How do Youngor's IT colleagues receive requirements without writing code?

"Why can't your IT department do anything?"

Xiong Yanping, an IT engineer at Youngor Group, a men's apparel brand, often hears such comments from business departments after joining the large company. Trained in computer science, he also feels aggrieved because too many IT development requests cannot be fulfilled by just one technician typing lines of code.

According to him, under traditional development methods, even the simplest application requires at least three people: a product manager兼UI designer, a front-end developer, and a back-end developer. From requirement communication to product design, even if front-end and back-end development happen simultaneously, testing and launch still take at least a week to complete.

The bigger problem lies in some "pseudo demands." This means that applications painstakingly developed might only "survive" for a week before being abandoned by the business department—like seasonal flavors needed only during specific periods.

This situation leads to the strange phenomenon described at the beginning: the IT department must carefully evaluate whether development is necessary, resulting in longer development cycles. While every IT engineer is busy, business departments feel their needs are unmet.

Xiong Yanping realized that in large conglomerates like Youngor, IT infrastructure and digital systems are already highly mature. IT technicians don’t need to laboriously build full-code ERP or CRM systems from scratch; their work is more oriented toward "maintenance."

Initially, he joined a wholly-owned subsidiary of Youngor Group. As an IT staff member, most of his job involved operations and maintenance. Whenever something stalled, leaders would call him over to check it out, or colleagues would come to him when they forgot login passwords.

Later, during a company-wide integration of IT departments, he was assigned to the business team within the IT department, responsible for handling business requirements. At headquarters, he still heard complaints, as the development team often lacked manpower to support numerous business demands.

But a turning point came during a DingTalk low-code training camp. Xiong was sent to participate and learn, starting from zero, building an application using drag-and-drop methods—and ultimately winning first place. He said, "That experience with low-code shocked me. Tasks that previously took at least two days with several collaborators, I completed in just three hours."

Xiong felt that low-code brought tremendous convenience to the IT department. Facing business department demands, he no longer had to struggle coordinating development resources—he discovered he could quickly respond on his own using DingTalk’s low-code tools through simple dragging and dropping.

It seemed Xiong wasn’t writing code anymore, but things were quietly changing.

HartMarx Division's Exclusive Portal

The first official request Xiong addressed using low-code came from HartMarx. In recent years, Youngor Group acquired this century-old American men's clothing brand, meaning this new division needed to be integrated into the existing digital management system.

An independent division implies differences in management style and business processes. Moreover, each division of Youngor Group has its own complete organizational structure, including merchandise, technology, procurement, marketing departments, etc., with each sub-department having specific daily tasks and concerns.

However, HartMarx employees share the same DingTalk workspace with other divisions and even headquarters staff, causing HartMarx employees to frequently struggle finding the correct entry points or archived locations when submitting approval workflows or retrieving data. Therefore, the HartMarx department hoped for a dedicated, comprehensive, and intelligent process management platform.

Xiong thought of early website portals and used DingTalk’s low-code tool to build a conceptual portal, creating different channel sections according to HartMarx’s sub-departments, allowing customization per department. For example, HartMarx’s procurement department placed high-frequency applications like “Fabric Development Requests” and “Fabric Library” on the homepage under the procurement section for easy access.

Then, Xiong placed this main portal at the entrance of the workspace, so all HartMarx employees only needed to click this entry to enter their division-specific management platform.

Xiong said that after the HartMarx information portal was built, executives from other divisions approached him wanting similar setups. "They all felt it was very convenient for a division to have its own portal entry. Opening it every day connects them to all their work."

The portal built via DingTalk low-code solved major issues, and one department general manager specifically treated Xiong to dinner in gratitude. Other colleagues joked with him, "We’ve done plenty of work too—why didn’t you get invited to dinner?"

If you look closely, you’ll notice a string of real-time changing numbers behind each application on the portal—representing the number of clicks for that app. Xiong said, "Truly useful applications are the valuable ones." He emphasized that when building these apps with DingTalk low-code, he paid special attention to "data tracking," i.e., monitoring usage frequency of each app and feature.

"Seeing people actually use what I built gives me a real sense of achievement," Xiong said.

Forming a Low-Code Team to Empower Business Innovation

The company also highly values low-code. Youngor Group CIO Wang Xin established a low-code team within the IT department, appointing Xiong Yanping to lead it, specifically tasked with addressing long-tail demands from business departments using DingTalk low-code.

"Low-code development can reduce routine workload by 40%. Ideally, we redefine the boundaries of product development—integrating roles like product design, development, testing, and delivery through low-code tools, making everyone both a requester, developer, and tester, bringing development and application teams back to actual business scenarios," Wang Xin stated.

Building the HartMarx portal instantly made Xiong a celebrity within the IT department. Many colleagues from business units came seeking help, asking if certain scenarios could be resolved.

Xiong explained that core scenarios vary greatly across divisions. For instance, the e-commerce division handles massive data statistics and analysis, needing to collect and compare data across various dimensions daily.

One employee was responsible for monitoring GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume). Xiong said this person had to work overtime every day because part of their job required compiling total GMV figures every morning from multiple e-commerce platforms involving all brands—Taobao, Tmall, Douyin, Vipshop, and others—then reporting the summary to leadership. Thus, they were always working overtime before 8:30 a.m.

Finally, one day, this person approached Xiong asking if he could solve this "trouble."

Xiong used DingTalk low-code’s API interface to pull data from Youngor Group’s core database, set up the required GMV metrics, defined the report format, and leveraged DingTalk’s one-click screenshot function. With just one button press, a data report image is generated and sent directly to relevant leaders.

According to Xiong, the functions used weren’t entirely original, but DingTalk’s low-code “handbook” contains abundant case studies. After reviewing them, he could adapt and creatively combine features to rapidly address diverse, unique business needs.

"Now, this colleague finishes the task while waiting at a red light," Xiong said.

Wang Xin mentioned that Youngor’s IT department requires everyone to master low-code skills. He mandated that all IT staff participating in low-code training complete assignments and even personally rewarded top learners with red envelopes. In Wang Xin’s view, adopting low-code tools effectively alleviates shortages in development manpower, lengthy development cycles, and high communication costs between development and business teams. "The IT department can achieve rapid development, quick iteration, and low-cost delivery."

Digitalization Is a Tool—Its Value Lies in Empowering Business

"Digitalization is merely a tool, and tools themselves have no soul or inherent value. Only when tools are applied to specific business scenarios and trigger managerial actions do they generate enterprise impact," Wang Xin believes. All successful digital enterprises must align digitalization with corporate strategy, mission, and vision. Therefore, IT should think one step ahead of business, enabling intelligent data to empower operations.

Xiong Yanping is now the most accurate estimator of project timelines in the entire department. After hearing a request, he can almost immediately gauge how long it will take to build it using low-code.

Yet he still deliberately experiments with new approaches to fulfill business needs, deeply enjoying this feeling of "creation." He said, for an IT professional, having a tool like low-code makes the entire journey—from product design to final delivery to users—full of responsibility and value.

In the past, when working in the subsidiary on operations, Xiong had to run around solving problems. Hearing countless complaints gave him deep user insights. So now, he is very satisfied being the low-code team leader. "Now I have long stretches of uninterrupted time to build applications. I truly enjoy this work state," Xiong said. He strives to deliver the best possible products—applications with foolproof interactive interfaces—to his business colleagues. The more colleagues who use them and praise their usability, the greater his sense of accomplishment.

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