Topbond: Three Axes for Winning the Intelligent Era

In the new era of intelligence, the market demand for intelligent IoT products has grown rapidly, and the complexity and importance of intelligent control technology has continued to increase. Shenzhen Topbond Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Topbond"), as a leading enterprise in the intelligent controller industry, in order to better cope with the arrival of the intelligent era, officially launched the "T-Smart" platform in 2017 to provide customers with a one-stop Smart home appliance solutions.

"At the Yunqi Conference in cooperation with Alibaba Cloud in 2016, Topbond demonstrated a complete SmartHome solution, and the ability to provide a one-stop solution is always in reserve. Around 2017 , some small and medium-sized brand customers put forward the service needs of intelligent cloud management, and we have launched this platform in order to meet their needs." Liu Tianxi, strategic director of Topbond, told "CEConline".

Technological innovation is the foundation

For Topbond, innovation is the core of the added value of products and the DNA of the company's development. Liu Tianxi said that in recent years, Topbond's R&D investment accounted for about 7% of its total revenue, which was about two percentage points higher than that of several other listed peer companies.

The high R&D investment reflects Topbond's determination in technological innovation. Although the development of the entire market slowed down in 2018, Topbond still does not reduce its R&D investment. It is understood that the total number of R&D personnel in Topbond exceeded 800 in 2018, and more than 100 R&D personnel will continue to be added this year. "It is one thing to talk about innovation. To translate it into practical actions, we firmly believe that innovation is the basis for increasing the added value of products." Liu Tianxi said.

More importantly, innovation requires a cultural atmosphere. Under the guidance of different corporate cultures, the results of technological innovation are not the same. According to Liu Tianxi, Topbond emphasizes everyone's collaboration and a relatively self-made decentralized organization, which means that many innovations of technicians are sparks created by mutual exchanges and collisions. If too much discipline is emphasized, it can prevent direct communication between technologists, thereby hindering innovation.

"Although I do strategic planning, I understand that innovation is not planned," Liu Tianxi emphasized, "Innovation is the result of the collision of experts from different backgrounds and fields. The 'Mozi Academy' was established this year, hoping to build multiple innovation organizations in addition to the formal R&D team, where technical personnel can communicate or form small teams. Topbond will also establish an innovation fund to support them in the future. Let them explore new technologies in the form of small projects."

In addition, Topbond uses IPD's system integration product development, which originated from IBM and is also the R&D system used by Huawei. Liu Tianxi said, "In recent years, we have spent a lot of energy to introduce this system. First, compared to Huawei, Topbond has made functional tailoring of the IPD system to make the whole system more agile. Second, to develop the IPD system. It is like an investment behavior, because it not only pays attention to technical needs, but also pays attention to other stakeholders, including market needs, customers, end users, etc., so that we can see wider when we have insight into industry needs. Third, IPD The system can better achieve cross-department and cross-field collaboration, because technical personnel do not exist in isolation, and they need to be supported by people from back-end manufacturing, account managers, and marketing.”

Liu Tianxi believes that in addition to completing the project delivery, the technical team's own management capabilities and collaboration capabilities will also be improved accordingly. For the management of technical talents, Topbond has always emphasized people-oriented and always pays attention to their needs. Implementing it into specific daily work is to create a more efficient and innovative environment for them while requiring innovation, and to pay attention to their own overall growth.

Personalized service capabilities

As the core components of household appliances, tools, smart devices and other complete equipment, intelligent controllers play the role of "nerve center" and "brain" Role. According to Liu Tianxi, as a provider of upstream intelligent controllers in the industry, Topbond's core business is mostly B2B mode, so it has a very close partnership development relationship with customers, which can be said to grow with the growth of customers.

"There are many successful corporate customers, and we have accompanied it from small to large, from a single category to multiple categories, and from an excellent company to a listed company. We will focus on products, service capabilities, Delivery capabilities and other aspects are in line with the development of customers, and the core customer groups are also growing relatively fast." Liu Tianxi said.

Topbond will also pay attention to the customer's own management level to achieve mutual success. For example, the industry-leading brand customers, due to their excellent management level, have also given a lot of help to Topbond's own growth. Liu Tianxi said: "Because major customers themselves will put forward very strict quality and production requirements, their management capabilities will also be improved while meeting customer requirements. For new growth customers, their current management level may be average. , but Topbond's own high-quality management requirements will help customers improve their own value chain management and bring added value to their products. Just like Apple, most of its supply chain links are open to the industry chain. During this process China Apple can also better realize its own value. In fact, for the entire supply chain, it is still necessary to find its own position and realize mutual appreciation with upstream and downstream to create higher value.”

