LZ and XM hold initially equivalent positions in charge of operations for their respective companies: Yisi Technology and Xiang Yue / Xiang Yue Communications. XM is actually wearing three hats as he is also in charge of development for the R&D department of his company (and potentially a fourth hat for XY dev work as well, but that is likely outside of his usual scope of work) as he founded XYC with his technical ability. His goal was to give himself space to grow outside of the control of his grandfather. Thus, the main workload encountered by the protagonists involve the tech companies floundering YT and the growing XYC than the stable XY.

Keep in mind that there is no way these three had only one project per company through the course of the story. The author clearly focuses on a 1 for 1 approach to make the story easier to follow for readers while exploring the setting to its maximum potential.

I do admit it took me a while to catch that there were two different XY companies. I can only be 50/50 certain I listed the right company with the right project, because the person in charge of both was XM. The lack of clear divide did blur the lines for me thanks to this, but the cooperation between companies is so deep that this confusion did not otherwise impact my understanding of the plot.

Xiang Yue

To sum it up: the first big project mentioned involves all that banking stuff. I am definitely not an accountant. Thankfully, Shen Ruozhen is a secretary doing mundane office stuff for this arc. The take-away is that SR kept his boss watered (with coffee), organized meeting minutes, did research relevant to each project he touched, printed out reports, mastered typing, learned Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, adapted to modern technology, fought with his boss, trusted the wrong person due to not having certain knowledge of workplace connections, and learned to apply his previous business experience to the modern world. An odd point I noticed about the banking stuff was when SR mentioned something “used to be called Posting”. Trouble is, I am pretty certain the term is still in use (at least in English).

Yisi Technology

Daddy Chu was a software engineer who founded his own company. His left and right hands were LZ, in charge of sales team, and ZK, in charge of software team. LZ is feeding customers and technology that belong to the company to his son’s company instead, a huge no-no. I am not sure how he was never prosecuted for malicious business practices beyond the Chu family being way too generous with him. LZ drives ZK out after daddy Chu dies and does not put much effort into the company causing it to decline by the start of the story. Its remaining value is a few softwares that XY or XYC happens to value.

One of their softwares we know is a CRM they adapted for Pharmaceutical needs. A CRM generally contains customer information, including their contact information. It can also do things like classify customers into groups and send emails specific to each customer list. An example might be sending a greeting advertis**ent to ‘Prospective customers who subscribed to X’ (side note: this is where a lot of sold personal information is used in a legal way as long as the source is legit, governed by the laws of whichever country the customer resides in) with a mass email. They can potentially have features to remind account managers to follow up with customers on any communications and store notes about these interactions so that no customer is forgotten. They do not always involve a ticket system for customer support directly, but are often integrated with third party programs for this purpose.

The specifics of the YT CRM are not actually disclosed in the story and doing so would be unnecessary. The relevant portion is that they are able to design custom modules for this type of software. The main project Shen Ruozhen takes on is finding a way to resell a custom module designed for Pharmaceutical software that received a negative review from it’s initial customer. Do not forget that SR is from 1945. He does not know programming throughout the course of this story, although I am sure he will learn it one day. XM takes care of the coding behind the scenes so that SR can focus on his strength: management. SR identifies a solution to mitigate the bad rep, instills checks-and-balances into the work group to reduce the slack, assigns work appropriately to the team members (and his boss), secures new customers, and attends a lot of meetings to ensure progress is on track.

The ‘business people’ probably includes the middle management in charge of various departments and the office workers who actually set the work deadlines? Because someone is rolling time estimates for the necessary work. That data is then used to calculate the quotes SR is submitting and presenting everywhere.

Xiang Yue Communications

XM catches wind of a massive upcoming government development across the city’s tourism sites. Neither of his companies have touched this field before, but government contracts are lucrative and using some of YT’s software as a base will make up for XY’s shortcomings if they do it right. The biggest struggle here is not just designing a custom system that can handle the complex needs of the customer and keeping costs within an acceptable range for both parties. It is the competition from other similar companies and preexisting softwares. Yay! an actually described business war that is won with relatively fair methods rather than knives in the dark! But also office politics, booooo! The inclusion of small details like this shows why businessmen in these novels are still going out to socialize even though they hate it.

For example, the protagonists and villains attempt various methods to show the customers their business ability as a way to improve the customers trust in their yet-to-be-created product. XYC takes a big risk that does not pan out as planned. Yes! Mistakes happen! The recovery from this by the team is a lot of fun, involving clean business socialization (not one President calls for s*x workers!!!!) for once.

SR wins the bid in the end by essentially saying “Our quote is higher, but it eliminates many hidden costs by being more comprehensive and accurate than other companies who slyly avoid disclosing [insert here] important factors.” This bid is at least 7 digits if I had to guess. Billions are not impossible, but are unlikely considering the gov budget must also be used to do the actual work such as restoring cultural attractions. These individual projects might be taken by contractors who would enter their own bidding process. A CRM to discover and track these local B2B customers could be a major boost long term. The text mentions primarily features specific to financing, but creating all of this and having it work well is $$$. No one likes to have the first link in the chain tell you: “oh, we can’t continue work until you give us more money because we have exceeded budget.” The trust they built through various methods in the plot show why reputation is always mentioned in these family business novels. Over-promised Under-delivered is the bane of anyone exchanging money for services, even if the business is as small as hiring someone to mow your lawn. Trust becomes more important the higher the transaction volume and the higher the complexity of the task. Brand image and the ability of the sales team serve to set the stage for initial cooperation. Fun (?) Fact: CRMs are often used by account managers to maintain repeat customers even after the project is successful.

A simplified workflow would be Sales -> Project Management -> Account Management. All three projects here follow the protagonist and largely stop at the initial Sales stage with others handling the follow up. The author really managed to make it seem like they explained things in depth, while keeping the specifics as simple as possible in actuality.

• He casually pulls drunken SR for a fling during their ambiguous period under the presumption that Chu Shichen is a playboy sleaze anyway. +2 RF
• Does not follow through showing consent does matter to him. -1 RF
• XM thought they were developing into something more and was not aiming for a 1-night stand. -1 RF
• He did not communicate his thoughts nor did he ask for SR’s before taking action out of jealous rage. +1 RF
• He arranged for food/clothing/medicine the next morning after waking from their cuddles. -1 RF
• He reacts very badly to SR’s negative reaction and lets him leave without sharing his real feelings and arranges for the items to be discarded. +1 RF
• He learns from this and quickly repents to chase his lover properly. -1 RF

I simply do not like r*pe as a plot device even if it were a sub-plot. Being forced into an affair by

through threats against her child while she was fighting for divorce from her wayward husband is a new low for r*pe in fiction.

My first thought was, “Why didn’t anyone try to contact the police or some other authority figure?“ My second thought was the realization that the majority of r*pe victims do not seek outside assistance. It’s a very sad fact that I do not like to confront often no matter how much I appreciate the author’s attention to detail. Some things are just too real to consider entertainment.

However, it seems that there are unresolved aspects, such as the fate of Ruozhen's mother and sister, which could potentially be explored in extra chapters or in future books

Ruozhen reveals his true identity to Chu's family while it's really rare to see transmigration novel where the MC reveal his true identity to the OG family, not only to his partner