What do Chinese companies need most when they go to sea?
"It's really a headache, now the EU and Southeast Asia have stricter and stricter requirements for compliance, and it is easy to be punished..." "Each country must make a version of the local language's official website, the key is to understand the local people's sophistication, to collect user feedback in various language versions ..."
This is the complaint that I understood and heard when I chatted with the heads of the relevant departments of two manufacturing enterprises in Shenzhen and Guangzhou not long ago. The Shenzhen company, which produces maternal and infant clothing (apparel), has entered the French and German markets from Southeast Asia; the Guangzhou e-commerce company focuses on programmable toys and is making every effort to develop overseas business in Japan, South Korea and Singapore, but their biggest headaches are almost all security compliance, business data integration, IT infrastructure and other aspects of the problem.
In fact, in the past six months and half a year, when communicating with many enterprises in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, they have found several significant phenomena: First, the number of enterprises with business going to sea is increasing; second, these enterprises have encountered the dilemma of "unfamiliar life" when developing overseas business. If combined with the reports of some third-party well-known institutions, we can find that this is a big tide, And Chinese enterprises are greeting the arrival of the era of "all-round going to sea", from micro to macro, from external to internal, the arrival of this era is the trend of the times.
So, what are the characteristics of Chinese enterprises "going to sea in an all-round way", and in the face of various challenges, what is the ballast stone for enterprises to break the waves?
「 01 」
From quantitative change to qualitative change: the reasons behind the era of full access to the sea
"Two years ago (2020), domestically developed games earned $15.4 billion in overseas market revenue, and by last year, that figure was $18.013 billion, an increase of 16.59% year-on-year." An Internet industry analyst talked about the achievements of Chinese Internet companies in going to sea, and first talked about the game industry. Indeed, in the Internet industry, games, social networking, e-commerce, etc. are all popular tracks for Chinese companies to go to sea, and many people in the industry talk about Transsion, OnePlus and the well-known OPPO, vivo and millet, and they frequently praise their overseas markets.
However, judging that Chinese companies are ushering in the era of "all-round going to sea", the answer is still in the words of some other data.
According to the recent 2021 edition of the "Survey Report on the Status and Intention of Chinese Enterprises' Outbound Investment" released by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Research Institute, the flow and stock of China's outward direct investment have ranked among the top three in the world for four consecutive years, while about 80% of Chinese enterprises will maintain and expand their intention to invest abroad, optimistic about the prospects for overseas investment. It can be said that on the one hand, "all-round going to sea" is a process from quantitative change to qualitative change, on the other hand, this process also presents a state of superimposed resonance between quantitative change and qualitative change.
The so-called quantitative change mainly presents four points: one is from near to far; the second is from large to small; the third is from "trying" to "paving"; and the fourth is "born and global".
From near to far, that is, to understand the observation, most of the overseas business of Chinese enterprises in the past was only involved in neighboring countries (such as Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian markets), but now more and more companies are going to all continents. Zhongqiao Consulting, commissioned by Amazon Cloud Technology to conduct market research on Chinese overseas enterprises, pointed out in the report that 60% of the overseas business of overseas enterprises has involved more than three continents/regions; Southeast Asia, Europe and North America still occupy the preferred destination for Chinese enterprises to go to sea, while emerging regions such as South America, Africa and the Middle East are becoming hot spots.
From large to small: that is, most of the people who went to sea in the past were large enterprises, and now more and more small and medium-sized enterprises have begun to go to sea, and the willingness of small and medium-sized enterprises to go to sea has become more and more intense; from "trial" to "shop": many enterprises have only a small part of their own business before, and try in neighboring countries and regions. Now, after initial testing, more and more companies have begun to put a larger proportion of their business in overseas markets.
Globalization is a particularly noteworthy aspect of the quantitative change: in the past, many Chinese companies first gained a foothold in the domestic market, and now many start-ups are founded with the goal of facing the offshore market, which is particularly evident in Accenture's relevant reports.
Because of the above changes from the "quantity", there is a "qualitative change" in the form of Chinese enterprises going to sea, and understands how to summarize it into four aspects: one is from system to wisdom; the second is from C to B; the third is from old (traditional) to new (new forces in car manufacturing); fourth, it is the upgrading of ideas.
From system to wisdom: it is the new characteristics of Chinese enterprises going overseas, starting from the traditional manufacturing industry to the technology-driven, innovative thinking, brand-led transition; from the old to the new: under the global carbon neutrality trend, the new energy vehicle manufacturing in the new energy vehicle manufacturing trend of China's new energy vehicle companies, especially the rise of new car-making forces and overseas markets. A few years ago, the first wave of Chinese companies going to sea was set off by Internet companies, and now this wave includes more and more traditional industries, in this regard, Li Xiaomang, general manager of Amazon Cloud Technology China Commercial Market Division, has a description: Chinese companies are moving from "digital going to sea" to "going to sea digital".
