In the previous article, we analyzed the application scenarios of zero-code development platform products, typical representative products. Back to the beginning of the topic, what is the difficulty of making this kind of TO B product, and who is more suitable to do it?
The difficulty of products in the field of enterprise services should be studied from two aspects: technical threshold and product solution. The product solution between the two is much more important than the technical threshold. The vast majority of failed products in the field of enterprise services are the failure of the solution, everyone feels that they understand the needs of the scene, and then rush to the top, but in fact, they only see the surface needs, and how the users think and what they want under the scene have not been deeply explored. We always say that the threshold of to B is high, but where the specific high is, it is difficult to unify and standardize the requirements of all levels and dimensions in its application.
Technically, the drag-and-drop control is much easier than the tabular control, which can be a comparison of the coefficients of level 1 and 10, and there are a lot of drag-and-drop controls to choose from at the front end, and there is no technical threshold problem. The first version of Workfine's tabular product was developed for nearly three years, but it took less than three months to release a version that was compatible with drag-and-drop designs. The drag-and-drop control will be a little lower in the application threshold, and the interaction will be more friendly, but there are also unfriendly places, such as not supporting the Excel formulas that we commonly use on Excel, copy-paste, drop-down and drag-and-drop operations.
In many products with drag-and-drop design, some of the so-called advanced features are actually supplements that cannot replace some of Excel's common features.
In terms of solutions, it depends on the depth and breadth of each product vendor's understanding of business scenarios, and whether it can solve the complex digital applications based on the continuity of management models. Breadth is the ability of a product to respond flexibly to various long-tail requirements, but also not to become more and more bloated due to functional iterations.
Product solutions are the core points that truly test the strength of the manufacturer's team. Users always want to solve problems in the simplest and most straightforward way, but technical teams need to consider various constraints, they need to abstract the scene deeply before modeling.
Each function point of the product needs to realize a class of vertical scenes, and the function points and function points need to realize a closed-loop and continuous horizontal scene after coupling, and between the horizontal and vertical interactions, if you cannot have a very deep and detailed understanding of the industry scenes, as well as the ability of induction and deep abstraction, even if a large factory intervenes, it is difficult to achieve the effect of all.
To sum up, comparing the technical threshold of several manufacturers, the technical threshold of drag-and-drop control is the lowest, and there are many ready-made technologies at the front end for reference. Their competition is mostly focused on product solutions, how to understand and solve digital scenarios when facing digital scenarios, but the homogeneity of application scenarios and interaction methods between each other is obvious, and it is easy to distinguish who is superior and who is inferior.
The technical threshold of tabular design is on the high side, we have experienced the whole process from relying on table controls to independent table controls, and the process of drag-and-drop control design is also supported, this layer should be deeply and carefully combined with technology and application, he should not only consider the implementation of the business, but also consider the habits and preferences of different users.
In the tabular design, the technical threshold of the table server products represented by Chenzhe is in the middle, because they do not have independent table controls, but they need to realize many complex digital applications, which is actually a challenge to the product solution. The typical representatives of this are movable type grid and Workfine, which are the only two products in China that adopt tabular design and have independent tabular controls. In the comparison between the two, the movable type grid has an advantage in the table control technology, and Workfine has an advantage in the product solution.
Finally, let's talk about the processing capabilities of various products for different business scenarios:
At present, users will generally choose the B/S architecture mode in the application, so the "certain table" products represented by Qinzhe slowly fade out of the user's field of vision due to poor interactive experience and outdated technical architecture. Among all the example products, the threshold for using movable type is the highest, and the target audience is actually technical personnel, because the designer is a C/S architecture and does not support the SaaS model.
Workfine should be unique in the tabular design products, the tabular control is deeply integrated in Workfine, and supports the dual deployment mode of SaaS and privatization, and is currently the only SaaS product that can handle complex digital business through zero-code development. The whole team has realized the product construction of the digital requirements of the entire scenario from light to heavy at a very small cost, which requires greater concentration and endurance.
Personal-level tabular data applications are mostly completed through spreadsheets such as Excel or online documents, but when encountering business scenarios such as collaborative filling and permission management, the processing of spreadsheets is relatively inefficient, and some lightweight application building platforms can play a role at this time. When faced with complex relational business, this kind of lightweight application platform cannot handle it. It still needs to be done with a development platform based on tabular design.
In terms of the processing capacity of different types of tools for different business scenarios, many drag-and-drop control development tools can deal with problems that Excel cannot handle, or improve processing efficiency, but there are also many business scenarios that Excel and such light applications are very difficult to deal with, and the business aspects and processing capabilities they cover are limited. Tabular design is quite prominent in this kind of business processing, and in more personalized and professional applications, tabular design will have an absolute advantage.
For example, when it is necessary to implement specific forms for various scenarios, the specific forms of various scenarios are not only the form styles of different industries and different businesses, but also contain the data table structure in data governance.
Different industry scenarios have their own specific form styles, which are the result of continuous summary and optimization in the process of business development, and changing the style may not be able to meet the needs of related businesses, so the style is a basic, if it cannot meet the specific form style requirements of different industries, it will face great challenges for the applicability of the system.
At the same time, table styles also represent different data table structures, and the structure of the primary, sub-table, master-sub-table, or multi-subtable will also bring about logical differences.
Therefore, for our zero-code development platform, the basic style should also be met as much as possible, and the drag-and-drop control here can meet the user's table structure needs, but the industry-specific style is not easy to implement.
Because of the need to deal with the characteristics of complex digital business, it also brings some thresholds for the application of products, here to mention the keyword "template", many customers will ask us if we have a corresponding "template" when consulting the product, in fact, we pay more attention to the "model".
In personal applications, we are accustomed to using Excel operations, and often mention the keyword "form", in lightweight applications, we will mention the keyword "template", but in complex relational applications, we are more likely to mention "model", that is, the business system abstracted by the management model. Many applications in the enterprise are abstractions of the management model, and each link of business is interreferenced and interrelated, and it is useless to take out a separate template.
In fact, most of the internal processes of many enterprises are clear, and each customer will have a set of their own management model, but there is a lack of rapid modeling tools to achieve digital management.
Workfine's zero-code digital management platform is currently the only development platform on the market that uses the dual-design model, and it is also the only SaaS product under tabular design. It is an essential artifact for handling complex businesses and realizing the digitalization of enterprises. There is still a lot of imagination in the track of zero-code development, and under the general trend of China's digital development, China will sooner or later give birth to such creative and great enterprises as SalesForse.