All walks of life are being affected by the changes driven by new technologies. Both upstream and downstream enterprises in the supply chain need good partners to work together, and partners must recognize each other and match their capabilities. Liu Tianxi likened it like this, if you want to play basketball, it is not realistic to want to be teammates with Yao Ming, because the level is not on the same level, Yao Ming and ordinary people are just playing with you.

Topbond's total operating income in 2018 was about RMB 4 billion, and considering the business characteristics, it is difficult to achieve full automation in the production process. Liu Tianxi told "CEConline": "Topbond has established a flexible production line that adapts to multiple customers and varieties. In fact, we have systematically invested in ERP, MES, and PLM for a long time, and more through partial automation transformation. To gradually replace some employees. On the whole, Topbond will do a good job of intelligence on the basis of leanness and agility.”

Of course, the most important thing to achieve cooperation with customers is its own team A kind of cohesive force, "geese-shaped spirit" is the core of Tuobang's corporate culture. "If employees do not have this sense of value themselves, it is difficult to reach cooperation with customers. The 'goose spirit' corresponds to the direct technical problems with customers, because Topbond's service to customers is not completed by a single person. It is a form that requires multi-departmental technical teams to form a fast and agile response." Liu Tianxi said that Topbond is using some tools and activities to allow more employees to reach a consensus on brand and cultural construction, so that more people can participate. The cultural construction action is coming, because the premise of creating greater value for customers is the ability to respond quickly and agilely to the market, which requires the joint efforts of all employees.

One-stop solution

At present, enterprises engaged in IoT and smart home are divided into many schools, such as manufacturers of communication modules and enterprises specializing in voice. Many Topbond customers have reported that in the process of developing a smart home appliance product, many suppliers have to be managed, and problems may arise when they are integrated, and the problem solving speed is not so fast. This is a pain point faced by customers. Topbond provides services to customers by integrating industrial chain links. The "T-Smart" platform can realize synchronous development from controller, communication module, APP to cloud, which not only saves customers' time and expenses, but also allows customers to focus more on market users one end.

Of course, customers generally have different levels of needs. For example, the world's top ten home appliance brand companies have their own R&D teams of thousands of people. "What we need to do is to provide them with better intelligence. The controller is good, or depending on which piece they are missing, we can help them build it." Liu Tianxi said.

In the past, Topbond mostly sold a product to customers, but now it also needs to provide a complete service, such as product networking service or product life cycle management service.

"In terms of openness, the 'T-Smart' platform has a unique positioning. One is the integrity of the industry chain, and the other is the openness of customization." Liu Tianxi emphasized that this is the The key difference between the "T-Smart" platform and other platform companies is that taking smart door locks as an example, Topbond should be the first company in China that can provide mass-produced NB-IoT smart lock solutions, which also reflects Topbond An ability to make control schemes integrated with the Internet.

With the advent of 5G technology and NB-IoT, smart door locks have become a connected product, and then combined into different scenarios, such as in an apartment, it becomes an entrance to a smart apartment ; Apply it to the family, it is an entrance of the family; apply it to the hotel, such as an unmanned hotel, it is the entrance of the hotel service. Therefore, the evolution of a product's species is from a single hardware product to a service portal along with the scene of the application scenario. In recent years, Topbond has also been exploring some other smart hardware, and often invests and develops new species of smart home together with partners.

In 2017, the NB-IoT network was completed in China Telecom. In terms of performance alone, NB-IoT has more advantages in terms of low energy consumption, long life, and long-distance transmission. Liu Tianxi told "CEConline": "In 2017, we considered applying NB-IoT to locks, because locks have high security requirements, and are products that use batteries, and low power consumption is also its core appeal. .So, we started to develop this product in 2017, using NB-IoT to make smart door locks, and we have already achieved mass production at the 2018 AWE exhibition."

"Topbond used to be a component manufacturer. For the company, it is now a combination of components and solutions, but we will not be a brand, we will continue to provide open one-stop service capabilities. If customers need, we can empower more, but the ecological It is more open." Liu Tianxi said that Topbond recently signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Fujian Unicom Industrial Internet Company, and will explore more in the application of 5G to smart homes in the future. Topbond is willing to build an ecosystem for customers to jointly Develop new species, new scenarios and new services.

For the future development of smart home, Liu Tianxi believes that the existing products focus too much on the device as the center to make a very smart device, which is a process of product evolution. The real intelligence, the so-called borderless intelligent experience, actually comes back to people. For example, when people switch between different scenarios, these intelligent experiences can continue, and they can truly provide a consistent, smooth, and less burdensome experience for people. "This may require a product change, rather than evolution to achieve true intelligence." Liu Tianxi said.

Photo/Liu Tianxi