The transformation of the relations of production is only the first step.
Wen 丨 祝莹丽
Edited by 丨Guan Yiwen
On January 6, the 6th day of becoming the president of China's digital business sector, Dai Shan announced the full integration of Taobao and Tmall. Since then, Alibaba Group's two most core business groups have been scattered, forming three centers of users, industries and platforms.
For most Ali employees, in Ali, there are few adjustments like this one, making everyone feel that it is "the trend of the times" and "inevitable".
Of course, their subtext may also be that the problem has already arisen and been perceived.
The antonym of merging, "secession", is the reason. An employee of Ali's marketing line mentioned that in the past, Taobao and Tmall people were all doing their own thing, with few intersections and lack of unified guidance ideas. One service provider felt that the original Taobao and Tmall's respective industry operation logic was conflicting with each other, the former to attract more merchants, the latter in pursuit of the maximization of traffic efficacy, encouraging the survival of the fittest.
This adjustment means that this organizational framework that began in 2011 and deliberately distinguishes between individual merchants and brand merchants will come to an end.
Founded in 2003, Taobao is an 18-year-old business; Tmall was born out of Taobao, and it also has a 10-year history, as the most core business of this listed company, the two contribute more than 80% of Ali's revenue.
"LatePost" learned that on December 30, 2021, China's digital business sector officially announced the suspension of the development model aimed at GMV growth at a management meeting, which indicates that the two of Ali's largest and most complex businesses will usher in changes in products, rules, services and operating mechanisms.
The change from two business groups to three centers is that Ali began to examine itself more thoroughly under the pressure and the end of the growth era, and re-designed and organized its own business from the perspective of consumers.
More than two months have passed, and there have been more specific changes under the general framework. "LatePost" learned that before the Spring Festival, the adjustment of the business leaders at the P9 level has been basically completed; one month after the Spring Festival, various departments have entered the planning stage.
New strategies and targets are being developed intensively: some are ready for implementation at the first level, while others are still being fine-tuned frequently and plan to finalize the programme before the end of the fiscal year.
The brands of Taobao and Tmall are independent
But the industry is consolidated
"LatePost" learned that from the marketing department level, the brands of Taobao and Tmall will still be independent. Daniel Zhang shared it at Alibaba's internal CEO face-to-face "juice meeting", and he strongly recommended that Dai Shan keep two marketing departments.
He said that in the past, users did not feel deeply about the two brands because in the decision-making factors, performance and after-sales links, Taobao and Tmall did not form a difference, and the characteristics and differences of the two brands in the future should not only come from the product itself, but include a full range of experiences.
However, from the strategy of communication, a marketing department employee revealed that in the future changes, tmall is a subset of Taobao, and the relationship has been relatively clear.
Under the premise of brand independence, the industry operation merger of Taobao Tmall is more thorough: there is only one person in charge in an industry, and the general manager responsibility system of the category is implemented.
"LatePost" learned that the adjusted industry No. 1 has the original Tmall industry leader, such as the head of consumer electronics He Chunlei (Flower name Hyun Qing); home improvement home is Xu Zhong (Flower Name Enzhong).
He Chunlei previously served as the general manager of Tmall Fresh and the general manager of Tmall mobile phone digital industry from 2018 to 2020. In 2021, after Chui Xue, the former head of the consumer electronics and home improvement business department, was responsible for the entire Tmall industry, He Chunlei became the head of the consumer electronics business department.
Xu Zhong served as the general manager of Tmall Consumer Electronics Digital Entertainment and AutoMotive Products, and became the general manager of Tmall Home Improvement Division in 2021. It is understood that the new home improvement and home furnishing industry is merged by the original Tmall home improvement, Taobao Jiyou home, per flat per house and other three business lines.
The adjusted industry No. 1 also has the original Taobao industry, such as the person in charge of clothing fashion is Chen Lina (flower name Qiaoqiao). In the field of clothing, Taobao stores, known as "bazaar stores", were originally on par with Tmall's brand stores in terms of size and importance. In addition, the original Tmall person in charge of the apparel industry left his job more than a year ago, and Tmall's big industry was once split into multiple vertical industries such as men's and women's clothing, fashion accessories, etc., and there was no other general manager, and Chen Lina is an old Ali, who has been in the field of clothing for more than ten years, and his qualifications are enough to control the entire industry.
