How Suning’s “Douya” Remote‑Work Platform Scaled in 24 Hours During the COVID‑19 Crisis

Suning employees have long relied on the internally developed remote‑office software “Douya” for email, scheduling, and daily tasks.

When the COVID‑19 pandemic struck, the company announced on January 27 (the third day of the Lunar New Year) that Douya needed emergency configuration and free public release within one day.

The core Douya team entered an all‑night work mode, communicating until 2 a.m., and by the next morning (January 28) released the first post‑holiday version and opened it to external companies.

Within 24 hours the team delivered the update, and by the fourth day of the New Year the new version was publicly announced, supporting external enterprises.

On the seventh day of the New Year, Douya was tasked with providing live‑stream technical support for the chairman’s video‑conference, ensuring smooth viewing for all employees and on‑demand video playback.

Team members worked through the night, testing until after 2 a.m., to guarantee stability for the upcoming meeting.

Over the following weeks, the Douya team expanded to more than 80 people, handling increasing demands from 280,000 internal employees, the Suning ecosystem, and external enterprises totaling millions of users.

Key functionalities such as audio‑video conferencing, health reporting, task management, and online documents were rapidly enhanced and scaled.

Statistics after one week of public release: over 8,000 new groups created and 15,451 files transferred nationwide.

Team members worked long hours, often late into the night, with even senior managers participating in version testing.

To manage the surge of tasks, the team prioritized work by urgency and importance, assigned clear owners, and encouraged broad participation, turning a chaotic emergency into an organized effort.

Beyond Douya’s core features, the team also upgraded task management and online document functions, adding work‑record tracking, multi‑scenario support, and task‑chain tracing, thereby strengthening the overall “Douya family” of products.

Douya has now become one of Suning Group’s three key projects, serving not only the 280,000 internal users but also hundreds of external enterprises, illustrating how rapid, coordinated R&D can support massive remote‑work needs during a crisis.