Wen | Li Yipeng
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"When I looked around and couldn't find my dream car, I decided to build one myself."
The person who said this was Feiley Porsche, the legendary car designer and creator of the classic sports car 911 series. Since the first Porsche sports car he designed rolled off the production line, the title of "King of the Track" has hardly changed hands. In the 24 Hours of Le Mans alone, Porsche won 19 titles.
Porsche Tayan interior design sketch
Since its birth, the name "Porsche" has always meant speed, extremes, and constant innovation – even seventy-four years later.
In 2021, when the global automotive market was hit hard, Porsche achieved an annual revenue growth of 15%, exceeding 33.1 billion euros, a 27% increase in sales profit, and the number of product deliveries exceeded the 300,000 mark for the first time. At the recent results conference, Mr. Obomu, Chairman of the Executive Board of Porsche Global Oliver Blume) called 2021 "the most glorious year of achievements."
The Chinese market is once again playing an important role: in 2021, Porsche delivered nearly 96,000 vehicles in China, an increase of 8% year-on-year, making it Porsche's largest single market in the world for seven consecutive years.
Porsche's investment in the Chinese market is also obvious to all.
Taking digital transformation as an example, in January 2021, Porsche transformed its digital team in China into an independent digital technology company, planning to create a locally based digital experience in China.
"The average age of Porsche owners in China is 35 years old, more than ten years younger than abroad." Zhang Junfeng, managing director of Porsche (Shanghai) Digital Technology Co., Ltd., told 36Kr, "They have higher requirements for digital experiences, and they also make us have to speed up the pace." ”
Average age of Porsche owners in China: 35 years
Five years ago, China's technology industry was in turmoil.
In 2018, artificial intelligence became the hottest topic, the total number of cumulative users exceeded 600 million after the Launch of WeChat Mini Programs one and a half years ago, and the cumulative financing of new domestic car-making forces exceeded 130 billion yuan throughout the year, setting a record.
The continent attracts attention from all over the world, and Porsche is no exception.
Just in 2018, members of Porsche's Executive Board teamed up in China and spent half a month visiting China's most famous Internet giants and technology start-ups.
This detailed and in-depth field trip made Porsche managers realize that China has a completely different digital ecology from other regions, and the product and service experience synchronized with the world can no longer meet the needs of the local market.
In March 2019, Porsche China officially launched its digital team. Zhang Junfeng, who has worked in well-known technology companies such as Microsoft and Xiaomi, and has more than 20 years of digital experience, became the leader of the team.
Zhang Junfeng, Managing Director of Porsche (Shanghai) Digital Technology Co., Ltd
"The establishment of a local digital team is due to the completely different Internet usage habits in the Chinese and foreign markets." Zhang Junfeng explains, "The simplest understanding is that overseas consumers are used in web pages, while in China there is no doubt that WeChat and mobile apps are, which is a huge gap in experience design. ”
Therefore, compared with other parts of the world, in order to gain the recognition of potential Chinese consumers, it is also necessary to do a digital experience that is in line with local habits in addition to mechanical performance, reliability and driving experience.
Taking Porsche's first electric car, the Taycan, as an example, in the Taycan's exclusive app, the Porsche China Digital Technology team designed and developed a large number of interconnection functions, such as planning charging piles along the way according to the remaining power, and pre-booking the charging position to lock the smart unlock.
The interconnection function of the car, including remote unlocking, has also become the daily life of Porsche car owners. According to earlier disclosed data, the download volume of Porsche APP in the Chinese market reached 73257 (times/ person-time), the registered users reached 20868, the Taycan car owner activation rate reached 94%, and the remote appointment usage rate reached 21%.
And that's just the first step in Porsche's full digitalization.
In Zhang Junfeng's view, the full digitization of automobiles in products will go through three processes:
The first thing that will be realized will be the consistency of the car with the smartphone in the digital experience of smart cockpits. With the advancement of car chip and the improvement of interactive experience, car owners will enjoy the same use experience as outside the car.
The next step is to find the unique synergy between the car and the mobile phone. No longer a simple screen projection or replacement, the interaction between the vehicle and the mobile phone will bring a more seamless and smooth on-road experience.
Ultimately, the goal of networking and intelligent automotive products will be to connect inside and outside the car. Driving on the road, turn on the air conditioner at home through the voice on the car; the schedule set on the mobile phone is automatically synchronized to the car machine and navigate to the corresponding location after getting on the car; in the aimless journey, the car machine intelligently recommends the places to play or the popular restaurants nearby...
At present, digital experience has become a product selling point that cannot be ignored in the automotive field, and it has also become one of the focuses of Porsche's exploration on a global scale.
According to data released by Porsche, in 2021, Porsche's IT team has reached the size of 5,000 people, distributed in 9 different regions around the world.
Compared with the total number of employees of 37,000 people, 13.5% of IT employees have exceeded the imagination of the vast majority of people for a car brand.
According to Obermou, the Porsche team met with Apple in California last year to discuss the possibility of more joint projects after Carplay.
Nearly 30% of orders come from online
Among Porsche's digital innovations, there is a seemingly inconspicuous "small" innovation that has brought huge sales growth to the Chinese market – the WeChat Mini Program.
This starts from the pain points of Porsche users' car purchases.
