Abstract: Combined with his own experience, the author first elaborated on the "1 process and 3 nodes" of the product market system, and analyzed the three stages of the internal development of the product market system in combination with the development history of the intelligent driving enterprise, thus proposing the method of product market system construction, hoping to have a certain reference value for the construction of the marketing system of the intelligent driving enterprise.
I. Overview
In the previous article "Three Years of Intelligent Driving, Understanding of the Market, Brand, Sales, and After-sales", the author mentioned that the main responsibility of the marketing department is to understand the strategy, insight into the market, and service sales, and the specific implementation level is the closed loop of the MM market planning and execution process.
Looking at the commercial vehicle autonomous driving industry, there are three forces driving the industry forward: (1) autonomous driving technology companies, such as Zhitu Technology, Tucson Future, Wincher Technology, etc.; (2) traditional OEMs, such as FAW Jiefang, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle, China National Heavy Duty Truck, etc.; (3) new car-making forces, such as DEEPWAY, Qianchen Automobile, Zhidian Automobile, etc.
In terms of scenario selection, autonomous driving companies are different. Some people focus on trunk logistics, such as Zhitu Technology, Wincher Technology, Hongjing Intelligent Driving, etc.; some people focus on ports, such as the main line, Feibu, Si Nian, etc.; some focus on mining areas, such as Ta ge, Huituo, Yikong, etc.; some focus on sanitation, such as Yuwan, Xiantu, etc.; some people lay out two tracks, and some people lay out the whole scene layout.
Some startups may rush into multiple tracks and multi-line operations at the same time because they have not conducted sufficient research in the initial stage. As the scale of the enterprise grows, there may be a situation where the market research is not thorough, the management of customer needs is not clear, and the product and market are disconnected. As a result, the company's strategy is not focused, the resource investment is scattered, the product research and development is slow, and the customer needs are not met, which may encounter problems in development.
In order to match product development with customer needs, there must be a set of processes to constrain the internal market activities of enterprises, and to ensure that no cutting corners and deformations are made in the process of implementation, which is the "MM market planning and execution process". In mature benchmarking companies, the market MM process is a basic customer-centric process. It is based on the current situation of the industry, in-depth research on customer needs, speaking on behalf of customers, making requirements for product planning, and tapping the core competitiveness of products/services to make customers satisfied.
This article combines its own understanding and focuses on autonomous driving technology companies to describe how to create a first-class product market system.
Second, the product market system
The mature product market system includes "1 process + 3 key nodes":
1 process refers to "MM market planning and execution process";
The three key nodes refer to the three major nodes around the commercial success of the product, such as "market research, demand management, and product market".
Taking product planning as the breakpoint, the market MM process is divided into front-end market research and demand management (supporting product planning), and the back-end product market (empowering sales services), and the overall process is shown in the following figure:
*Image from "Gao Wei Academy"
(1) Market research: clairvoyance to support the commercialization of business lines
Put the time back to three years ago, suppose a team with intelligent driving technology as the entry point, want to start a business, then the scenes in front of it are trunk logistics, ports, sanitation, mining areas, minibuses, buses... How should I choose? At this stage, it is necessary to conduct a detailed market study of each scenario.
Assuming that you plan to enter the trunk logistics scenario, you need to conduct a full investigation of market entities such as OEMs, logistics companies, freight platforms, and logistics parks to understand their demands, including what models to use, where the pain points are, and what are the key points that affect decision-making.
Assuming that it is planned to enter the mining scene, it is necessary to conduct a full study of coal mines, cement mines, non-ferrous metal mines, digital mining enterprises, main engine plants, and mining area transportation engineering teams.
Assuming that you plan to enter the sanitation scene, you must fully investigate the urban management department, the operation mode, and the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.
On the basis of fully analyzing the technical difficulty, operation mode and feasibility of commercialization in each scenario, combined with the advantages of the enterprise itself, the commercialization route is selected and key milestones are set to guide the team to move forward.
After the business route is determined, the market research should continuously monitor the industry, and the trends of each main engine factory, the choice of friendly business models, and the needs of the owner, combined with their own core advantages, find the value of products to the industry.
(2) Demand management: not only to meet customer product needs, but also to meet customer business demands
Customer needs are divided into two categories, one is product demand, and the other is commercial demand, such as cooperation mode, purchase method, etc. The former is related to product development planning, and the latter is related to business model choices.
Taking the trunk logistics scenario as an example, the customers of intelligent driving companies mainly include two types of main engine factories and logistics enterprises, the main engine factory has more urgent needs for mass production solutions, engineering services, product highlights, after-sales service, etc., and logistics enterprises have urgent needs for operating costs, supply and funds.
Here, three typical intelligent driving companies are selected and analyzed from two dimensions. Zhitu Technology, representing the intelligent driving company with the background of the main engine factory; Tucson Future, representing the typical global intelligent driving company; Wincher Technology, representing the intelligent driving company with the background of technology logistics.
