SWDnovel #507 - opportunity
#507 - opportunity
Xue Xiaofeng walked into the conference room of the Liming Research Institute headquarters with some apprehension.
Although no one had told him why in advance, Xue Xiaofeng knew very well that this was a great thing.
He even looked forward to meeting the famous Dean Ren Zhong here.
At the thought of the possibility of meeting Dean Ren, Xue Xiaofeng couldn't help but feel a little nervous.
He quickly collected all the computer-related information he could find on the market and studied it.
And he also tried every means to enter the Computer Technology Research Center with the help of the company for 3 months of study, and fully mastered the standard computer motherboard design circuit diagram.
For an engineer with only basic electronics knowledge and not much computer basic knowledge, Xue Xiaofeng was one of the top ten most outstanding in this group of one hundred people.
Xue Xiaofeng's first product was a business computer developed for financial staff.
When domestic computer designers were still exploring how to use computers and who to use them for, Xue Xiaofeng sensitively discovered the problems in corporate financial processing through market demand research in enterprises.
So, after fully researching with the financial staff of the enterprise, and understanding the logical relationship between financial accounting, bookkeeping, and the inventory of enterprise materials, he spent a year, together with software engineers, customizing a financial-specific computer.
After its release, it immediately became a best-selling product of business computers in China, leading Northern Computer to become the first computer company to enter the 100,000+ sales volume in two years.
Next, Xue Xiaofeng continued his efforts, and through research on the education industry, he developed an educational computer.
At the lowest possible cost, he created an economical computer similar to APPLE II, with a built-in basic programming typing training program and elementary school math calculation training program, plus a few simple basic small game programming learning codes.
Xue Xiaofeng's educational computer was designated by various elementary schools in Dongda University as the designated computer to purchase.
It soon became Northern Computer's second best-selling product, with annual sales exceeding 100,000 units.
Compared with competitors, Xue Xiaofeng did not simply replicate the public version of personal computers, and did not make too much fuss about the appearance of the chassis or the monitor.
Instead, based on the practicality of the computer, he designed the integration of computer hardware and software to achieve specific functions into a product that can complete specific functions at the factory.
Moreover, the hardware configuration of the computer is also closely integrated with these applications to ensure that the price is controllable.
As a dedicated computer, it directly achieves the ultimate cost performance.
When other companies were still blindly making standard computers with 1999 TVs as monitors, Xue Xiaofeng had already developed a 1499 educational computer for schools and wealthy families with streamlined configurations.
His idea of making personal computers surprised Ren Zhong.
Because these ultimate products are actually not very common in the main world.
Under the conditions of limited function and performance of early personal computers, many people did not know what to do with a computer without industry applications.
In addition, with the proliferation of mass-produced standard computers brought about by the development standards, few of the first batch of Dongda University manufacturers making personal computers in China thought of customizing computers for professional applications to open up specific markets.
After all, these people have not experienced too much information baptism in this era, and it is normal to lack imagination for the use scenarios of computers.
Xue Xiaofeng's way of thinking is not to regard the computer as an omnipotent platform, but as a carrier of professional applications.
That's why he stood out from the competition.
He even prematurely spawned software copyright regulations for the development of Dongda University's computer software.
Because after the financial professional computer was launched and sold well across the country, many competitors also began to follow suit, imitating Northern Computer's financial professional computer, and some small companies simply copied the software from Northern Financial Professional Computer and directly put it into their own computers for sale, producing the first generation of "piracy", which Ren Zhong discovered the problem and urgently took out the temporary management regulations for software copyright for standardization.
This curbed the speculative atmosphere in the market.
Computer mainframe manufacturers did not have the ability to have software and hardware developers like Northern Computer, so they entrusted some companies specializing in software development to imitate the functions of Northern Computer's financial software.
Ren Zhong didn't have any good way to restrict such follow-up.
If the imitation of functions is also prohibited in a swarm, then this industry is prone to form an invisible monopoly in subdivided industries.
After all, most of the functions in industry applications are similar and similar.
To Xue Xiaofeng's disappointment, he did not see the long-admired Dean Ren.
Sitting behind the desk were five judges who were middle-aged and above.
They learned about and verified Xue Xiaofeng's product development from various aspects, including the inspiration for a product and other details.
After the whole group chatted for more than 2 hours, the meeting was suspended, and they asked Xue Xiaofeng to leave the conference room and wait in the waiting hall outside.
After Xue Xiaofeng left, Ren Zhong walked into the conference room.
"Let's all talk about it, how is this candidate?" Ren Zhong asked directly after sitting at the head of the conference room.
"Comrade Xue Xiaofeng's approach to product development is very clear and is typically demand-oriented," one of the middle-aged men, obviously very familiar with Ren Zhong's habits, cut to the chase, "He is good at communicating with product users to understand their real needs. The financial computer he developed was the result of him visiting more than a dozen companies to understand the specific operations in finance in detail. After gaining a full understanding of the actual work in finance, he summarized and standardized the original, somewhat different, processing procedures of these companies. Then, he created a requirements specification, using an intuitive diagrammatic method to present his financial processes and key factors such as input screens to these company's finance personnel for further discussion, confirming that his financial processing procedures did not deviate from actual needs and were accepted by the front-line finance staff before he collaborated with software development engineers to implement these requirements."
