How Alibaba’s Enterprise Intelligence Team Powered Remote Work During the Pandemic

In the fight against the pandemic, more enterprises realized the importance of digitalization and began to consider how individuals and companies could respond more flexibly to sudden changes.

In 2003, Alibaba survived SARS through strong organization and execution, and the experience later helped it during COVID‑19.

To ensure smooth and orderly resumption of work, Alibaba formed an emergency technical support team drawing staff from DingTalk, Alipay, Alibaba Cloud, Government DingTalk, and the Enterprise Intelligence Division.

The Enterprise Intelligence Division quickly established a COVID‑19 IT support group, publishing the "Alibaba Work‑From‑Home Manual" within seven hours and providing remote network access, device support, collaborative tools, and hotlines.

The rapid response stems from Alibaba’s overall architectural shift to a "big middle platform, small front end" strategy. The Enterprise Intelligence Division, as the "organizational middle platform," supports digital transformation of internal management, connecting core data such as HR, finance, and space.

Using the low‑code platform Yida, the team built more than 20 systems from zero to one, including virus information updates, health check‑in, epidemic data collection, material assistance platforms, post‑holiday work statistics, and a global sourcing platform for pandemic supplies, some of which were opened to the public as templates.

Team leader Ye Jun explained how the department grew within Alibaba’s organizational transformation and achieved high‑efficiency collaboration during the pandemic.

1. From Organizational Middle Platform to a Society‑Wide Resumption Platform

Q: In 2003, Alibaba survived SARS due to strong organizational governance. How did the Enterprise Intelligence Division ensure remote work for Alibaba employees during this pandemic?

A: The experience from 2003, when many employees worked from home, cultivated early innovation and teamwork, which proved essential during the current crisis.

Our mission is to "make work easy and happy." The team worked around the clock, building comprehensive health‑monitoring systems that identify risks, classify employees, and generate reports for senior management.

We reorganized into flat, cross‑functional squads—covering employee outreach, epidemic management, data analysis, reporting, campus access, and IT support—to maintain efficiency.

Another squad provided technical support to the Zhejiang provincial government, involving nearly a hundred Alibaba staff across DingTalk, Alipay, Alibaba Cloud, and other units.

2. Digital Capability Penetrates Organizational Governance

Q: How did the Enterprise Intelligence Division grow, and how does it relate to Alibaba’s digital transformation?

A: The division evolved through three stages: an initial IT‑centric informationization phase before 2012, a platformization phase from 2012‑2016 when all information‑related departments merged, and a digitalization phase after 2016, driven by acquisitions and the "big middle platform, small front end" strategy.

Since 2016, the focus shifted from pure efficiency to enhancing organizational vitality and innovation through data‑centric product design.

Q: How did digital technology improve team efficiency during the pandemic?

A: Over 20 systems were launched in just 20 days using the internal PaaS platform Yida, which was also adopted widely across society for pandemic‑related applications.

Q: What distinguishes a low‑code platform like Yida from a no‑code solution?

A: No‑code platforms handle simple surveys, while low‑code platforms like Yida support more complex development, enabling rapid creation and iteration of forms, approvals, and data reports.

Through this crisis, Alibaba refined its product architecture, improving real‑time data pipelines and demonstrating that low‑code solutions can address most complex enterprise management scenarios.

3. Future Outlook

The enterprise resumption platform, initially built for the pandemic, is expected to continue delivering value post‑crisis, evolving into a comprehensive government‑enterprise online service platform.

While some resistance exists toward the new platform, its ability to enable healthy individuals to resume activity is seen as a major contribution to societal recovery.

Alibaba continues to expand the platform nationwide, indicating ongoing work rather than a pause.