数字赋能·助力中国·影响世界

The foundation of a strong country lies in strong agriculture, and the construction of an agricultural strong country is a key strategic deployment for China to move towards a socialist modernized strong country. Among them, the level of agricultural science and technology is the decisive factor for whether a country can become an agricultural strong country. In recent years, smart agriculture has become a new engine driving the modernization of agriculture with its unique advantages.

In this context, Jiangsu Three&Three Information Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Jiangsu Three&Three"), as a pioneer in smart agriculture, has been deeply involved in the agricultural field, committed to deeply integrating information technology with agricultural production, and promoting agricultural transformation and upgrading. On this path full of challenges and opportunities, Jiangsu Three&Three has achieved remarkable success and, with its outstanding performance and innovative capabilities in the field of smart agriculture, has successfully passed the national level specialized and innovative "Little Giant" enterprise certification.

Recently, Su Business Media visited Jiangsu Three&Three and conducted an exclusive interview with the company's chairman, Zhang Ziqiang, to gain a deeper understanding of Jiangsu Three&Three's "specialized, refined, unique, and innovative" development path in the field of smart agriculture.

From foreign enterprises to independent entrepreneurship

Zhang Ziqiang is a typical post-80s generation. In 1999, she was admitted to the School of Animal Science and Technology at Nanjing Agricultural University from Baoding, Hebei. The seeds of her love and pursuit for agricultural technology were planted in her heart. In that era, the College of Animal Science and Technology only admitted about 100 students annually, and the employment prospects were extremely optimistic.

During my college years, I served as the president of the student union. At that time, taking the civil service exam had not yet become popular among college graduates, and entering foreign companies was considered the first choice for outstanding graduates. In 2005, Zhang Ziqiang stepped into the door of a Fortune 500 American funded company, filled with aspirations and dreams for the future. The training mechanism of this job has brought me great inspiration, "she said." Their training process is very standardized, including clear guidance on communication with clients.

Zhang Ziqiang's next job will also be at a Fortune 500 company in the United States. There, I experienced a completely different corporate culture. Old employees and leaders can pat the table when discussing issues, and employees are required to take a taxi when traveling to the company. Personal itineraries and reimbursement receipts must strictly correspond to the visit time. At that time, many Chinese companies had not yet been exposed to 'management systems', and we already needed to bring laptops when visiting customers, enter data into the system during lunch breaks, and return to the company before 4 pm to upload data.

In addition, foreign companies are also very efficient in task coordination. I can communicate work details with colleagues who are far away on the other side of the world through email in a timely manner, "Zhang Ziqiang said. This advanced scientific management has left a deep imprint on her. Jiangsu Three&Three places great emphasis on employee training, and the company's executives and business R&D backbone are all trained by Jiangsu Three&Three themselves. Nowadays, we still widely use digital tools such as email and systems - within the company, we require important matters to be communicated and copied through email. And promote process management to make internal and external communication concise and efficient Zhang Ziqiang applied her valuable experience accumulated in foreign companies to her management practice after starting her own business.

Jiangsu Three&Three was founded in 2013 by Zhang Ziqiang and Mr. Liu Weimin.

When it comes to the origin of the company name "Jiangsu Jiangsu Three&Three Information Technology Co., Ltd.", Zhang Ziqiang explained that in traditional Chinese culture, the number "33" carries a special meaning, with the saying "33 heavens" and "one life gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and three gives birth to all things", which also reveals the laws of nature and coincides with the characteristics of agriculture. In addition, she happened to be 33 years old in the year of founding the company, which gave rise to "Jiangsu Three&Three".

Nowadays, Jiangsu Three&Three has developed into a national high-tech enterprise with agricultural industry digital brain, agricultural AI big model applications, agricultural production models, and agricultural intelligent terminal equipment products as its core. The company's customer base covers large state-owned farms and modern agricultural industry demonstration parks. At the same time, in the international market, enterprises from countries such as Ecuador customize breeding ships for the cultivation of South American white shrimp; There are also projects under negotiation with Colombia in the field of flowers.

However, little known is that at the beginning of the company's establishment, its main business was not in the agricultural sector.

From hard technology to unmanned farms

Like all startups, Jiangsu Three&Three's primary task in the early stages is to ensure survival. I come from a sales background and go wherever there is business, but we quickly realized that this model can only bring short-term benefits and is not helpful for the long-term development of the company. "Zhang Ziqiang admitted that the company will only stagnate if it continues in this state. Therefore, she believes that having one's own core product and doing something valuable to society is the key to promoting sustainable development of enterprises.

In 2014, Jiangsu Three&Three took an important step by forming their own research and development team. "We start from the fields we are good at, such as industrial Internet and ERP/OA system." Zhang Ziqiang mentioned that in the process of communication with customers, they found that no large manufacturers have occupied the market in the OA field, and everyone has equal opportunities for competition. However, the low threshold in the OA field has also brought fierce competition, so they have begun to search for new blue ocean fields.

At that time, the concept of smart cities was gradually heating up, and Jiangsu Three&Three keenly seized this opportunity and quickly ventured into related businesses. We have achieved good results in the field of industrial informatization. However, in the field of smart cities, with the addition of large companies such as Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent, etc., small vendors can only undertake some small projects, which also makes us realize that the lack of competitiveness of enterprises is ultimately due to insufficient technical capabilities.

