How a Smart‑Hardware Team Cut Costs by 95% and Boosted GMV to $1.68B in One Year

Background : The team inherited a fragmented workflow with multiple information gaps, no shared platform, and unclear product handling methods, leading to wasted personnel and capital.

Goal : Integrate resources, align information, and achieve “small input, big return, high efficiency, growth”.

Step 1 – Build a Business Support System : The author took initiative to design a multi‑line support framework covering supply‑chain and custom processes, assigning clear responsibilities to ensure every task follows a documented process.

Step 2 – Analyze and Optimize : After self‑assessment, the team targeted a 50% efficiency increase and a 100% reduction in remote communication cost by establishing a cross‑domain collaboration mechanism, which resolved long processing times and delivery delays.

Step 3 – Empower Stakeholders : Customer service, supply chain, product R&D, and operations were jointly empowered to identify core issues such as “no one responsible, no traceability, information gaps”. The team produced a hardware quality‑control manual and a robot‑automated integration, cutting required manpower by 50% (compressing 20 people to 10) through automation.

Results : Within one year the business‑support process was upgraded to version 5.0, guaranteeing normal smart‑hardware sales and supply‑chain operation. Efficiency rose by 50%, costs fell about 95%, and GMV reached approximately 1.68 billion. Logistics collection rate improved to 99% (up from 95.8%).

Experience & Insights : Viewing the problem from a revenue‑and‑cost‑reduction perspective, the team identified pain points, leveraged tools like FCST for cross‑department collaboration, and demonstrated that modest investment can yield substantial returns—e.g., reducing delivery time from 45 days to 20 days. The knowledge distilled from this case is reusable in future projects and has been validated across multiple initiatives.