Princess Vivian arrived and left without any interesting stories. Unexpectedly, Old Brother Ma made a move on Huang He.
On October 10th, Boss Huang received the detailed report for September from the company. This was a very comprehensive report, consolidating the situation of all companies under Jiangnan Group.
You might not believe it, but these reports, combined, totaled a staggering 3.8 million characters, exceeding 90% of completed web novels on Qidian. And this wasn't a one-off; such reports were generated monthly, with each month's word count exceeding the previous one.
This was because Huang He demanded that his subordinate companies meticulously integrate all daily affairs and company matters into their reports.
However, in this consolidated report, Huang He only required objective numbers and data, not any subjective descriptions. Otherwise, this report, which brought together data from over a dozen independent enterprises and hundreds of branches under Jiangnan Group, would easily exceed one hundred million characters.
Of course, purely data-driven reports would be extremely dry and dull, making even reading a single word a painful experience.
Fortunately, Huang He was the boss and had a vast secretarial pool, so he didn't need to read them himself. He could simply delegate this task to his secretaries.
Many might find it hard to imagine that within Jiangnan Group's high-level departments, the largest in scale was not the administrative department or the finance department, but the secretarial department.
At this time, Huang He's secretarial department already had over a hundred secretaries. Of these, only about 20% were liberal arts majors; the remaining 80% were science majors.
And among these science majors, 80% were mathematics graduates. Thus, Jiangnan Group became a rare enterprise in China that recruited heavily from university mathematics departments.
It's important to note that after graduating from university mathematics departments, only the very top students would pursue mathematics professionally. The next tier of students would generally go into education, teaching mathematics in various schools.
Alternatively, they might enter fields like finance and accounting, or other professions that require a sensitivity to numbers.
However, the demand for these professions was not high, and many other careers did not require mathematics graduates at all. A large number of mathematics graduates found themselves unable to find jobs and often ended up taking positions completely unrelated to their studies, becoming living examples of the "uselessness of learning."
But Jiangnan Group, which dealt with computers and electronic equipment, already recruited a large number of mathematics students. Now, even secretarial work was recruiting mathematics graduates in large numbers, making it a true anomaly in the campus recruitment industry.
In fact, it wasn't just secretarial work. Many of Jiangnan Group's administrative management departments, marketing departments, and other positions traditionally considered more suitable for liberal arts graduates were all recruiting mathematics students.
In Huang He's words, people who study mathematics, and study it well, possess strong innate logical abilities, making them capable of excelling in almost any job.
Whether Boss Huang's theory was right or wrong, at least this batch of mathematics secretaries worked diligently and effectively.
Millions of characters of data, spanning hundreds of subsidiaries across the entire group, were processed by this team of secretaries. In less than a day, a condensed report of under 10,000 characters appeared before Boss Huang.
Some might wonder: if Huang He needed a report under 10,000 characters, why did the subordinates go to the trouble of producing a report of millions of characters? Wasn't that a waste of manpower and resources?
There was, of course, a reason for Boss Huang's approach.
In the beginning, Huang He had requested that each company submit a monthly report of under 10,000 characters. However, after a few months of operation, Huang He discovered that while these reports were well-written and impressive, over half of them were filled with praise and stated that the company was running smoothly.
When problems were occasionally mentioned, they were limited to external operational issues that the parent company already knew about, with no internal company problems being reported.
Huang He found it hard to believe that everyone within his company was a saint, with not even a sliver of a problem.
Of course, problems existed, but what leader would willingly expose issues under their purview to the chairman?
After reviewing such reports for several months, Huang He decisively changed his approach, requiring companies to submit actual data. This included operational data, financial data, personnel data, employee data, and even data on employee meetings and the purchase of a single pen.
This was because while many things could be concealed through careful wording, irrefutable data could not be hidden. All data was interconnected, so if someone wanted to falsify data, they would have to alter all related data to appear reasonable, leaving no room for error.
Otherwise, if any single piece of data was inconsistent, another department under Huang He, the Internal Affairs Department, would directly intervene to investigate and determine the cause of the discrepancy.
