DingTalk, Jack Ma’s new weapon to the rise of Enterprise-Collaboration software
In 2013 Tencent’s “WeChat”- A messaging and social media application was exploding, quickly moving towards mass adoption by the Chinese public. In response to this Alibaba developed their own application to compete with WeChat called “LaiWang”. Unfortunately for Alibaba, LaiWang was unable to provide any significant competition to WeChat, resulting in the eventual closing of LaiWang. While many companies would sit and dwell on their defeat, Alibaba had other ideas. Rather than abandon everything and start a new project. Alibaba thought, how could they utilize the software and talent they had assembled? The answer was to change direction from being a personal social application to becoming a business based social application, thus in 2015 DingTalk was born.
In learning from the failure of LaiWang, DingTalk was diligent in finding exactly what users needed in its’ product, often having personnel from different companies and position spend time in the DingTalk office to talk over ideas and product features. When DingTalk 1.0 was launched in January 2015, feedback was lukewarm, with users questioning the product’s value outside of providing free phone calls. With feedback from 1.0 in mind, four short months later in May, DingTalk released version 2.0. With 2.0 DingTalk focused on becoming “a way of working” — an efficient style for communication within organizations. The two key features of the 2.0 release were DingMail — a feature that combined multiple email platforms into one and DingDrive, — a feature that provided cloud storage for organizations. 2.0 was a major advancement for DingTalk and provided the framework for which the company would expand at a rapid rate.
In September 2016 DingTalk released 3.0, the company focused on branching out from internal communication and providing a platform for collaboration and communication outside of organizations. Fast-forward to 2017, DingTalk is a now a household name within the Chinese small-medium business enterprise industry and has made in-roads to international expansion in India. 4.0 ,the latest version of the application introduces DING Staff Attendance — an advanced staff attendance management system and DING messaging — A multi-channel solution to deliver messages.
While advancing their software ambitions, DingTalk also focused on delivering hardware that could integrate with the company’s software. DingTalk introduced two signature products; The C1 (Intelligent communications center) and M2(Intelligent front office). DingTalk’s hardware integrates with the DingTalk application producing seamless data transfer and automation of administrative tasks. The combination of software and hardware positions DingTalk in a unique position, few competitors can offer both solutions for organizations.
Today, the DingTalk team has swelled to over 300 hard-working employees in the famous Alibaba Lakeside Garden in Hangzhou. The company remains committed in its’ goal of being the gold standard for Intelligent offices.
Jack Ma Quotes “Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.”
DingTalk link: https://www.dingtalk.com/en
