of the above sales delivery, payback and supply chain-related management, including remittance, billing, customer credit, and so on, are beginning to be managed effectively. From the data point of view, whether it is sales, production, or finance, what you see is real-time data. This is the key value of Zhi Yuan Interconnection Collaborative Management system.

Chen Chun said: "it is very useful for me to intercept a lot of reports after getting through the whole system." this year, I often find that I have nothing to do in the company. I often find that I have nothing to do in the company at noon or rest time every day to see if there is anything to be approved in the collaborative management system. It is very clear to take a look at the report form. I don't have to be in the company every day. "

Starting from 2019, the digitization of Imagination 3D has entered the second stage. "if after the first stage of construction, the offline management has been initially completed through digital management, then the main task of the second stage is how to carry out secondary development and optimization through digital management. Continue to reduce costs and improve efficiency."

The "secondary development" mentioned by Chen Chun is different from the traditional "secondary development". Traditionally, as long as the secondary development is mentioned, it often means setting up a special team and a long development cycle. However, in Creative 3D, because of the support of Zhi Yuan's digital middle station and business middle station, the digital team of Creative 3D has a strong ability of rapid modeling and business replication in a very short time. Imagine that 3D CAP business customization platform based on Zhiyuan Interconnection can quickly customize personalized business scenario applications on the basis of business models, flexibly and flexibly carry out business design and innovation changes, and deal with the uncertainty from customers and external environment.

To put it simply, after the background system such as ERP is built, more and more people at the grass-roots level of the company will use it. The middle and senior managers of the company only need to define the whole process and standards, and the rest of them are basic data processing.

In the Zhi Yuan cooperative operation center, the middle and senior management of the enterprise have set up a lot of reports, which are the data transferred from the background system, when there is a problem with which link, they know very well what is going on and what is going on in which business.

In the second stage, the basic construction of CCTV is completed, and then the three-dimensional is designed to build the foreground, which is more about the information that senior managers want to see.

From the system tools to manage

Imagine that the digitization of three-dimensional does bring a lot of changes in the way of work and operation.

Chen Chun, as the main person in charge of the daily management of the company, has obvious feelings about the changes brought about by digitization. For example, when it comes to the decentralization management of the general manager, "it used to be that I had to take care of everything, but because I couldn't see the data, I was blind even if I sat here every day." now that there is a collaborative management system, it will make the boss feel more at ease and save more time in daily management, so that the boss can delegate power to the professional managers below to do more things.

At the employee level, because the system is running, the standardization of what all employees do will be higher and higher, he does not need to consider too many problems, he just needs to correspond to the relevant data, a lot of things will be calculated through the system. " For example, PMC manager, through our MRP budget, we know exactly how many things to buy back, not like before, you have to consider this and that when excel tables are calculated.

The management process solidified by the system can be found everywhere. For example, in the reimbursement process, there were about eight or nine people in the whole process. Through the management of the current system, the overall efficiency can be improved by at least more than 50%. Many of the processes in the company are "moved offline to online, cured offline, and optimized after curing".

In the key data collection, it used to require the assistant general manager with a full-time employee to find the heads of various departments every month to collect all the operational data of the company. And this job takes up 40% of their working time. Now, with the collaborative management system, this large piece of time is completely liberated.

As mentioned earlier, Creative 3D continues to verify with its own practice that it is better to manage from system tools than from management ideas. Of course, the management idea is also very good, but if it is a purely theoretical management idea, the degree of acceptance in every boss and every organization will vary greatly. Even if it takes effort to study, it may be difficult to reach the ideal level in reaching a "consensus." if it is more specific to reach an agreement on implementation, it will be even more difficult. Compared with the management thought of this theoretical form, the management thought of digital system tools undoubtedly provides a powerful tool support for the boss and the organization's "unity of knowledge and action".

