The logic behind Ali's personnel changes: the core retail is divided into two, Dai Shan and Jiang Fan are both inside and outside

Economic Observer Network reporter Qian Yujuan On December 6, as usual on any Monday, Chen Zheng (pseudonym), who works at the headquarters of Alibaba Group in Hangzhou's Xixi Park, did not sit on the workstation and brushed the news of the company's new round of organizational structure adjustment.

In the past nearly a year, Alibaba has carried out several organizational structure upgrades and personnel changes, and Chen Zhengduo is a quick glance at information, and then "does not care about himself, hang high" .

But this time it was different. As an employee of Taobao's live broadcast business, Chen Zheng saw that Jiang Fan, the "supervisor of the supervisor", was no longer the commander of the Datao department.

In fact, in recent years, soon after the end of every double eleven-year promotion, Alibaba will make organizational adjustments, and this year will come as scheduled. This is an internal letter sent by Daniel Zhang, chairman and CEO of Alibaba, announcing that businesses including Taobao (Taobao, Tmall, Alimama), B2C Retail Business Group, Taocaicai, Taote and 1688, etc., constitute the "China Digital Commerce" section, and dai Shan, the former head of Alibaba Group's B2B business line, is in charge as the group president.

Jiang Fan, who is also the president of the group, is in charge of the "overseas digital business" sector formed by the two overseas businesses of AliExpress and International Trade (ICBU), as well as a number of subsidiaries facing overseas markets such as Lazada.

Because Jiang Fan is in this round of personnel executives' "reshuffling" and has been transferred out of his "base area" Datao system, it has aroused external concern. Behind the above changes in personnel management authority, what is Alibaba's consideration?

Alibaba's core retail business was seen split in two, and dai shan and Jiang Fan were each mastered inside and outside. Zhang Xiaorong, president of the Institute of DeepIn Science and Technology, believes that "the separation of domestic and overseas businesses is intended to strive to break the growth ceiling, showing the idea of 'betting' on both sides." He said that on the one hand, it is to consolidate the base areas and resist domestic competition; on the other hand, it is to expand overseas to find new opportunities.

Daisan will be inside the Lord

Today, Chen Zheng's Taobao business belongs to the "China Digital Commerce" section. "The China business belongs to the core of Ali's power." Zhang Xiaorong said that after the adjustment, Dai Shan, as the founder of the sequence, became the female commander in charge of Ali's core business.

According to public information, Dai Shan (flower name Su Quan), as the No. 11 employee of Alibaba, is also one of the early founders of the group, "Eighteen Arhats". She has served as Senior Vice President of Human Resources for Alibaba and Taobao, in addition to serving as The Group's Chief Talent Officer and Then Chief Customer Service Officer.

Since 2017, Shan Dai has been appointed President of Alibaba Group's B2B Business Group, and since March this year, she has served as the President of Alibaba Community E-commerce Business Group.

Wei Chi (pseudonym) has been working in the B-series business line since joining Alibaba, in his eyes, the boss is "young and capable, there is no shelf", in order to solve problems at any time, he often works with his subordinates, "her office has become our conference room."

For the core business that Dai Shan grasped after this adjustment, Wei Chi felt that the key was that "Ali's business intersects too much, and it needs high-level unified management with deep qualifications and understanding of e-commerce to complement each other's advantages." ”

The business covered by the micro plate, in addition to the original To C business such as Taobao and Tmall, Wei Chi told reporters, "Taote was born on the basis of 1688." Although the original idea of Taobao Special Edition was To C, he revealed that 1688 direct supply of Taote is a complete supply chain, and Wang Hai, general manager of Taobao's business department, also reported to Jiang Fan and Dai Shan in the past, and now after adjustment, Taote single line reports to Dai Shan, which is also natural.

In the "B series" business that Dai Shan managed in the past, "although the proportion of wholesale business represented by 1688 is low, the market position has always been stable." A brokerage analyst who did not want to be named said that like 1688, there are no competitors in the market so far, he believes that there is an overlap in the needs of a small part of the wholesale business and retail business, and Dai Shan, who has been adjusted by the organization, can put more energy into the domestic retail business, "Selectively introducing into the retail platform may create new increments." ”

Jiang Fan "ran" overseas

After the scandal with Internet celebrity Zhang Dayi broke out last year, Jiang Fan, who was originally the youngest alibaba partner, also became the first to be removed, and has rarely appeared in the external activities of the Datao department since then. This round of adjustment, its business focus to overseas, was interpreted by Zhang Xiaorong as an opportunity for Ali to give him a meritorious service.

Industry watcher Meng Qi shares the same view. He saw that as of October this year, China's total import and export volume reached 4.89 trillion US dollars, not only an increase of 31.9% year-on-year, but also the scale exceeded that of last year. It is under the background of the normalization of epidemic prevention and control that the cost of overseas manufacturing has risen sharply, and cross-border business has ushered in greater opportunities. He believes that at this time, Ali made adjustments, transferred Jiang Fan from the Datao department, grabbed overseas business, and also gave the "young marshal" an opportunity to create future possibilities.

