Megvii to B's core "secret"

Efficiency towards space.

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Author | Gao Xiusong

Edit | Yu fast

"To be or not to be，that is the question."

Shakespeare's widely circulated famous quote was sinicized by Mr. Zhu Shenghao, a domestic translation scholar, as "survival or destruction, this is a problem", which has become a rare stroke of God in the translation industry.

The universal value of this sentence is that whether it is people, enterprises, organizations, often face a choice, a wrong decision is likely to bring endless pain and suffering, in the case of high cost of trial and error, no matter what to do, should be asked: do, or do not do?

For AI companies, it's time to make a choice.

After more than ten years of precipitation and exploration, AI is no longer a castle in the air, but also faded the mysterious cloak, and has become a technology within reach and can be perceived by ordinary people. The capital story can no longer be written, and it has become the top priority of AI companies to achieve its own "hematopoiesis" through commercialization.

What lies ahead of AI companies is not the philosophical proposition of "to be or not to be", but the business choice problem of "to B or not to B". The relationship between the two is that AI must be, and can choose whether to B or not, but to B directly affects AI "survival or destruction".

In the question "Answer to B or not to B", Megvii chose to B, which is the enterprise-side business.

Since the establishment of the Enterprise Business Division (EBG) in early 2020, in the past two years, Megvii has continued to exert efforts on the B-side, whether it is from the organizational structure, or human resources, technology and other resources, you can see Megvii's investment in expanding the B-end business.

However, if you do not answer megvii's why, how to do it, and how to do a better B-end business, these three questions are like the organization has lost its action plan, and the policy lacks top-level design, which will only cause chaos in the end.

After following the report on Megvii for many years and having conversations with a number of Megvii executives, Leifeng tried to answer these three questions.

1

Why to B?

Let's look at the momentum first.

Today, in the era of AIoT, the further development and landing of AI, cloud computing, big data and other technologies are driving the most extensive wave of digitalization.

From the perspective of enterprises, under the practical problems such as aging population and labor shortage, more and more enterprises are embracing digitalization and using artificial intelligence, big data and other technologies to improve efficiency; at the same time, in the epidemic environment, the rise in operation and management costs has also prompted enterprises to use digital tools and systems to reduce costs and increase efficiency and improve management efficiency.

From the policy side, the government also actively encourages the digital transformation of enterprises, digitalization has appeared in government documents such as the government work report and the 14th Five-Year Plan for many times, and has introduced a variety of policies to help enterprises digitally transform.

From the perspective of market trends, whether it is Internet companies such as Tencent Ali or ICT companies such as Huawei, they have already targeted B-end business, invested a lot of people and property, and aimed at seizing the digital market highland.

As the saying goes: "The disease of the water, as for the drifter, the potential also." "

For enterprises that do B-end business, customers have needs, the government has policies, the market has competition, and the prospects are very broad. Therefore, Megvii's choice to B is an inevitable choice that occurs under the wave of digital transformation.

Look at the shape again.

The so-called shape refers to the enterprise itself.

After AI enters the commercial landing stage, AI companies also urgently need to find industries where their own technologies and products can land, and expand their business to make their own blood. There are roughly three types of customers for enterprises to do business: consumer business (C), enterprise business (B) and government side business (G).

These three types of customers have different understandings, needs, and ability to pay for AI.

Ordinary consumers' understanding of AI is more distorted, or underestimated, or overestimated, and for consumer business, AI companies are also difficult to develop a phenomenon-level product to promote AI landing, coupled with the long development cycle of AI products, high costs, it is difficult to pull down marginal costs through large-scale shipments. Therefore, C-end business may not be suitable for AI companies to be fully rolled out at this stage.

There is a more obvious difference between B/G users and C-end users: the ability to pay, the willingness to pay are stronger, and there is a huge demand for AI empowerment. However, unlike the B-side, there are many large projects on the G-side, but the number is limited, and it needs more stable channels; but the B-end business is more inclined to "complete market competition", the market itself is large enough, and there are enough players.

Therefore, as an AI company, Megvii is also the most suitable choice for the B-end business at this stage.

"Potential" is the external cause, "shape" is the internal cause, and the combination of shape and potential can produce a massive amount of potential energy. The reason why Megvii chose to do B is actually a business strategy based on its own AI capabilities, positioning, and judgment of market prospects and comprehensive factors.

2

How to B?

Megvii's B-end business started very early, and by 2020, it will grow into three major business segments: consumer Internet of Things, urban Internet of Things and supply chain Internet of Things.

In January 2020, Megvii officially established the Enterprise Business Division (EBG), and five months later, Megvii announced the "Enterprise Service Strategy Map" for the first time.

"The establishment of EBG is not an accidental decision, but a planning and upgrading of Megvii's business development, which is an inevitable trend."

This was the signal sent by EBG to the industry at that time, and it is clear that the trend here is the previously mentioned digital wave and the demand of AI companies themselves to pursue landing business scenarios.

However, B-side services face a problem: fragmentation. Because B-end customers come from various industries, and the scene requirements are very different, it is difficult to form standardized products like consumer business, so B-end business has a strong challenge to AI enterprises themselves.

Megvii's play is divided into two layers: one is inward and the other is external.

Internally, Megvii has launched organizational changes and released a new strategy, namely the EBG division established in 2020, and the "1+3+6" strategy.