Furthermore, data sometimes revealed issues that would otherwise go unnoticed, leading to unexpected discoveries. For example, before the outbreak of yQ this year, one of Huang He's secretaries discovered that the procurement of masks at a packaging factory of Jiangnan Blind Box in Guangzhou had suddenly halted, and the price had more than doubled.
However, this was a minor issue, as the cost increase for masks was only over 400 yuan. It wouldn't even be believable that someone was pocketing a rebate for such a small amount, as no Jiangnan Group employee would risk their position for a 400 yuan kickback.
Therefore, this secretary began investigating other data from Guangzhou city and found that most data related to healthcare had shown increases to varying degrees. Thus, before Qy was officially announced and without any mention from Boss Huang himself, the secretary submitted a report to Huang He about the potential for a large-scale medical problem in Guangzhou City. This report completely stunned Boss Huang.
Consequently, this secretary was now the deputy director of the secretarial department.
This was why Huang He adopted this seemingly elaborate process: requiring all subordinate companies to submit raw data, which his vast secretarial pool would then organize. By leveraging the sensitivity to data of these top mathematics graduates, they could identify various issues.
Moreover, as large volumes of data were distributed among hundreds of different secretaries, and their processing results were randomly consolidated by different deputy directors, who then compiled reports for Huang He.
This effectively prevented collusion from below, as no subordinate company knew which secretary would process their data, nor which deputy director would further organize it before submitting it to Huang He.
Not to mention that Huang He had explicitly warned these secretaries that with their high salaries, they should work conscientiously. Otherwise, if problems emerged from below and it was discovered that such issues were blocked by the secretarial department, the consequences would go beyond dismissal; Huang He would ensure they faced legal repercussions.
As a result, his secretaries were exceptionally dedicated and honest. To date, Huang He had not uncovered any issues within the secretarial department.
It was precisely because of the existence of the secretarial department, coupled with the company's internal reporting system, that Jiangnan Group maintained a high level of integrity and cleanliness. There were few frustrating problems, and issues could be identified and addressed promptly.
For instance, Huang He now saw a concise sentence in this 10,000-character summary report: "Sales of infant formula products in Jiangnan Department Store dropped by 30%, but the overall infant formula market is trending upwards. This data is abnormal."
"Infant formula?" Huang He paused, then circled the sentence.
Upon closer inspection, two or three sentences on this page were circled in red.
Any text circled in red indicated that Huang He was highly interested in the information conveyed by that passage and had requested further processing from the secretarial department. xxs壹贰
Huang He spent the entire afternoon reading the 10,000-character report. There were approximately 30-plus red circles, indicating that the secretarial department would have plenty of work to do.
However, the efficiency of the secretarial department was quite high. Within a day, over a dozen of these circled items had results, with detailed information being consolidated and presented to Huang He.
Huang He reviewed the information related to infant formula. According to the investigation results from the secretarial department, the reason for the decline in infant formula sales data was due to the "Hai Gou Wang" (Sea Purchase Network) of Old Brother Ma, Huang He's old friend and rival.
"Hai Gou Wang is holding a large-scale promotional event, with many products being sold at discounted prices. However, it involves three categories, totaling over a hundred domestic products. Among these, infant formula products are particularly attractively priced, with some infant formulas priced at nearly half of the market price. This has impacted our infant formula market, leading to a drop in sales data!" Upon seeing this data, Huang He's expression shifted slightly, and he turned to Hu Jing beside him, asking, "What's your take on this information?"
"I believe this is just a normal promotional strategy for a website!" Hu Jing replied after a moment of hesitation. Firstly, she genuinely didn't see any problem with this intelligence. Secondly, she understood that Huang He's question implied he already had his own suspicions.
Therefore, he wasn't seeking an answer from her but rather showing off his intelligence.
If Huang He had been someone else, Hu Jing would have undoubtedly kicked him. But he was her boss, so Hu Jing could only play along.
"Heh heh, Old Brother Ma can't hold back any longer. He's preparing for a major move to compete with us for market share!" Huang He said, narrowing his eyes.