Amoeba, the term used in the business management model, is called "amoeba business model". Amoeba management is based on the leadership of each amoeba, allowing them to formulate their own plans and rely on the wisdom and efforts of all members to achieve their goals .
Through such an approach, every employee on the front line can become the protagonist and actively participate in the operation, thereby realizing "all employees participate in the operation" .
What we usually call "development for all" is also one of the amoeba models.
In 2012, Gartner proposed the concept of "Citizen Developer". The definition given by Gartner is
"National developers" are neither employees of software companies nor affiliated with corporate IT departments. They develop applications for use by themselves and others to improve work efficiency.
1. What is the core of the amoeba model
The core of the amoeba model is to realize the overall operation optimization and profit maximization of the enterprise by stimulating the creativity and initiative of all employees . It emphasizes that every amoeba operator should actively participate in business decision-making, pursue amoeba profit maximization, and cooperate and compete with other amoebas like a "minority shareholder" of an enterprise.
The core principles of the amoeba model include
- Emphasize actual performance and pay attention to the operation of profit center;
- Emphasize the initiative and participation of employees, stimulate creativity and teamwork;
- Focus on information sharing and communication to achieve full participation and common growth;
- Emphasize the sense of responsibility and autonomy of the operator, and realize the agility and flexibility of the operation.
At present, the development of enterprises in our country is facing the challenge of digital transformation. According to the traditional understanding, the development and iteration of digital applications in enterprises should be the work of the IT department, but this is not the case.
On the one hand, fierce market competition and recurring epidemics have put forward new requirements for digitization ;
On the other hand, a variety of zero-code and low-code tools have sprung up like mushrooms, providing the possibility of zero-threshold digitalization in various business and management scenarios.
Therefore, at present, digital transformation is not only the responsibility of management and IT teams, but requires more business and management personnel to participate.
At this time, it is very important to stimulate the creativity and initiative of all employees. Different roles in the enterprise can participate in the development of the whole people. The positioning of these roles can be:
Senior managers, mid-level and lower-level managers, and front-line business personnel and IT managers.
Under the universal development model, applications within the enterprise are developed hierarchically and hierarchically according to business complexity and scope of application, usually in the form of:
- Lightweight applications that meet the individual needs of employees or a single business link, allowing businesses to use zero-code tools approved by the IT team and build independently under the rules formulated by the IT team
- Satisfies the application of data management and process management within the team or department , and is realized by the business department leading and IT providing technical support
- Complex applications at the department level and cross-functional collaborative applications are delivered in a collaborative manner by a project team composed of business employees and IT. The business is responsible for sorting out the process, both parties participate in the solution design, and IT is responsible for the implementation of the solution
- Complex systems that involve the organization's core business or administrative processes are fully managed by IT .
According to the latest report of the world-renowned consulting firm Gartner:
61% of organizations have or plan to conduct citizen development programs, and by 2023, 41% of non-IT employees will build or customize their own solutions, and in large enterprises, these "non-IT developers" will outnumber professional developers by four times.
2. The pain points of the current national development
Before talking about the value of universal development, let's take a look at the current pain points of universal development
1. Lack of concept
It is not difficult to find that the current employees of many enterprises do not have the concept of lean improvement, and lack the opportunity and right to change the process , so they think that process optimization is a matter for the management. The most business-savvy people in any organization are front-line employees, and it is difficult for anyone other than themselves to help them identify problems
2. Lack of environment
In addition to the lack of the concept of national development among the employees of the enterprise, the management of the enterprise has not created an environment for employees to participate in improvement . Many enterprise management will criticize and refute the proposals of employees without thinking, or even allow employees to propose proposals, which has frustrated the development of the whole people.
3. Difficulty implementing the plan
Even if employees and business department managers give improvement plans, due to problems such as slow IT response and long system optimization cycle in the traditional model, the improvement plans cannot be implemented quickly, and eventually the accumulation is hard to recover.
