– Leading Online Education Company
With mobile apps such as a flagship education app, an exam preparation app, a mental arithmetic app, and an AI class app under its belt, this company has become a powerhouse in the online education space. Since its founding, the company has attracted investments from prestigious institutions, making it the first unicorn in the K–12 online education market and currently valued at over $7.8 billion.
01 From Personal Edition to Enterprise Edition to Private Deployment
Founded in 2012, the company entered a fiercely competitive online education market teeming with players. From the start, it committed to leveraging smart, data-driven strategies as a core pillar of its long-term development. This vision has helped it grow into one of the most valuable online education firms globally.
For example, in its teaching and research efforts, the company has seamlessly integrated artificial intelligence into education, boosting both efficiency and outcomes. Internally, it demands the same high level of excellence in communication and collaboration.
Off-the-shelf office software often falls short—it can’t support real-time multi-user collaboration, unified file management, or robust security controls. These limitations meant that traditional tools couldn’t meet the company’s high operational standards. Efficient, easy-to-use knowledge management and collaboration tools were essential.
Starting in 2017, both the product and customer service teams began using Shimo’s personal edition to enhance internal collaboration. The product team used Shimo for drafting requirement documents, developing and tracking product roadmaps, and taking meeting notes, while the customer service team used it to compile customer feedback.
Although the team experimented with other office tools—both domestic and international—they encountered issues such as slow access speeds for overseas products, incompatibility with local software ecosystems, and tools that fell short in functionality, user experience, and visual appeal.
“Shimo isn’t just a great document collaboration tool—it’s also beautifully designed,” the team noted. After careful comparisons, they chose Shimo and enthusiastically introduced it to other teams. Word spread quickly within the company, and by August 2018 the organization officially signed on as an enterprise customer. Then, as user numbers grew and the need for enhanced security increased, the company opted for a full private deployment of Shimo in March 2019.
02 Efficient Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, and Data Security
Efficient Enterprise Collaboration
Team Meetings
During team meetings, participants use Shimo to take real-time notes. The built-in @-mention feature allows tasks to be assigned and relevant documents to be linked instantly, while task reminders send email and in-app notifications as deadlines approach. This not only preserves the content of meetings but also clarifies task assignments—greatly boosting meeting efficiency and ensuring projects move forward smoothly.
Project Management
Many of the company’s smaller projects are tracked using Shimo Sheets and Tables. By setting up lightweight, flexible project trackers and inviting team members to update them in real time, project leaders can instantly see the latest progress.
Internal Announcements
Shimo streamlines the creation and distribution of internal announcements. Collaborative editing speeds up content creation, while the commenting and discussion features allow managers to provide targeted feedback. Once finalized, announcements can be easily shared via a direct link to relevant workgroups.
Product Development
Within the product development team, Shimo Forms is essential for collecting feedback from both internal and external customers, while Shimo Docs serves as the standard tool for drafting requirement documents and conducting review meetings. Feedback gathered through Shimo Forms is automatically aggregated into spreadsheets, streamlining both initial data collection and subsequent analysis. During review meetings, product, design, and development teams can collaborate in real time on the same document to quickly reach consensus.
Other Uses
The customer service team compiles feedback into Shimo Spreadsheets and shares the results with the product and education teams, ensuring rapid information transfer that drives future improvements. Likewise, the HR department uses Shimo’s collaborative spreadsheets and auto-aggregated forms to efficiently manage employee data and attendance.
Corporate Knowledge Retention and Sharing
Traditional office setups often lead to scattered files and information silos. Thanks to the widespread adoption of Shimo within the company, these issues have been effectively resolved. From small project groups to entire departments, teams have built their own knowledge bases using Shimo Office.
Shimo’s “Team Spaces” function much like a corporate cloud drive—they support all file types, provide a tree-structured document management system, and offer detailed controls over file and user permissions. With multiple file-sharing options such as links and QR codes, uploading, downloading, and sharing documents has never been easier. Centralized and standardized file management has turned accumulated corporate knowledge into a critical resource for future projects, breaking down information barriers and keeping everyone on the same page.
Enterprise Data Security Management
As a knowledge-driven organization, safeguarding corporate knowledge is vital for maintaining a competitive edge. Shimo Office offers multi-layered security features—including detailed operation logs, document watermarking, content leakage prevention, and one-click removal of former employees’ access—to minimize the risk of data breaches. Files can be secured with various access permissions, password protection, or restricted to company members only. Additionally, Shimo Office records even the smallest changes, down to punctuation, and its spreadsheet permissions can be managed at the cell level. With full traceability and comprehensive control throughout the process, the company has achieved robust security over its internal documents.
03 Efficient, Stable, and Secure Collaborative Work
Since its inception in 2012, the company has been dedicated to breaking down geographical barriers through technology and high-quality educational resources, making smart education accessible to more students worldwide. As its business lines and company size have expanded, Shimo Office has evolved along with them—from individual use to team-wide and then company-wide adoption, and from the personal edition to the enterprise edition, ultimately progressing to a fully private deployment.
By integrating Shimo Office with its enterprise instant messaging tools, the company has dramatically improved both internal and external communication and collaboration. Centralized cloud storage and management of company files have eliminated information silos and transformed corporate knowledge into a key resource for decision-making. With rigorous file security controls that prevent data leaks, the overall safety of corporate data has reached unprecedented levels. Today, tens of thousands of the company’s employees rely on Shimo Office every day for efficient, stable, and secure collaborative work.
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