1Office’s Journey to Build “Kindness DNA”

1Office was born from a passion for building a solution to help businesses optimize their operations. This passion was nurtured and developed for over 10 years, since Mr. Thang was still in university. Starting as a mathematics major with a passion for precise numbers and a particular love for optimization thinking, Mr. Thang delved into business management software early on.

The CEO of 1Office recalls that 15 years ago, the business management software field only followed a “tailor-made” approach, meaning businesses would commission providers to write custom software. This method was time-consuming, expensive, and lacked scalability for widespread implementation, partly because the concept of SaaS (Software as a Service) was still unfamiliar in Vietnam at that time.

Seizing the opportunity, in 2009, Mr. Thang and his associates launched the startup DOS (Digital Optimization Solution), with the desire to build a digital solution to optimize business operations. After achieving many successes, DOS merged into a new joint venture with Vietnam Price Joint Stock Company (VNP) three years later.

The joint venture, named OneOffice, was created to commercialize the internal operational management solution for Vat Gia, which was built by DOS itself. “The idea was great, but the reality was different. A ‘tailor-made’ solution for an e-commerce company did not represent the market’s needs,” Mr. Thang recalled. OneOffice failed three years after its establishment because clients demanded too many modifications.

This failure, along with the departure of some of the original founding members and a debt of nearly 500 million VND, was described by the 1Office CEO as “a devastating blow that shook the entrepreneurial spirit.” At times, he thought he couldn’t recover and seriously considered giving up.

“But at that very moment, I always remembered the saying: When you want to quit, take a minute to think about why you started. It was that youthful, passionate reason, for the sake of society, that made me get up and move forward,” Mr. Thang recalled.

He went home to borrow 500 million VND from his family, and his father’s words stuck with him forever: “I’m lending you this money for the people who follow you, not for you. Remember, whatever you do, don’t owe your employees’ salaries, and don’t owe state taxes.” On August 3, 2015, Workway Joint Stock Company (later renamed 1Office) was born. Recognizing the “Achilles’ heel” of the previous failure, Mr. Thang was determined to create a solution for all businesses. 1Office officially launched its first commercial version in 2017, and has been continuously expanding and developing its features ever since.

For this CEO, what keeps his entrepreneurial fire burning to this day is his passion for providing Vietnamese businesses with a toolset for operational optimization, alongside his perseverance and resilience. “If you lack money, you’ll find a way to earn it; if you fail in your market approach, there will be a more flexible path… For me, passion is a necessary condition, but perseverance is the sufficient condition to reach the destination,” he shared.

For him, the most difficult and darkest moments in his entrepreneurial life were not when he lacked money, colleagues left, the product had bugs, or customers complained… but when he lost his passion for the product. Sitting in front of the creation he himself had made, feeling no excitement to do new things, to make it better… those were moments of “terrible loneliness that were hard to overcome.”

The formula for optimizing profit for any business is calculated on two sides of the issue: business growth and operational optimization. For 1Office, solving the second problem – optimizing business operations – has been an unchanging philosophy throughout its nearly decade-long journey.

“Someone who studies math always understands the concepts of variables and constants in a calculation. Here, the constants, or the immutable values, are 1Office’s product philosophy, while the variables are how the business shifts its frame of reference to navigate through difficulties and temptations, ready to say no to fleeting trends that are unsuitable or not optimal for customers,” said Mr. Thang.

The CEO further explained that the differentiating factor of the 1Office comprehensive business management product is its “all in one” mindset.

According to Mr. Thang, that is the solution to the problem of optimal overall business management, and the answer is the 1Office solution. Solving a single problem in business operations is always simpler. Typically, software companies will choose a specific problem in business operations to build software around. This aligns with business theory, making it easier for them to create, sell, quickly turn a profit, and expand their market share by launching a product early. However, this also means that customers will have to struggle to find many other software solutions to handle the remaining issues in business operations, such as sales, operational processes, human resource management, internal communications, etc.

Moreover, businesses are fragmented across many small software applications, which causes a lot of trouble for leaders. For example, poor data synchronization makes it difficult for businesses to analyze statistical report indicators. Businesses lack sufficient data to thoroughly solve any particular problem and cannot create a unified working environment between departments (as each person uses different software).

Additionally, using multiple software solutions requires businesses to spend a significant amount of money. Therefore, 1Office chose to solve the overall problem of business operations.

Having gone through many startup ups and downs, what entrepreneur Le Viet Thang wants for 1Office is to build an organization with integrity.

According to him, 1Office carries out a mission of integrity, mapping businesses from the ground to the cloud by digitizing the entire enterprise, providing a solution that acts as a health monitor for the business. The more digitized and the more input data that can be linked, the more it becomes the key to solving the problem of optimizing operations, saving time and costs, and improving labor productivity in every enterprise.

At 1Office, integrity is present even in the most difficult times. “During the recent pandemic, I refunded a significant amount of money to travel and training companies because I understood their difficulties, and I couldn’t possibly take their money under those circumstances,” shared the CEO of 1Office. The company also has a “pay-for-what-you-use” policy, meaning if a business buys a package for 30 employees but only 10 use it, 1Office will still calculate the product’s value based on 10 users.

1Office always strives to build a competitive salary structure compared to other technology companies in Vietnam. Mr. Thang believes that employees stay with the company because “understanding comes before loving.” In return, the company has humane policies that care not only for the employees’ lives but also for their “home fronts,” such as providing extra days off for parents on their children’s first day of school and a health insurance policy.

In addition, the spirit of “sincerity to understand, debate to develop,” “all for the product,” and “bosses only manage administratively, we are equals at work”… are also characteristic cultures of 1Office.

Looking back at 1Office’s journey since its establishment, CEO Le Viet Thang says what makes him most proud is that the company has been and is helping thousands of businesses operate better and hundreds of thousands of users perform their jobs more easily every day.

Over one million CRM contracts, 2 million workflows, 8 million requests, 12 million tasks, and more than 111 million fingerprint check-ins have been processed on the 1Office system. According to a survey of businesses using 1Office, on average, each employee saves one sheet of paper and 15 minutes of work every 5 days thanks to data digitization, and labor productivity also increases by 10-15%.

1Office has now become a strategic solution trusted by more than 5,000 corporate clients and over 450,000 users across Vietnam. Notably, more than just software, the company provides an online work ecosystem, turning the business into both a workplace and a place for connection and sharing among people.

Sharing his future plans, Mr. Thang confidently affirmed that 1Office has a “firm footing” in the domestic market. The immediate goal is to expand beyond Vietnam’s borders, reach one million users by 2025, and become the number one business management platform in Southeast Asia.

Source: Vnexpress.net