Another important industry, the head of "FMCG", is Lu Jianmei (Hua Ming Menggu), who has just been transferred from Tmall International Business Unit. Lu Jianmei previously served as the deputy general manager of Tmall Apparel, and then promoted to the head of Tmall import and export business, COO of Koala Haigou and CEO of Kaola Haishou. Chen Xi, the previous head of FMCG, was transferred to be in charge of Alibaba's automobile business.
In addition, after the addition of the first-level category last year, pets and trendy toys also have a separate person in charge as a first-class industry. Fresh is also separated from "food fresh" for independent operation, and there are currently more than 10 industries in the entire industrial center of Taobao.
In the past, the problem of Taobao and Tmall's industries operating separately was reflected in various aspects.
The first is the fragmentation of marketing activities. Ali's industry operations usually take marketing nodes as the baton, in the same industry Taobao and Tmall have their own rhythms, it is difficult to unify, only such as "Juhuasuan" such a group-level marketing IP can occasionally coordinate an industry from beginning to end. However, this kind of collaboration is usually a project system, and it is difficult to precipitate and promote the development of industry products and business.
In the face of a double 11 or 618 promotion, the two divided operating systems are also facing competition with each other. A Taobao clothing merchant with more than 1 million store fans said that every time they get a big promotion, they need to make way for Tmall merchants, and the traffic is artificially tilted to Tmall, and "unfair" is their most profound experience.
In daily operations, Taobao's overall traffic weight will also be lower than that of Tmall stores. Coupled with the fact that it is generally difficult for this group to buy paid traffic such as diamond exhibitions and through trains (Ali's online paid marketing method) as often as Tmall merchants, the Matthew effect in the industry began to occur.
A service provider believes that the essence behind this "unfairness" is the contradiction in operational logic that exists in the development of Taobao and Tmall to the present.
Tmall's GMV is one of the most important goals of Tao's e-commerce, and Jiang Fan's first task after taking office in 2019 is to announce that he hopes tmall GMV will double in 3 years, and has just reached the target line in 2021 with a score of 4.12 trillion yuan.
Taobao is operated as Ali's large market, the richness of merchants, the diversification of supply, "almighty Taobao" was once its business strategy.
Two business strategies and the same set of traffic mechanisms are fundamentally unfair. From the perspective of the platform, the traffic tilt to Tmall is the way to maximize efficiency, but in the long run, it is not conducive to the ecological development of Taobao, and when more new platforms appear outside, it will face the loss of merchants.
The above-mentioned Taobao merchants feel that the traffic mechanism of Douyin is more "fair", "as long as you are formal, and then you insist on broadcasting every day, it will really give you traffic." ”
Returning to the industry perspective is the starting point of the merger. Daniel Zhang said that the goal of the merger is to start from the characteristics of the industry, not just to divide the traffic according to Taobao and Tmall, "the result of the final business volume in a specific category, how much Taobao accounts for, how much Tmall accounts for, should be a natural result, not a planned economy." ”
The benefits of the category general manager responsibility system are also obvious, and it can be tried to be more in line with the characteristics of the industry in terms of industry products, marketing, and performance experience.
The direction is determined, but it falls to every industry, specific to every person who does business, and the confusion is still greater than clear. Some Ali employees said that although the planning has been carried out for more than a month, it is difficult to be clear in such a short period of time, "who is the main, look at the ecology or look at the income, the industry side is not easy to solve." ”
"Good shopping" is a new idea for traffic sources
The industry merger points to reducing internal friction, and the bigger background is that the Taobao platform is facing the problem of insufficient traffic distribution.
A clothing merchant said that since the beginning of this year, the traffic on Taobao has become less, and now the daily sales of their store are 40,000 yuan. In contrast, a more high-end clothing store opened on Douyin in January currently has a daily sales of 800,000 per day, counting the 50% return rate, and the final transaction is also 400,000, which is ten times that of Taobao.
Taobao now has two ideas to solve the traffic problem: one is content, and the other is to improve the consumer experience.
An employee who visited said that after the organizational upgrade, they can be sure that content is the general direction of Taobao. But how to combine with shopping, there is no plan, their current goal is still to increase the user time.
Consumer experience is the new thinking of the platform after the era of growth.
Back in 2020, that's what Ali was trying to solve. On November 13 of that year, an Ali employee posted on the intranet that the price of one thing he was squatting on double 11 was not the lowest. He thus raised questions about Tmall's complex marketing mechanism – which was also the source of the average consumer's slot for Double 11.
There are not many posts such as intranets, but this one rarely got a reply from Jiang Fan. Jiang Fan, who was the president of Taobao, Tmall and Alimama at the time, was not a person who liked to communicate with everyone on the intranet. Jiang Fan replied that consumer price perception is their biggest concern, from the preparation of double 11, they have set up a special team to solve these problems, and then they will continue to select Ali employees to communicate with the product team.
