INTRODUCTION

In our previous article, we explained how to build an entire ecosystem within the border of WeChat Work. The first one implies the in-house development of Applications and Mini Programs. The second one is plugging your current tools into WeChat Work through API connections. But how can you leverage these solutions in real-life situations?

Similar to how WeChat Official Accounts and Mini Programs are leveraged in thousands of different ways, there are infinite methods to use WeChat Work, and how they differ will be based on your type of company, size, internal structure, goals, etc. Surely it can bring clear benefits to multiple departments, from finance, going through security, and landing human resources.

In this article, we want to show you some of the most significant ones to give you an idea of how WeChat Work can enhance your business operations by the department, and give you inspiration for your own customized implementation. Let’s jump right in.

1 - FINANCE

Financial health is the number one concern for every company, key for your decision-making and actions. Your finance department bridges between your clients and internal operations and marks the start and end of your projects. A major threat to smooth coordination between your internal and external processes is the asymmetry of information. This is what a current asymmetry of information may look like.

Receiving payments - What the current process looks like

You have won a project but are waiting to receive a downpayment to break ground. Your financial team is not sure when the downpayment will be issued. Your project management team is not informed on whether or not it can take on the work. Your business developer has a different take on the situation. The result: your finance team is going from person to person, endlessly asking the same question only to be redirected to the same people over and over again. Has this ever happened to you?

Receiving payments - How WeChat Work helps

WeChat Work can serve as a catalyst to convey all the updates from every department and simultaneously inform all the parts involved.

The different steps and tasks of a project would benefit from a smoother transition and shorter loading times. Every department involved in a project can learn more about the latest stage of a project from a centralized platform, leaving no space for misunderstanding. This solution has every single team member contribute exactly when they have the power to act. The time and money saved are astounding.

Taking a step back, it is easy to imagine how this centralized approach could benefit more than just your financial department. The biggest win would be to gather clean data which would describe your financial health.

2 - SECURITY

Security is self-explanatory. It is crucial for every company to take severe measures to protect their assets and competitive advantage. Once information leaks, it is up for grabs for the competitors. By default, WeChat Work is available only to the team members you authorize the entry to your workspace, which makes things much more secure. On top of that, WeChat Work SSO means centralizing the access you grant to team members to the app and third-party software.

Security - What the current process looks like

Dealing with the leak of sensitive information today is a major source of concern for any company, to the point that even the risks associated with letting a team member go cannot be underestimated. Very often when people leave your company, they bring data, information, and even clients with them and it is extremely hard for a company to avoid it. They may be part of WeChat group chats you have no control over, or still keeping access to specific pieces of knowledge inside your company.

Security - How WeChat Work helps

Security can be strengthened thanks to what is known as Single-Sign-On or SSO. WeChat Work makes it possible for a company to gate the access to all of its platforms, were they a CRM, a PoS, an ERP, A Payroll, etc, through a WeChat Work login interface.

This is similar to the fact that users can use their WeChat account to login into different platforms, but with WeChat Work, only contacts who belong to your working space can access your platforms. This also eases the onboarding process, and saves the new team member from the struggle of dealing with all the different logins. The second benefit is that when somebody leaves the company, once the admin removes them from the workspace, they will lose access to all of the related platforms.

3 - HUMAN RESOURCES

HR is in charge of many sensitive tasks, which requires them to work with a number of tools for managing internal communication, payroll activities, recruitment, on-boarding, etc. The risk is that, when jumping from one tool to the other, mistakes could be made and inefficiencies might arise. WeChat work can be of help and, with a few actions embrace multiple tasks. Let’s have a look at how WeChat Work can improve Recruitment and Reimbursement.

Recruitment - What the current process looks like

Let’s consider recruitment. Finding suitable talents for your team is a resource-consuming task, especially in a high-turnover job market like the Chinese one. Specifically, right now, onboarding talent can be an excruciating task, timely and expensive, where inefficiency can easily cost you losing talent to a competitor. Your Talent Acquisition Manager may add people on her WeChat at a job fair, then create a group chat with the manager in line, create another chat to share opinions, share resume online with another group, while the candidate is dragged from group to group and needs to submit and share his information over and over again.

Recruitment - How WeChat Work helps

WeChat Work's main benefit is to consolidate operations. In this case, it can serve as a platform to connect the pool of applicants and your HR department.

For example, a Mini Program could become a bridge between your company and the pool of talents out there. The coolest part is that the Mini Program would distribute the efforts of talent qualification and selection among all your departments. Line managers would have a direct channel to the pool of talents and could speed up the whole onboarding process. In case an applicant turned out to be a better fit for a different position than the one he initially applied for, there would be no need to start over with the selection process. Finally, through the Mini Program, all recruitment steps would take place within a company-owned asset and not involve a third-party platform, enjoying more visibility and shorter feedback time.

Reimbursement - What the current process looks like

Another pain in the back for your HR and partially finance department is given by the reimbursement and payroll tasks. Most employees do not take care of their fapiaos on a regular basis but pile them up. A typical process could look like this: Your business developer goes for a business lunch. Then, after paying, he would ask for the fapiao, fold it up, and put it in his wallet. When his wallet is on the verge of exploding, maybe he realizes it is high time he dealt with his fapiaos. Upon submitting all the fapiaos, the finance department would likely lose hours and hours to make sense of this mess. Multiply this by all your salesmen on the road, and this means a massive waste of time. This negatively affects the efficiency of the team in charge of clearing out all the pending expenses and reimbursement.

Reimbursement - How WeChat Work helps

A good way to change habits is by connecting your payroll system with the backend of WeChat Work.

Once you get a fapiao you can take a quick picture of it and upload it on WeChat Work. Your company’s payroll system will display the request for reimbursement so that the manager in charge can approve it or decline it. As soon as the manager takes action, you will be directly notified through WeChat Work of the status of your reimbursement. Salespeople can take care of their expenses on the go, during a moment of inactivity, or while on the cab back to the office. Say officially goodbye to half working days booked for six-month-worth of “fapiao management”.

More importantly, this WeChat Work-Payroll connection empowers you to clean your expenses faster, so to declare your taxes faster, resulting in overall better tax compliance.

Takeaways

In this article, we have dug into WeChat Work and how to unleash its full potential. Now we pass the ball to you. Do you think it is the right tool for your business? Would it generate a meaningful ROI? To what extent can it be integrated into your business?

To help you steer your decision-making, we have built a 6-step framework.

In case you have further doubts and would like further advice on the app, feel free to reach out to us through our website or Official WeChat Account! Stay tuned for the next article!