Chen Chun said: "the experience of Creative 3D is that enterprises must be managed well through system tools." Because no matter how many people you cultivate, they may end up being poached. We integrate the management concept and the ideas of the management team digitally to build a system so that all users are just a process of data entry, so that in management, we do not rely so heavily on managers. After this system is built, the company will be able to operate normally even if our founding team is not in the company, and as the system is used more and more deeply, it will continue to drive the operational efficiency of the entire company. "

Can management also print in 3D?

In fact, if we jump out of the perspective of Creative 3D and examine its digital practice from the perspective of a large category of enterprises represented by Creative 3D, we will find that Creative 3D is actually out of a very representative digital transformation mode.

In this model, there are at least the following in common:

First, they all have the foundation of the real economy, such as manufacturing, so there is a demand for traditional tools such as ERP; business takes off under the tuyere, and the speed of development is extremely rapid. With the help of the previous accumulation of the entire traditional manufacturing industry, especially in highly developed areas such as Shenzhen, the industrial soil is already very deep. They will be able to concentrate on capturing the new development direction and carrying out the research and development of new products. They face fiercer competition than before, and the pace of growth and upgrading is faster than before.

Second, before opening the road of digitization, the enterprise management system is basically poor, which belongs to the unreclaimed stage. In the initial stage, most startups are product-oriented and market-oriented, so it is good to clarify the finance and supply chain. As for the operational efficiency of the whole company, it is a matter that needs to be solved later. After all, in the early stage of the enterprise, survival is the top priority, before the business is polished and understood, the improvement of internal management will generally be postponed. Before that, most of them adopted more "approachable" and simple methods.

Third, the company's digital strategy is simple and clear, which is to use the mature tool system in the market to promote the process, and then use the process to solidify management and use management to improve efficiency. For the first two reasons, it is more "simple and rough" for such companies to digitize. With efficiency goals, go back to management and processes. Because this kind of company develops too fast, the proportion of mature staff will not be too high, the work flow is still being polished, and the management system is being gradually improved. In a word, whether it is the starting point or progress, the management level of the enterprise lags far behind the enterprise business development and business ability. In this case, using mature tools and software to frame the process and management, so that the business and employees realize the importance of process and management in the application of the software, and can get twice the result with half the effort.

Fourth, in the process of digital construction, the cost of capital and time should be strictly controlled, the system should be streamlined to the maximum extent, and there is no isolated island of artificial manufacturing system. From the informationization in the early years to the digitization in recent years, many enterprise users have stepped on the pit before, which provides a lot of experiences and lessons for the newly established enterprises like Creative 3D. Some of these experiences and lessons have been directly precipitated and solidified into the products, while others have become the consensus principle in the digital construction.

Fifth, understand the positioning of digital product suppliers, and clarify the different positions of each product in the foreground, backstage and middle platform in its digital architecture. Attach importance to the middle station, take the middle station as the axis, connect the foreground business and background data; take the middle station as the basis, build a new system. In the face of fierce competition and the ever-changing market, these enterprises have put forward higher requirements for the effectiveness of digital construction, such as better use experience, faster deployment, less development, unable to land data, and so on. These requirements have become very important reference indicators for this kind of enterprises in selecting suppliers. The digital traders of enterprise users must understand the development trend of digitization and the advantages and disadvantages of mainstream suppliers. For example, although people have different views on the connotation and extension of China Taiwan, it can not be ignored that the concept of "China Taiwan" provides a more advanced perspective in terms of management and digital construction. It allows us to re-examine the organizational management structure and digital overall structure of the enterprise. New enterprises such as Creative 3D have been exposed to the concept of "China-Taiwan" from the very beginning, and have deployed a platform that applies Zhi-yuan interconnection to support the business with this "China-Taiwan" capability. The starting point of digitization itself is higher than that of many enterprises in the past.

In the interviews of many cases of digital transformation in the past, we have tried to find some "best practices" and share them for similar enterprises to learn from. This set of digital management "3D printing" created by the joint creation of 3D and Zhiyuan interconnection is indeed of great value.

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