But he also mentioned that to completely solve the problem of consumer experience, "please understand the complexity of the technical implementation logic and business logic of a platform that has been operating for 17 years, which may be unimaginable to the outside world." We still have a lot to keep improving, and we're not happy with where we are today. ”
Technical difficulties were partially answered in the following year, such as the expansion of shopping cart capacity, the faster display of express delivery pickup codes, the classification of products after search, etc., but the problems of business logic have always been difficult to solve.
It's about the balance between the interests of merchants and consumers, the balance between the various businesses, in other words, under the premise of GMV-oriented and growth-oriented, it is difficult to achieve "both and want".
The resource battle on the homepage is the most typical example. This is the place with the highest commercialization and realization, the embodiment of the most important business of the platform, and the first impression of consumers coming to Taobao. It is not easy to unify the interests of the three.
The new architecture of the User Development Center attempts to solve this problem.
"LatePost" learned that most of the current user center and platform center business comes from the Tao system platform and ecological business department headed by the former Tang Xing (Hua Ming Ping Domain). For example, search and algorithms are assigned to the platform strategy center; user-related products and strategies are assigned to the user center.
In the original business, the User Development Center has newly added a homepage and recommended product group to specialize in product operation and intelligent recommendation of the homepage.
An informed Alibaba employee mentioned that consumer experience will become their first goal next, and their strategy will change from traffic thinking to user experience thinking, "The product side, the rule side, the service side, and the operation mechanism will change." ”
He explained that the previous idea was to make a balance and trade-off between the business and the business, which was a matter of competition between departments and departments, but it did not necessarily bring a good experience to consumers. Now, everyone's KPIs and weekly reports have begun to ask for explanations of what problems are solved from the consumer's point of view.
"LatePost" learned that at present, Ali has also set up a decision-making group of cross-departmental Leaders to solve the problem of "user experience".
At the juice meeting, a Taobao employee asked Daniel Zhang, what are the three core things to do in the next year? Daniel Zhang said that he can't even think of three things, only two things, one is to solve the basic user pain points, and the other is to make Taobao easy to shop
Good shopping is the source of traffic. Regarding the relationship between the two, many Alibaba employees have similar statements:
"Whoever is good to the user is considerate of the user, and the traffic is on the side of whom."
"Back to the roots of business, who's generating traffic? Is it to solve the problem of consumers, I am not to solve it well enough. Only when it is solved well can the traffic continue to come naturally. ”
A merchant said directly, "Ali must change it, whether it is the traffic purchased outside or the traffic created by himself, he wants to monetize as soon as there is traffic, which is actually a big problem." Utilitarianization is actually very difficult to generate that kind of native traffic. ”
Recently, it became Dai Shan who succeeded Jiang Fan in responding to consumer experience problems on the intranet, and she followed up with messages under a number of posts reflecting the buyer's experience, and circled the corresponding person in charge. An Ali employee who defended his rights after the intranet said after receiving a response that he hoped that he would not need to go to the intranet after the after-sales rights protection, and Dai Shan replied, "I also hope to work together."
Taobao Tmall is divided into ten years
In addition to Ali, there are almost no examples of e-commerce platforms at home and abroad completely separating individuals and brand merchants, but looking back at that period of history, everything is not without basis.
Taobao began with a bazaar of small and medium-sized sellers, and its scale gradually increased, and the endless problem of counterfeiting and shoddy products also followed. In 2008, Taobao Mall began to appear as a sub-column of Taobao.
By 2011, due to the success of Double 11 and the general trend of external B2C, Taobao Mall was officially structurally independent, and the president at the time was Daniel Zhang, the current chairman of Alibaba Group.
But the cut between Taobao and Tmall (Taobao Mall) was also accompanied by severe pain.
On October 11, 2011, 7,000 people from the "anti-Taobao Alliance" assembled in an organized and unified operation to attack the brand sellers of the time and concentrate on cash withdrawals to run Alipay; the number of this alliance reached 55,000 at its peak. At the same time, there were also sellers who raised banners in the Taobao headquarters building to demonstrate in protest.
The event has since been dubbed the "October Siege". The trigger was that on October 10, Taobao Mall issued an announcement on the renewal of investment and the adjustment of rules: the annual fee of technical services was increased from the previous 6,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan and 60,000 yuan; the amount of the default deposit of the shop rose from 10,000 yuan in the past to 50,000 yuan, 100,000 yuan and 150,000 yuan. Renewals are one week after the rules are issued and will be due on December 26.