Specifically, the EBG business unit integrates the resources of the original large customer business unit and commercial business unit, and collaborates in the form of a business department by integrating the product delivery center, software research and development center, hardware research and development center, solution center, and strong customer development and customer support teams.

The purpose of this is to break through the chimney barriers formed between the original departments, reduce communication costs, and improve the efficiency of departmental collaboration, so as to quickly respond to the fragmented needs of enterprise customers and shorten the solution delivery cycle.

The "1+3+6" strategy determines the development direction from the top-level design, that is, "one platform, three main tracks, and six major segments" as the guide, and all departments deploy and mobilize around the strategy.

Externally, Megvii has established a preliminary partnership system.

When choosing a cooperative enterprise, Megvii first chooses an enterprise with a certain degree of digitalization and informatization, which has accumulated data, can realize AI algorithm training, and can make AI products run and use.

As an AIoT company, Megvii itself has divided its own boundaries, that is, "doing something and not doing something", not for "some industries with very narrow and very complex industries", but choosing to work with those ecological partners who understand the industry to provide platform and software and hardware product support for the latter.

Under the two-pronged approach of internal and external operations, Megvii uses EBG as a combat unit, cooperates with the "1+3+6" action guide, and then cooperates with the important foreign aid of partners to jointly fight in the to B battlefield.

3

How to do better in the to B field?

"Efficiency towards space."

This is a new pain point that Megvii has explored in the past two years.

In the past, in the IT era, enterprises to "things, processes to be efficient", gave birth to ERP, CRM and other systems, but also achieved SAP, Oracle, Yonyou network and other well-known manufacturers.

In the IoT era, enterprises began to "to the object, the machine to efficiency", through the access to a large number of IoT equipment, so that a large number of data in the production process can be automatically acquired, uploaded, to improve the production efficiency of equipment, the formation of SCAD, MES, PLM and other systems, and a number of companies that provide automation services.

Now, in the era of AIoT, through the deep integration of AI and IoT, open up the two-way interconnection of device perception and execution, on this basis, build an intelligent and digital production and living space, and "efficiency to space" has become a new demand for B-end customers.

In other words, in this wave of digitalization, Megvii aims at the digitization of space.

The so-called spatial digitization does not refer only to physical spaces, such as physical offices, but to integrate the three elements of people, things and things in this space to create a digital space.

In this digital space, people's experience, dignity, etc. are guaranteed; with the blessing of AIoT technology and products, people's work efficiency and enterprise production/management/operation efficiency have been significantly improved.

Leifeng network learned that Megvii's space digitalization mainly covers three major areas: office space, public space and production space.

Digitalization of office space: including some smart office applications;

Digitization of public space: including various identifications such as vigilance and safety;

Digitalization of production spaces: including detection of whether people are wearing hard hats, overalls, and other illegal operations.

So, how does Megvii create "space digitalization"?

Simply put, it is a three-step process.

The first step: establish a digital perception super entrance, that is, open up the shaft system formed by various spaces, and promote the closed-loop application of multiple value scenarios;

Step 2: Build a digital perception system, including AIoT applications, platforms, and various devices that manage the cloud, edge, and end, which together constitute a "new type of infrastructure."

Step Three: The process of analyzing decisions to automating execution is further driven by "digital perception."

This complete set of digital perception systems is an important cornerstone for Megvii to realize the digitization of space. Megvii EBG's mission is to "provide a highly intelligent digital perception system" to build a spatial digital cooperation ecosystem to achieve cost reduction and efficiency increase for enterprises/organizations and help transformation.

In addition to the way of playing, Megvii also has actions at the product layer and the partner layer.

At the product layer, Megvii launched a complete set of AIoT products as a support, including front-ends such as Shenxing panel machine and Minguan IPC (that is, one of the super entrances), as well as edge-side devices such as Hongtu and Rubik's Cube, and intelligent hardware on the edge side plus the edge side, which together constitute the basic products of AIoT; at the same time, Megvii also launched the Pangu application platform.

At the partner level, Megvii released a new "AIoT Ecosystem Partner Program".

Previously, Megvii and its partners were "upstream and downstream, manufacturers and channels", selling standard products and programs to partners, and ultimately serving end users, completing the closed loop of the entire front line.

After the launch of the plan, the original model will be upgraded to realize the transformation from channel-based cooperation to complementary capability cooperation. We will serve industry customers through three types of partners: national industry ISVs, regional ISVs, and product solution providers. For different types of partners, the content and methods of cooperation are also different.

For example, isva may have resources and channels in a specific region, but lack of standard products, Megvii provides AI single products, AIoT software and hardware integration products; and for product solution providers, with hardware research and development, product production capabilities, but lack of AI algorithms, then Megvii provides algorithms, SDKs, etc., to help them do their own products.

It can be seen that Megvii's thinking and exploration in the digital transformation of enterprises has always kept pace with the times and observed market trends, and after anchoring the direction, it has quickly upgraded the path.

This may be the "secret" at the core of Megvii to B.

4

epilogue

Under the wave of enterprise digital transformation, for AI enterprises, to B is already a must, but the understanding of B-end business will also form different ideas and methods. After years of exploration, Megvii has gradually found a suitable model for itself: product-centric, to create a multi-level ecological partnership system.

Although it is sick to walk alone, the crowd is even farther. In the future, Megvii will work with partners to open up space for digitalization, to B and to Be.

END