*Source of information: Compiled according to public information
(1) Zhitu Technology is committed to becoming a pioneer in the automotive industry empowered by AI technology and a leader in the commercialization of commercial vehicle autonomous driving. Therefore, while focusing on mass production, it also pays attention to commercial landing, on the one hand, it has realized the mass production of J7 smart heavy trucks with Liberation, and on the other hand, it is also realizing commercial landing operation in subdivision scenarios.
(2) Tucson will focus on the research and development and application of L4 self-driving truck technology in the future, and provide mileage-based autonomous truck transportation services through unmanned network freight. Therefore, it has made great efforts at the operation end and normalized the operation of the "Phoenix - Tucson City - El Paso - Dallas" route.
(3) Wincher Technology positions the autonomous driving technology and operating company, focuses on the trunk logistics scenario, independently develops L3 or above automatic driving technology, and provides a new generation of TaaS freight system for logistics customers. Therefore, it has made greater efforts at the business model end (supply and capital), starting from the financial leasing of traditional cars.
In terms of product positioning: the core product of Zhitu Technology is the mass production solution of autonomous driving heavy truck for the main engine factory; the core product of Tucson Future is the automatic driving operation service for logistics enterprises; and the core product of Wincher Technology is the "supply + capital + automatic driving equipment" solution for logistics enterprises.
In terms of customer choice: for Zhitu, its OEM customers are very clear, that is, FAW Jiefang, its scene customers are other ecological partners besides the main engine factory; for Tucson Future, its customers are logistics companies rather than OEMs; for Wincher Technology, in the short term, its customers are mainly logistics companies and are infiltrating into the OEMs.
In terms of demand management: Zhitu pays more attention to the demand management of intelligent driving system functions and after-sales service, Tucson will be more inclined to the demand management of driverless freight products in the future, and Wincher Technology is more inclined to the management of logistics customers' needs for supply, funds, settlement and so on.
Differences in company positioning, customer selection, and demand management will ultimately be reflected in the company's product planning and business model choices.
(3) Product planning: match customer needs and technology platform planning
Product planning is not the author's strength, here I would like to take the trunk line scenario as an example to illustrate the differences in product categories of each enterprise.
At this stage, mainstream autonomous driving products can be divided into two categories: L3 and L4, L3 is dominated by Zhitu and Wincher, and L4 is dominated by Xiaoma Zhika and Tucson Future. L3's customers are OEMs, which do mass production pre-installation; L4's customers are logistics companies, doing post-installation operations.
Positioning as an L3 intelligent driving enterprise, its product planning focuses on the research and development of "intelligent driving system" products, that is, how to achieve stable and reliable L3 mass production products. Positioned as an L4 intelligent driving enterprise, its product planning focuses on the construction of "driverless freight" networks, that is, how to operate future unmanned vehicles.
For the specific product definition and planning of the three, it will not be elaborated here.
(4) Product market: product market amplifier from 0-N
In this section, we will explain how to ensure market success after the product is available. While product power is important, market power is equally important to ensure the commercial success of products.
At this stage, many intelligent driving enterprises have a scale of about 300 people, and there is no special product market function, so sales and products are very separated; waiting for the development to the scale of 500-1000 people, the product market function is clear, and the product market is a sandwich biscuit that exists between products and sales.
Although the survival conditions of the product market are poor, the author still recommends that intelligent driving enterprises set up special product market functions under the conditions allowed by personnel allocation to be responsible for the whole process of product GTM listing and help enterprises find the combination point between the market and the product.
Due to the coherence of market research, demand management, product planning, and product market work, it is recommended to set up a special product market in a certain product line/scene to be responsible for the whole process of product market related work of the product line.
(5) Summary of the product market system
This chapter describes the whole process from market research to market MM planning of the product market, and here is a brief summary of the key work in the two stages of product launch and post-market launch.
Before the product is launched, the product market conducts industry research, organizes customer research for specific product lines, and cooperates with the product department to carry out demand management and product planning, accompanied by the whole process of products from 0 to 1. And to create a model customer, optimize the product to meet the SOP requirements, and then combined with the previous industry research, customer research, demand management experience, the upstream and downstream needs of the industrial chain to distinguish, so as to divide the strategic partners / customers, profit customers, ecological partners to guide sales.
In the product launch stage, based on the analysis of the product before the market, the service accumulation of model customers empowers sales and brands. At the level of guiding sales, the core is to create a sales toolkit (including sales talk, sales training, service processes, etc.) and help sales reach customers (who the customers are, how to reach, how to convert). In empowering brand products, the core is to refine product selling points, suggest communication channels, and provide input for product brands.