From a business point of view, Ali's choice at that time was beyond reproach. First, Ali e-commerce needs to more thoroughly cut with the impression of "fake goods" and "inefficient service", and second, in the external competitive environment, B2C platforms such as JD.com and Dangdang have become a catch-up trend; of course, more importantly, Ali needs to make money.
Therefore, even if it was tragic, looking back now, an employee of Taobao Mall at that time still felt that "this strategy was right"
In 2012, on the basis of splitting individual merchants and brand merchants, the brands of Taobao and Taobao Mall continued to split, the latter renamed "Tmall", and then had its own Slogan, spokesperson, independent brand design and so on.
But then came the era of wireless. In 2014, with the failure of other strategies, Ali began to use the group's efforts to build a mobile super application "mobile phone Taobao", Taobao and Tmall from this moment on, the front end has not really been separated.
Organizationally, it has also been briefly "integrated". In 2015, because of the lack of achievements in the industry, Tmall president Wang Yulei (Qiao Feng) was dismissed, and Taobao, Tmall, and Juhuasuan were handed over to Zhang Jianfeng for unified management.
By the end of the year, with the determination of the new organizational framework of "small front desk and large middle office", Taobao, mobile phone Taobao, and Tmall belonged to the retail e-commerce business group and were transferred to the Daniel Zhang. Until 2017, Taobao and Tmall were implementing the class committee responsibility system, and the team made a unified decision.
In this process, the focus of user products and platform rules is left to Taobao to explore; industry development, brand marketing and other practices that are closer to business are almost completed by Tmall.
By 2016, mobile Taobao merged with Taobao, and the transaction proportion of mobile terminals has reached 80%; in the same year, Tmall merged with Juhuasuan to establish industry business groups such as fast-moving consumer goods, electrical appliances and home improvement, clothing and apparel, as well as marketing platforms and operation centers, known as "three vertical and two horizontal". In that year, the turnover of Tmall Double 11 exceeded 100 billion, reaching 120.7 billion.
In 2017, Ali entered its heyday, and its market value doubled year-on-year, approaching 500 billion. At the end of the year, the Taobao business group and the Tmall business group each set up a president, the former is Jiang Fan, the latter is Jing Jie.
Daniel Zhang mentioned their respective merits and contributions in the open letter of appointment, Jiang Fan "has keen consumer insights and product insights", which promotes wirelessization, content, and data drive of thousands of people; Jingjie has "rich business experience" and "has a deep understanding of customer pain points".
This is also the core mission of Taobao and Tmall. Taobao continues to develop in the direction of productization, doing content ecology and creating new traffic sources; the industry direction has begun to explore new and peculiar, focusing on the richness of merchants. Tmall will serve businesses, do the ultimate commercialization as the primary goal, after the double 11 marketing IP, Tmall also pushed the "super brand", "super category" "small black box" and other marketing business, the purpose is to do business outside the double 11 business.
This is a strange separation and balance, both the most income comes from Tmall, the most traffic comes from Taobao - Daniel Zhang has also ridiculed, "The ideal life is Tmall, Tmall grows on Taobao." This is the reality. ”
This sense of separation is perceivable to all. An employee who worked on Tmall in his early years said that by around 2016, the situation had exceeded the original intention of Taobao and Tmall separation at the beginning.
At that time, Ali had a Taobao brand team, but later found that incubating a brand was far from introducing a brand quickly and effectively, so Tmall went farther and farther on the road of pursuing big brands and pursuing internationalization, and the threshold was getting higher and higher, and even blocked the way for Taobao merchants to upgrade into Tmall, "At that time, many friends came to ask, how can I enter Tmall? After doing Taobao for many years, I found that I couldn't get into Tmall. ”
A Taobao merchant with annual sales of tens of millions of dollars also corroborated that they originally wanted to open a Tmall store, but considering the risk of migration, "they can only rely on manual notification of members, and they may only be able to pour 50% in the past" - so they gave up.
In the past few years when Ali has been fully pursuing brand upgrading, Pinduoduo has quietly risen by relying on its insight into the sinking market and many merchants transferred from Taobao.
By 2018, Pinduoduo has become a new opponent that Ali has to pay attention to, and integration has once again become a new direction. In March 2019, Jiang Fan concurrently served as the president of Taobao and Tmall and began to uniformly allocate traffic and supply.