Porsche's highly customized, first-selected and then scheduled approach not only meets the individual needs of the target population, but also produces the user demand of "faster car pick-up" because of its 6-12 month pick-up cycle.
Customers who are eager to pick up the car usually give up their own selection and buy a small number of existing cars and officially certified changed cars (used cars or exhibition cars) in the store of each dealership.
However, due to the different dealers, there is no unified platform that can give local or national information on existing cars sold. Car owners who need a car can only consult one house offline, or work hard to wait until the car meets their own needs.
This became the first breakthrough for Porsche China's digital team.
After more than a year of development and resource coordination by porsche china's digital team, the "Porsche Easy Car" WeChat Mini Program was launched in 2020.
Intended users only need to go through WeChat to grasp all the important information such as the detailed configuration information of the available car, the store, the price and the financial plan. In response to the demand for "existing cars", "Porsche Changing Hands" saves users a lot of time in obtaining information.
For dealers everywhere, mini programs have become the most important sales tool. Click the share button, the vehicle information will automatically form a poster for sharing in the group and circle of friends, so that the offline 4S store has the possibility of exploring private domain operations.
By the end of 2021, the number of users who have registered for the approved yishou mini program has reached nearly 1 million, the annual order volume has reached 7501 units, an increase of 54% year-on-year, and the online order volume accounts for nearly 30% of the total order volume, becoming an important growth point in China.
Mr. M. Mc. Lutz Meschke emphasized this at a global performance briefing: "The application independently developed in China has contributed greatly to the growth of the region over the past year. ”
The digital upgrade to empower sales doesn't stop there. In line with the implementation of Porsche's global new retail concept "Mirror Project", Porsche China's digital team launched the "Ruida Retail System" and "Ruixiang Service System" last year.
Through the integration of 16 systems, the "Ruida Retail System" includes customer management, personalized vehicle configuration and inventory management, contract generation and approval, one-stop delivery and document archiving. It is expected that in the future, the system will achieve 75% paperless sales processes for dealers to improve the efficiency and standardization of store operations.
The "Ruixiang Service System" involves after-sales service links, and brings together the whole after-sales process online through four modules: tablet reception, workshop management, customer service and insurance business.
"Products and sales are the most direct part of consumers' feelings," Zhang Junfeng said, "under China's digital ecosystem, we can do more." ”
Restructuring of the R&D process: faster, newer and more flexible
In order to continue to digitalize its products and business, Porsche's own organization and operation methods have also begun to be comprehensively upgraded.
According to previous practice in the automotive industry, the development of a new model usually takes up to 5 years. The addition or modification of a new feature or feature often takes 3 years after preliminary research, discussion, verification and implementation.
In this process, product development follows a chain-based process in which teams can do their jobs independently or with minimal collaboration.
But now that digital demand is blowing up, it's undoubtedly hard to keep up with the rapidly changing market. At the beginning of digital transformation, Porsche began to try to build a more agile organization like a technology company.
"In the beginning, we tried to use Scrum (iterative incremental software development process) to complete incremental updates as quickly as possible." "But this is more suitable for small teams, which are now achieved within the framework of SAFe 5.1 (Scaled Agile Framework, a collection of best practices and proven success models for defining and implementing agile software development processes at the enterprise level) within the entire Porsche R&D system," zhang said. ”
An agile model that originated in software development, emphasizing the fastest response to market changes and user needs. But this is not easy in the development of cars that involve a lot of hardware and require a lot of experimental verification.
To this end, Porsche has built a cross-functional, self-organizing team framework that does its job based on product value rather than function. Under this framework, hardware engineers, software engineers, and sales managers can work together for a subtle optimization to maximize the initiative and creativity of the team.
"The biggest takeaway is that all people must work for a common goal, a common discourse, and a unified product mix." Zhang Junfeng said, "Agile has greatly improved the ability of the entire enterprise to react to change. ”
Combining the different speeds and rhythms of hardware and software development, Porsche's R&D system positions the iterative rhythm every three months. Within Porsche China's digital team, small iterations occur every two weeks.
The faster pace and the integration of different positions and functions bring more possibilities for innovation, making Porsche digital more than just products, sales and services.
Porsche Digital Technology
At the previous earnings meeting, Obomu, Chairman of porsche's Global Executive Board, announced when talking about digitalization that artificial intelligence will be widely promoted within the company, and more artificial intelligence will be used in research and development, production and internal processes to complete daily management and business decisions.
More than 70 years of production experience has also become a fortune. Through the "Industrial Cloud Solution", jointly developed with its subsidiary MHP, Porsche translates advanced production and logistics expertise into software that helps industrial customers increase efficiency and achieve sustainable, resource-saving production.
Perhaps the most "digital" is to really virtualize your own products. In August 2021, Porsche auctioned the exclusive design sketch of Design Director PeterVarga as a Non-Homogeneous Token (NFT), bringing its brand values and claims into the digital world.
Under the tide of digitalization, Porsche has become one of the most actively explored traditional car brands, and as a result, it has won a return in the market.
Perhaps in the future, excellent mechanical quality is only one of the reasons why people buy Porsche, and the unique digital experience and the concept and lifestyle it represents will surpass the car itself and become a reason to attract more people.
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