In order to enhance competitiveness, Jiangsu Three&Three has begun to reposition itself. We firmly set the development direction as hard technology, "Zhang Ziqiang recalled. From the perspective of national policies and market trends, agriculture is a key area supported by the country, but the construction of agricultural informatization is relatively lagging behind, especially in agricultural production, which still relies on traditional manual operations." This is a fertile land that urgently needs to be developed, and it has ideals and a future, meaning and value, and contributes to society. Looking back now, our decision at that time was correct.

In 2017, Jiangsu Three&Three made a decisive transformation, cutting off all previous projects and only maintaining necessary customer service work, fully investing in the agricultural sector. At the end of that year, when the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed the rural revitalization strategy, Jiangsu Three&Three had already launched their own product - the rural revitalization solution. They divided their products according to the national 24 character policy, ultimately focusing on the agricultural industry and investing in research and development around the software and hardware of the agricultural industry.

With the deepening of basic technical work, Zhang Ziqiang realized that in order to achieve the transformation of Chinese agriculture from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture, it is necessary to master the core algorithms and models in the field of agriculture. These algorithms and models are crucial for improving the technological content of agricultural production. "Whether it is modern equipment, agricultural robots, or autonomous driving technology, without core algorithms and models, it is impossible to achieve true modernization, that is, less human or unmanned," Zhang Ziqiang emphasized.

In 2020, Jiangsu Three&Three proposed the concept of unmanned farms and produced promotional videos to promote it. Although there were no relevant examples available both domestically and internationally at the time, they firmly believed that unmanned farms were the direction for the future development of smart agriculture. In the operation of unmanned farms, manpower input will be reduced to extremely low levels. For example, in the field of irrigation of high standard farmland, intelligent irrigation gates, models, algorithms, and field sensors can be used to achieve unmanned irrigation.

Zhang Ziqiang believes that unmanned farms can be achieved, which is also the future development goal of Jiangsu Three&Three. We predict that such cases are highly likely to occur in the next 5 years, but it also depends on technological development, hardware, materials, and sensor advancements.

Specialization, refinement, novelty, forging industry leadership

On September 2nd of this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the sixth batch of specialized, refined, and new "little giant" enterprises. Jiangsu Three&Three was honored to be listed with its outstanding contributions and innovative strength in the field of smart agriculture, becoming the first national level specialized, refined, and new "little giant" enterprise in the field of smart agriculture in Jiangsu Province.

In China, the importance of smart agriculture is particularly prominent - the rapid advancement of urbanization and the reduction of rural labor urgently require modern mechanization and automation equipment to replace traditional agricultural operations, in order to ensure the output of 1.8 billion acres of arable land and the food security of 1.4 billion people.

Although China's technological level in smart agriculture is relatively backward at present, based on China's development speed and business achievements, we are expected to catch up and even lead the world in some fields, especially in the field of agricultural robots, in the next 10 years. "Zhang Ziqiang firmly believes.

In the process of enterprise development, Zhang Ziqiang is most proud of Jiangsu Three&Three's enlightening and promoting role in smart agriculture. Even before smart agriculture was widely recognized, Jiangsu Three&Three had already clearly planned the integration path of agricultural technology with IoT technology and software technology, and took the lead in building a platform for the full lifecycle management of animals and plants. When others began to recognize the importance of software for agricultural enterprises, we were already researching models and algorithms. Therefore, we have always been at the forefront of the industry in terms of software and hardware integration in the field of smart agriculture nationwide, "said Zhang Ziqiang.

In terms of specialization, Jiangsu Three&Three's smart solutions for agriculture, rural areas, and farmers cover multiple fields such as agricultural production, operation, and management, achieving deep integration of agriculture's primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. They can provide comprehensive professional services for agricultural parks, large farms, agricultural operators, and governments; In terms of refinement, Jiangsu Three&Three has built a full process digital empowerment platform, which is based on a three-layer architecture of information perception, data processing, and intelligent analysis. It comprehensively collects, processes, analyzes, and applies data from the entire agricultural industry chain, achieving data empowerment for the entire process of agricultural production, processing, and sales; In terms of specialization, Jiangsu Three&Three has collaborated with multiple universities and research institutes to innovate and develop a variety of intelligent equipment products and agricultural robots for direct agricultural production processes, covering various agricultural scenarios such as fields, aquatic products, livestock and poultry, and greenhouses, accelerating the "machine replacement" in the agricultural field; In terms of novelty, Jiangsu Three&Three has conducted in-depth research on the application of AI models in the agricultural industry, leading the digital transformation of the agricultural industry and building a new ecosystem of artificial intelligence.

At present, Jiangsu Three&Three has successfully implemented more than 500 key projects, with over 20000 client enterprises and multiple intellectual property rights, including more than 100 software copyright registration certificates. 16 agricultural related patents have been authorized, and more than 30 patents are currently being applied for.

When it comes to the key factors that affect the growth of enterprises, Zhang Ziqiang believes that the first priority is to clarify goals and directions, and formulate implementation strategies based on them, which need to be constantly adjusted and revised during the process; Secondly, we need to keep up with the times and adapt to various changes in the process of enterprise development, such as customer changes, business model adjustments, etc.

Looking ahead, the goals of Jiangsu Three&Three are becoming increasingly clear. From 2014 to 2024, our goal is to become a hard technology group and have identified our strengths. In the next decade, we will delve into the application of AI algorithm big models and agricultural robots, and deeply mine data elements in the agricultural field to form data assets and enable them to play a greater role, "said Zhang Ziqiang.