However, for the adjustment discussed by the outside world is a "bright rise and dark drop" for Jiang Fan, the above-mentioned brokerage analysts do not agree, he said in an interview with reporters, although compared with Tencent, ByteDance, JD.com, Pinduoduo, etc., Ali's overseas business is relatively strong, but once compared with its own domestic business, "overseas business is absolutely weak." "This transfer of Jiang Fan to oversee the overseas core retail business can reflect Ali's further efforts in the international strategic layout."

An Ali insider also believed in a dialogue with reporters that "Jiang Fan's biggest achievement is actually to bring double growth in traffic and users to Ali." "In particular, for Ali to explore a path to achieve growth - live broadcasting," no one can deny this. ”

Once Daniel Zhang praised Jiang Fan for "promoting Taobao to be data-driven and achieve a thousand faces", and now in the internal letter, he also summarized Jiang Fan's seven years in Taobao, "making important contributions to the wireless, personalized and content-based development of Taobao", and the upcoming 2022 and future, Jiang Fan will seek more development for Ali in the overseas market.

Cheng Yu, a professional investor, also noted that the overseas e-commerce business is booming, and he feels that Ali will make adjustments at this point in time, and Jiang Fan will strengthen overseas business on behalf of Ali, which is in line with the key direction of internationalization, one of Ali's future strategies, and "will be a support for Ali's future income growth."

Zhang Xiaorong does not question Jiang Fan's business ability, after all, he is an Ali executive who once carried the two banners of Taobao and Tmall, but the lack of global experience and overseas practice is insufficient. "Can we gnaw the hard bones of globalization?" He believes that this problem still needs to be solved by Ali and Jiang Fan personally.

Giants are under pressure

As a pillar business of Alibaba, core retail should not only consolidate the domestic market, but also carry out the development of the international market during the opportunity period of global e-commerce development. For the organizational restructuring made by Alibaba, Cheng Yu believes that it is timely to "make phased adjustments in response to the current revenue and business problems." ”

In fact, after Alibaba's financial report for the second quarter of fiscal 2022 was issued, Cheng Yu clearly felt that Alibaba's core business environment "seems to have entered a certain bottleneck period". Judging from the data indicators, Ali's sales and marketing expenses have grown rapidly, and have not brought about the growth of revenue and gross profit margins.

Regarding the rising cost of marketing and promotion, Ali explained that it will acquire users and increase their participation for mobile business apps including Taote, Taobao, Lazada and Ele.me. In this regard, Cheng Yu's personal understanding is that Ali is trying to expand its share in the field of mobile e-commerce, but the results are obviously not so ideal.

Not only is Ali's own revenue growth rate and gross profit margin continuing to decline, the increase in market investment can not boost its operating profit margin, Cheng Yu retrieved the data of "online retail sales of physical goods" in the past three years from the National Bureau of Statistics, and he saw that the growth rate in the second and third quarters of this year showed a cliff-like decline. Obviously, behind Ali," the "momentum of the entire Chinese e-commerce industry market has declined," and he also judged that this decline in momentum is not a short-term phenomenon, but a long-term trend.

For Ali's current reality, the above-mentioned brokerage analysts said, "It is still the state of blood transfusion of core business to other businesses." He believes that behind the adjustment of Ali's organizational structure, there are considerations of strong first-mover advantage and high growth rate of overseas business, and then supporting the earlier and more perfect layout in China, in order to achieve "go hand in hand" in domestic demand and globalization.

In response to the adjustment, Daniel Zhang proposed in the letter that "diversified governance" will become a new organizational strategy of the group, which undoubtedly means the end of Alibaba's "middle office strategy" proposed in 2015.

6 years ago, in order to improve the overall service efficiency, Alibaba planned the underlying support logic and strategy, and launched the "big middle platform", which not only guided the imitation of various Internet technology companies in the outside world, but also did bring growth to itself.

Although thanks to the "middle office strategy", Ali's B-series service revenue has doubled, but Meng Qi also said that although the original intention of improving operational efficiency is good, Ali is more like making a "big pot of rice" after practice, as early as the end of 2020, its official rarely mentioned this strategy.

Indeed, since the beginning of this year, Daniel Zhang have put more emphasis on "domestic demand, globalization and cloud computing are Alibaba's three major strategies." "And under this goal, Alibaba focuses on multi-business engine drive to seek future growth." In fact, on the basis of the "diversified" governance mentioned in the Daniel Zhang, Ali has placed more and more emphasis on "agile organization".

Previously, it was reported that the Daniel Zhang decentralized management, divided dozens of internal business groups, and implemented the "operation responsibility system" of the president of the business sector. Today, the two major sectors of China's digital commerce and overseas digital commerce have been managed by the president, in addition to the cloud and technology sector under the management of Zhang Jianfeng, and the local service sector under Yu Yongfu's management.

At the moment when domestic Internet technology companies are collectively "wintering", cost reduction and efficiency increase are naturally the first coping methodologies for enterprises, which is no exception in Ali, "no need to interpret too much". Meng Qi's understanding is that from the past tracked business structure and the organizational model of large middle office and small front desk, to today's diversified business, agile organization, it is Ali's phased optimization and adjustment of the organization, behind which "Daniel Zhang decentralization is a precondition".