"In terms of the hardware design that supports this financial software, Comrade Xue Xiaofeng tested the software in advance with computers of different configurations. After finding the most suitable hardware configuration for the software, he customized the computer. We can see that this is a computer with strictly controlled costs, but the application runs quite smoothly. He even configured a printer driver for the computer, which can print out financial statements. Of course, for current enterprises, configuring a complete printer still puts economic pressure on them. Generally, they still prefer to complete a large number of financial calculations on the computer, output financial statements, and then manually copy the data from the computer reports into traditional reports. After all, the current software reports cannot fully realize our traditional manual reports."
"But even so, Northern Computer's financial computer has reduced at least 80% of the manual consolidation workload, turning a large number of calculation tasks into automatic computer operations, which not only greatly improves the efficiency of financial work, but also improves the accuracy of financial calculations!"
"Good, your understanding is very thorough. So, what are your opinions on Comrade Xue Xiaofeng going forward?" Ren Zhong nodded after listening to the brief introduction from the working committee member.
As the promoter of the new system, Ren Zhong is now neither making decisions nor screening candidates, but observing from the sidelines how these ideas of his are specifically implemented.
Just like now, he doesn't make decisions for the working committee, but asks for their decision.
After a brief exchange of opinions among the members of the working committee, the middle-aged man who had just made the introduction came forward to answer.
"President Ren, the opinion of our working committee is that Comrade Xue Xiaofeng is qualified to be a candidate for the ET Group's switch product manager. Although computers and switches are two different types of products with relatively large differences, from the perspective of product design concepts, the commonality between the two is quite large. For a product manager, what is important is not how to implement the product, but to depict what the product looks like, and what specifications can better meet customer needs, especially in terms of functionality and cost-price control. Switches are more challenging in terms of cost-effectiveness than computers."
"Understanding the operational needs of different telecom operators for switches has always been a weakness of ours. We believe that Comrade Xue Xiaofeng can lead the research and development of a switch product for a specific market, and further assess his potential through the development of this new product."
"Of course, before that, we must fully solicit Comrade Xue Xiaofeng's opinion to see if he is willing to switch from the computer field to the relatively unfamiliar field of switches to accept the challenge."
Seeing that the working committee was basically proceeding according to the established steps he had envisioned, Ren Zhong nodded and said nothing more.
He didn't need to intervene more in the work that followed.
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As an employee of the Dawn Research Institute, the working committee can directly make decisions regarding personnel transfers. These are merely internal job changes. After the working committee confirms, a letter can be sent to the specific company's human resources department.
Without waiting long in the reception room, Xue Xiaofeng was called back to the conference room.
"Comrade Xue Xiaofeng, after the investigation by the Institute's Talent Working Committee, we believe that you have the ability to rotate to ET Group. The initial consideration is to appoint you as the product manager for a 5,000-line program-controlled switch for medium-sized cities in Third World countries. I wonder if Comrade Xue Xiaofeng is willing to accept this challenging job?"
The middle-aged man in the working committee said to Xue Xiaofeng with a smile.
Xue Xiaofeng was not mentally prepared for such a thing. Although both are product managers, ET Group and Northern Computer are two companies at different levels. Northern Computer sells more than 100,000 computers a year, which is already a leader among domestic computer companies, but in terms of sales, it is only a little over 100 million, less than 200 million, while ET Group has long broken through 1 billion in sales.
For Xue Xiaofeng, this is certainly a promotion.
However, from computer product development to switch product development, frankly speaking, this is a very big step.
At this time, Ren Zhong was only piloting his ideas, so this policy of cultivating outstanding talents was not publicized to the outside world. Even the Dawn system's personnel system only received instructions at the senior level, and the specific staff members were not clear about it. Xue Xiaofeng knew even less.
However, Xue Xiaofeng also knew that as a Dawn system enterprise, transfers were not very frequent, but they were not uncommon.
It was just that this matter fell on his own head, and for a moment, Xue Xiaofeng couldn't figure out whether this matter was good or bad for him.
Promotion is a good thing, but if he messes up the switch product due to acclimatization, it would not be a good thing.
It was equivalent to changing careers to engage in a new field, and even the customers were designated as foreign customer groups.
Xue Xiaofeng did not answer immediately, but his brain was running rapidly. He remembered the time when he entered the computer industry, and suddenly, inspiration struck.
"Dear leaders, I am willing to accept this challenge," Xue Xiaofeng raised his head and looked at the middle-aged man and the judges with firm eyes.
He didn't know anything about switches now, but Xue Xiaofeng was very clear that the organization wouldn't be unaware of what he did either. Since they made such a transfer, it meant that there must be a certain training period in his arrangement to adapt to the work in the new field.
Thinking that he was still so young, and he had studied electronic technology, from the core bottom layer, switches and computers were essentially the same, both computer chips + software control. Switches were just more interfaces. If he started learning now, he believed that it wouldn't take long to get started.
Moreover, the position the organization gave him was product manager, which meant that his work was more focused on functional design and planning for the product, not any specific implementation.
So Xue Xiaofeng quickly grasped the key points. This was an important opportunity in his life. Even if he failed, he could go back to computers.
Thinking of these things, Xue Xiaofeng no longer hesitated.
He directly accepted this arduous task.