Third, the construction of the product market system in three stages
For intelligent driving enterprises, because most of the founders are technical backgrounds and are the first time to start a business, they often lack systematic product market thinking in the early stage of entrepreneurship, and what is missing in the rapid development of enterprises will be made up. When the enterprise reaches the scale of three or five hundred people, the bottleneck of development begins to appear, so it carries out systematic enterprise reform and finally realizes the first-class product market system. To sum up, the process of building the product market of intelligent driving enterprises can be roughly divided into three stages:
(1) The industry/scene market research stage in the early stage of establishment
Taking intelligent driving in mining areas as an example, companies such as Tage and Huituo are not focusing on automatic driving in mining areas from the beginning. In the early stage of its establishment, it also did passenger cars, sanitation vehicles, V2X, etc., and gradually through the drive of market projects, it was guided into the deep ploughing mining area for automatic driving. If they conduct in-depth market research on trunk lines, ports, sanitation, mining areas, etc. at the beginning of the establishment of the company, and compare the technology, it is very likely that other scenarios will be selected.
In contrast, Zhitu Technology is more cautious in the choice of scenarios, on the one hand, relying on the R&D accumulation of FAW Jiefang commercial vehicles, conducting full research on nine major scenarios such as trunk lines, ports, sanitation, mining areas, and factory areas, on the other hand, it also combines customer needs, mass production possibilities, and commercialization prospects to do a comprehensive analysis to obtain a strategic route layout of "one high and two low".
Sufficient market research in the early stage makes Zhitu very firm in strategic choice, so as to have a sufficient methodology for ecological construction and a firm and flexible way of cooperation. Not only has the mass production of the "high-level automatic driving system" been realized in the high-speed scene, but also the commercialization of sanitation and port scenes has made breakthroughs.
(2) Carry out in-depth demand management for specific fields to achieve rapid development
After the end of the first phase of market research, intelligent driving enterprises began to carry out in-depth demand management for their own customers in order to seek rapid development.
Taking the port scene as an example, Si Nian Zhi driving proposed to do the heavy asset operation of the port autonomous driving freight, Xijing Technology gradually focused on the port information construction to realize technology realization, Zhongke Spruce used the port automatic driving as a model to try to achieve large-scale application of PMCW millimeter wave radar, and Zhitu Technology adopted an open cooperation model in the port scene.
(3) Accumulate big data for specific fields to innovate products/services/models
At this stage, China may be experiencing the same industrial transformation in different industries. From the perspective of the development process of G7 in the logistics industry, whether it is equipment or transportation, it has undergone mechanization, informatization and intelligent industrial transformation. Mechanization has become the infrastructure of the industry, informatization is gradually being accepted in the past decade, and the wave of intelligence is gradually coming.
Intelligent industrial iteration will give birth to new producers, service providers, and consumers, thus reconstructing the industrial pattern. The advent of autonomous driving technology is accelerating this change, and companies that grasp the core elements of the industry are bound to win.
Here we share two articles, respectively, from the perspective of service intelligence and vehicle equipment intelligence, respectively, to interpret the product, service, model innovation path. The two articles are: "FAW Jiefang Intelligent Development Pilot Road" and "Zhai Xue soul: intelligent industry - G7 practice report".
Fourth, how to build a product market system
Returning to the practical level, if intelligent driving enterprises want to build a first-class product market system, it can be divided into three stages to implement, namely: the landing of the product market from scratch, the creation of benchmark product market business lines, and the realization of a first-class product market system.
(1) The product market from scratch has landed
First of all, a small team is formed from sales and products, and market research, customer research, demand management, product planning, product marketing and other work are started. At the same time, preliminary product marketing processes and documentation are formed. Through the process and documentation, let the product market process run first internally, and accumulate the original product market data.
(2) Create a market business line for benchmark products
If the intelligent driving enterprise has multiple business lines, it is recommended to choose the most core business line, carry out product market pilots internally, and make up for what is missing in the whole process of the product market. At the same time, the external consulting team is invited to publicize within the enterprise, form a special product marketing team, and implant the product marketing process into the daily management work.
(3) Realize the first-class product market system
Based on the results of the second phase of the experiment, the "Product and Market Committee" was formed to be responsible for the commercial success of all of the company's product lines. At the same time, the process will be informatized, the process-oriented organizational reform will be carried out, the responsibilities and rights of each department will be clarified, and the "force out of a hole is profitable and a hole".
5. Summary
The construction of the product market system is an iterative process. In the incubation period of the industry, the focus of the system is to support enterprises to conduct full research on various scenarios, provide input for product research and development, and consolidate the business line of enterprises. With the gradual maturity of the industry and the continuous focus of corporate strategy, the focus of the system is to find differentiation, amplify core competitiveness, and ensure product success. When the industry declines, the focus of the system is to find a second curve to support the longevity of the company's foundation.
At this stage, automatic driving has entered the stage of intensive cultivation of each scenario, and the track selection of each player is basically clear, and the requirements of enterprises for the product market system at this stage have increased again. The product market system may become the next point of control to help companies stand out.
Due to the limitation of time and energy, this article does not fully study similar enterprises such as Youdao Zhitu, Zhijia Technology, Hongjing Zhidao, Qingzhi Technology and so on in the case analysis of trunk logistics scenarios, and hopes that readers and friends will criticize and correct more.