Therefore, many obstacles will be encountered in the process of actual national development. The national development model allows the organization to mobilize employees to participate in digital transformation to the greatest extent, maximize the use of knowledge and skills owned by employees, and improve the operational efficiency of the organization. Development for all can help enterprises bring far-reaching value from the IT department level, business department level, and organizational level.
3. Amoeba model - the value brought to the enterprise by the development of the whole people
(1) Organization level
1. Help enterprises to improve lean
Lean kaizen is a management concept involving the participation of all employees. It originated from Toyota's lean production theory and was widely used in the manufacturing industry. Now it has been copied to excellent companies in various industries.
The process of the enterprise is not static, and the concept of lean improvement requires the enterprise to continuously improve to better match the management needs and business needs . In fact, process improvement cannot only rely on the management, but should penetrate to the front-line employees and continue to improve from part to whole.
2. Help enterprises innovate efficiently
Enterprise innovation needs to rely on digitalization, which is reflected in two aspects.
- On the demand side , digitization has enhanced the visibility and predictability of user behavior. For example, users in the e-commerce industry have left a large amount of data in their search, browsing, consumption and other activities. Through data processing, enterprises can better understand user needs, thereby realizing user behavior to drive enterprise innovation;
- On the supply side , enterprises hope to reduce costs. Digitalization can transform the experience-based innovation that relied on individual employees in the past into scientific innovation based on data, which reduces the risk of enterprise innovation to a certain extent.
The model of universal development can effectively support the precise and efficient innovation of enterprises, help enterprises to realize the online process and information visualization of all employees, help enterprises obtain comprehensive data, and help enterprises identify innovation opportunities .
At the same time, the zero-code tool is easy to adjust and iterates quickly, allowing employees to quickly build a system to verify innovative ideas, which is agile and efficient. After the enterprise develops for all, it can carry out business digital innovation in multiple departments and scenarios at the same time. Compared with the period when IT was governed alone, the innovation speed has increased exponentially
(2) IT department level
1. Help IT reduce “requirements debt”
With the deepening of enterprise digital transformation, the task backlog of the IT team is getting more and more serious, not only to maintain and optimize the original system in the enterprise, but also to deal with a large number of new demands. However, the growth of enterprise IT resources often cannot keep up with the speed of demand explosion, and it is difficult to respond to rapidly changing business needs in a timely manner.
According to the survey, about 70% of the IT teams are overwhelmed by the pressure of development and need to find a new solution. Development for all is the best choice to solve this problem.
2. Let the IT department and the business department collaborate more closely
In the traditional mode, because IT does not have a deep understanding of the business and business personnel do not understand the technical implementation methods, it often happens that the system built by the IT department does not meet the business requirements, needs to be continuously adjusted and optimized, and even the business is not willing to cooperate with testing and use. The time and effort of the IT department is spent and the value is not recognized.
Under the national development model, the IT department and the business department are in a cooperative relationship. Both have the same goal . Business personnel participate in the construction and iteration of the system throughout the process. With the close cooperation between business and IT, it is easier to build applications that meet business needs, and the final value of applications is more recognized.
(3) Business level
1. Help business departments improve work efficiency
Due to the limited resources of the IT department, it is difficult to meet the needs of the business department 100%, and the needs outside the core system can only be solved by themselves, such as using Excel is the most common way. However, Excel is gradually finding it difficult to meet the current corporate requirements for efficient collaboration
- Scenarios using Excel are often filled in locally, saved and sent to the work group, and then downloaded by the next colleague to fill in. The experience is not good when multiple people collaborate
- Use Excel to fill in the data, and the standards for filling in the data cannot be strictly limited;
- Data can only be stored locally, which is not conducive to future search and traceability...
Under the national development model, the business department independently builds the application through zero-code tools, and the entire process is circulated online. The rich field types can ensure the standardization of data, and can also facilitate process collaboration, automatically calculate and analyze results, effectively reduce repetitive operations, and greatly improve the work efficiency of the business team.
2. Help business personnel improve their comprehensive ability
In the future, digital transformation will be more in-depth. Business departments will use more and more systems to ensure that business processes and business specifications can be implemented. These systems will also be used to integrate and utilize data assets to identify opportunities.
