Taobao Tmall integration, Ali a big test

Alibaba was once a Taobao company, "hatching" Alipay, Cainiao, Tmall and even Alibaba Cloud.

These adjustments have supported Alibaba's continued rapid growth since its listing in 2014, until it became the world's largest "retail economy" and entrepreneurs learned and even worshipped.

But as the business refines and deepens, and the competitive environment changes, they can no longer take what they want from the market, nor can they replicate the competitive advantage they enjoyed in their early years: with local economies of scale and lock-in to some customers, they prevent competitors from entering the territory they occupy.

Alibaba still dominates competitors by transaction volume, but when measured by return on invested capital and operating margin, Alibaba's profitability has decreased after 2018. Last year, the scale of users was also surpassed by Pinduoduo, and it is no longer the most popular e-commerce platform in China.

At the end of last year, Alibaba rebuilt China's digital business sector, incorporating Taobao (Taobao, Tmall, Alimama), B2C Retail, Tao cai cai, Taobao and domestic trade (CBU) to promote agile organizations. Yesterday (January 6), Ali went one step further and integrated the Group's blood supply machine Tmall and Taobao business groups.

After the adjustment, Taobao and Tmall have changed from independent departmental organizations to functional organizations that emphasize synergy, and newly set up user operation and development centers, industrial operation and development centers, and platform strategy and operation centers, expanding the role of Dai Shan, the general manager, and the core leaders in all "products". No more fighting for each other and increasing attrition.

Alibaba has experimented with cross-departmental collaboration similar to those advocating agile organizations on Taote and Taocaicai. For example, Taote reused the commodity library of 1688, Taocai reused the fresh resources of Hema fresh and Ali Shunong, etc.; there are also rookie stations for Taote drainage, Taobao, Taote, Alipay together for Taocaicai drainage. This is a detailed study of this done by the Internet team of Orient Securities before.

However, the difficulty of these synergies is more than an order of magnitude lower than that of Taobao Tmall Fusion. Dai Shan, the head of the department, proved her ability to mobilize resources through Taote and Taocaicai, but directly regulating the core business, which accounts for 2/3 of Alibaba's total revenue, not only tested her governance ability, but also a big test of Alibaba's governance system. This is LatePost's exclusive coverage and interpretation of the matter.