However, the battle against Pinduoduo is in the ascendant, and after Douyin cut off its external link with Taobao and decided to devote itself to e-commerce, Ali was again affected by the traffic side.
The integration is still continuing, the original Taobao user products, platform rules and other businesses are neutralized, and the technical businesses such as search and recommendation are gradually unified and handed over to Tang Xing (Flower Name Ping domain), which has become the prototype of the current user and platform center business. At the same time, technology and industry have also tried to open up, for example, in 2021, search technology and industry combined, Taobao search for an item can first display style classification, improving the user's decision-making efficiency.
By 2021, the architectural pattern of Taobao, Tmall business group, Taobao platform and ecological business department has been formed. At that time, with the original industry end such as C2M division independent for Taobao special edition, idle fish division actually independent accounting, the industry has only clothing fashion, home decoration still has a certain scale volume. This forms the basis for the merger of Taobao and Tmall from the industry.
From this point of view, in the process of Taobao and Tmall from point of view to integration, Jiang Fan has completed his mission.
Why now?
A more thorough opening and integration requires sufficient external pressure and greater internal determination, as well as the right people.
Over the past year, Ali's external pressures have been evident. The regulatory warnings given by anti-monopoly fines and the continuous impact of Douyin e-commerce have brought severe tests.
A former Employee of Tmall Industry told LatePost that in 2021, some of Ali's industries have negative growth, especially in the apparel industry, and small and medium-sized businesses have been shaken out because of too expensive traffic costs.
The internal determination comes from Ali's clear understanding of a reality: the era of high growth that once relied on digital stimulation business excitement has passed. Last quarter, Alibaba's revenue only increased by 10% year-on-year, and Taobao Tmall's customer management fee, which is the core, fell for the first time year-on-year.
The logic of growth fails, returning to the origin of platform business, returning to user value, emphasizing refined operation and "high-quality growth", which has become the consensus of everyone.
An old employee who has left Alibaba is pleased with this change of thinking, "Growth has a peak, and at this stage, I think that the pursuit of the return of users, the sense of experience of business operation is very correct." He even felt that now was the time for Alibaba employees to regain a sense of awe from the strength and arrogance of previous high growth.
But returning to the perspective of the industry and the perspective of users, to carry out more thorough reforms, it is necessary to deal with many personnel relations, break more thresholds and barriers, "to be able to calm all people, you should let go, you should fight, to make the whole internal whether it is the new old school, conservatives, reformists, radicals and so on." ”
This is not necessarily what Jiang Fan is good at. An Ali employee feels that Jiang Fan's thinking is more data and technology-oriented, and his own qualifications in Ali are not enough for him to break the walls of departments large and small.
Dai Shan is a more suitable person. She is a member of Ali's founding team, the Eighteen Arhats, work number 11. She has worked as a salesman, responsible for human resources and customer service at Alibaba, and doubled her revenue and profits in two years after leading the B2B business in 2017. Since the beginning of 2020, Taote's growth has added another eye to her achievements.
Employees who came into contact with her described her as an amiable, delicate person, "like a big sister." This style also continues to management, "it belongs to the kind of spring wind and rain that exerts its appeal and influence." Some people also added that Dai Shan's gentleness is also reflected in the fact that she will give subordinates the space to make decisions in the employment of people, believing that professionalism and not all have to decide for themselves. This makes it easier to lead the team to a smooth transition in the reform.
Dai Shan's past experience in customer service is also the key to Ali's transition from "GMV growth" to user experience. In May 2014, she took over the customer service department and has since built a complete customer service system. Alibaba employees commented, "Mm The good point is that she can calmly stand on the side of the user to see the business, because the user can never be wrong." ”
LatePost learned that less than 3 months after taking office, Dai Shan was already exerting her influence.
Employees of Da Taobao said that Dai Shan would look at the business from the perspective of a pure user, and in the "user experience" solution group, she found that a problem would be thrown in at any time. Her influence seeped into the business level, and user experience became a priority for executives to subtly consider the problem.
In addition, the team's report as a whole has also begun to be de-formalized and vernacular, and the report can not be encouraged not to do PPT, but to communicate with word documents in advance.
"New official" Dai Shan is also a person who does not love the old. The person who reported it already felt that it had been done and should have been done now, and that it did not hold true in her case.
However, the transformation of the relations of production is only the first step. For a large company, effective strategy and implementation will bring about real change. A number of merchants interviewed by LatePost said that they have not yet felt the change, some of them have eager expectations, and some of them have little interest under the stimulation of more external traffic dividends.