Enterprises no longer need talents with only business capabilities, but comprehensive talents with both business capabilities and digital literacy . Development for all can enable business personnel without professional development capabilities to improve digital literacy, master digital thinking and system thinking, constantly think about how to optimize processes, actively innovate, and become highly competitive comprehensive talents.
4. How to better manage the amoeba model
Due to the different development status of different types of enterprises, the degree of penetration of the concept of the amoeba model is also different. Therefore, let’s talk about how companies of different sizes should better manage the amoeba model.
(1) Small and medium-sized enterprises
Small and medium-sized enterprises are the most common enterprise-scale enterprises in my country, accounting for the largest proportion. Generally speaking, small and medium-sized enterprises will face problems such as shortage of funds, brain drain, management and organizational confusion. These companies often have the following requirements for digital systems
- The system can iterate according to business needs at any time, supporting the process of capturing every market opportunity and growing
- The budget for system implementation ranges from several thousand to tens of thousands, and only a few entrepreneurs can afford the cost of hundreds of thousands a year
- The system should be implemented quickly enough to support organizational capacity building in a short period of time
- The data in the system can be retained for easy analysis, and can provide data for review at any time to support decision-making
It must not only adapt to personalized business processes, but also be low in price, be able to produce results quickly, and fully cover the entire process of data from generation to display. If you sum up the needs of entrepreneurial enterprises for digital systems in four words, the most appropriate is "more, faster, better and more economical" .
Therefore, in the face of this demand, small and medium-sized enterprises can choose a zero-code development platform as the technical foundation for the digital transformation of enterprises. Whether it is a department of type A or department of type B, as long as they are familiar with the business, they can independently build applications, business processes and data dashboards.
Official website: https://www.jiandaoyun.com
The above templates are from Jiandao Cloud Zero Code Application Platform.
(2) Group enterprises
Group enterprises refer to large-scale enterprises with many production and operation organizations. Group enterprises generally operate large-scale assets, govern many production and operation units, and have their own rights and interests in many other enterprises.
1. The current digital transformation mode of group enterprises: customized transformation
Almost all group enterprises will build their own digital system through heavy code development, or use these standardized product manufacturers to carry out customized transformation , so as to meet the overall digital transformation requirements of the enterprise.
The most difficult contradiction to solve lies in the differentiated business processes of subordinate units. Different subordinate companies/business departments often have different business processes, and even their own business fields and industries are different. Therefore, building a business system that can meet the differentiated needs of all subordinate companies has become a very big problem .
2. Solution: local solution
The design of the group's business system is often very complex, with a long cycle and high difficulty in modification and maintenance . For the group's IT department, maintaining the normal use of the group's core business system has become one of their important tasks, and any change may require a lot of IT resources to complete.
Therefore, the IT department of the group often has no extra energy to build a separate system for the special management demands of the subordinate units. From the perspective of a subordinate company, if the differentiated needs of itself and other subsidiaries are submitted to the group for resolution, the cycle is often long and difficult to modify. It may even wait for the group to really do a good job, and the business process and model have already changed.
Therefore, the lower-level companies will find ways to "solve these needs on the spot" from their own perspective.
3. The national development model helps enterprises transform and upgrade
Instead, under the supervision of the existing IT department, all business departments and functional departments of lower-level companies can learn the use of zero-code development platforms, so as to have the ability to develop applications, so that lower-level companies can solve their own digital needs on their own.
Specific action suggestions:
⭐Carry out Jiandaoyun skills training and practical drills
⭐The sharing of excellent cases and solutions within the organization inspires other departments to apply mature informatization achievements
⭐ Organize the methods of using Jiandaoyun for lower-level administrators to help them build information-based and model-based thinking
In addition, the group's informatization competence center can first select some of the more prominent companies in the lower-level companies as pilots, train and empower their business personnel/ITBP, and enable them to have system sub-administrator permissions, so that they have the ability to manage, modify, and build their own applications, so that they can become developers for all.
Get the Jiandaoyun template mentioned in the above plan >> https://www.jiandaoyun.com
Hope this article helps you!