Li Xiaomang, General Manager of Commercial Market Division of Amazon Cloud Technology China
In his view, these changes are the embodiment of the penetration of the Internet field into traditional industries, "China is very concerned about the integration and innovation of digital industries and traditional industrial industries, and overseas enterprises in traditional industries are also actively using digital technology to carry out all-round digital transformation and innovation of overseas business around the dimensions of products, services, experience, and operations, so as to achieve product upgrading and brand upgrading overseas." ”
Based on this, it is not difficult to understand the last two points of the qualitative change process: from C to B: that is, the overseas enterprises that originally focused on the C-end service capabilities, developed the business capabilities into new businesses that serve the B-end, and expanded the business to the B-end market; and the concept upgrade refers to the increasing number of overseas enterprises, which change in the thinking mode and concept of operation and management, and they uphold the concept of bravely going out and begin to rearrange and build new overseas businesses.
「 02 」
Meeting Six Challenges: A Compulsory Course in Business Globalization
In fact, whether it is a research institution, a consulting company or a high-tech enterprise such as Amazon Cloud Technology, an important information has been revealed in the research results, and the internal cause of the "comprehensive going to sea" of Chinese enterprises from quantitative change to qualitative change stems from the improvement of the overall productivity level of Chinese enterprises, and the demand for participating in the world's leading technology and service concepts is increasing. More importantly, more and more companies want to expand from the bottom of the smile curve (traditional manufacturing) to both ends (service capabilities and R&D capabilities).
On the one hand, these enterprises hope to find new growth points, on the other hand, they hope to enhance their own viability, driven by the mutual promotion of domestic and international dual cycles, from passive participation in the international economic cycle to actively promote the development of domestic and international two-way development.
Therefore, going to sea has become an inevitability.
However, with the advent of the era of Chinese enterprises going to sea in an all-round way, various challenges have also emerged, which are inevitable for Chinese enterprises to participate in the construction and competition of the global market. Combining some cases of enterprises going to sea, as well as observations from Amazon Cloud Technology, we can see that the main challenges focus on these six aspects:
One is the issue of security and compliance; the second is to build a "global network"; the third is to "global vision"; the fourth is intelligent upgrading; the fifth is to establish a global IoT platform; and the sixth is to diversify needs.
It can be seen that these six challenges have different thresholds and difficulties for Chinese enterprises to go to sea, and their importance is self-evident. Taking security compliance as the biggest challenge, as the biggest challenge of security and compliance is strengthened, the frequency and complexity of cross-border data exchanges have increased exponentially, and countries have strengthened the management of enterprises in terms of the perfection of legislation and supervision. Li Xiaomang also stressed that among the enterprises contacted by Amazon Cloud Technology, nearly 60% of the companies surveyed believe that the security compliance of the cloud going to the sea is the most important.
"There are now more than 130 countries in the world that have their own laws and regulations related to data protection and privacy, and as enterprises grow, many companies go to different regions of the world, and they have to meet the compliance requirements of these different regions and different industries." Li Xiaomang said.
Looking at the "global business network", when overseas enterprises hope to establish their own "one network", they will first consider how to achieve data integration of global business and improve business insight. Li Xiaomang pointed out, "Whether it is a company establishing a branch operation overseas or an acquisition or merger, Chinese enterprises are facing a big challenge, how to manage their scattered businesses around the world, and achieve data integration and unified management. ”
In response to these challenges, some Chinese companies have given their own "answer sheets". We all know that TCL, as a representative enterprise of China's home appliance industry, has long begun to expand overseas markets, its overseas business involves more than 160 countries and regions, many product lines, fierce market competition, TCL through Amazon cloud technology and services, to cope with challenges from all sides. First of all, the core system of overseas business is fully "settled" in the Amazon cloud, creating a global business network; secondly, with the help of Amazon Cloud Technology's technology to reconstruct the global big data platform, so that all categories of IoT device data and business systems can be interconnected, which strongly supports global operation and digital marketing; the third is to build a global Internet of Things platform, to achieve intelligent interconnection of all categories and integration with the world's mainstream AIoT services, and the platform can meet the privacy protection laws and regulations of different countries; and finally TCL uses the technology of Amazon Cloud Technology Security Service to improve cloud security and obtain full security compliance protection.
In addition to the manufacturing industry, NetEase Games, as a representative of the Internet industry, also presents many business difficulties with industry characteristics in the process of going to sea, these challenges are mainly for the vast group of game users on all continents, in the performance and elasticity of services to face the differences and limitations of the global network; in terms of network infrastructure, to face more security challenges, the rapid expansion of game business in different countries and regions, to face compliance issues and so on. After starting its business cooperation in 2014, NetEase Games has obtained efficient and high-quality service guarantees in all aspects by using dozens of services in more than a dozen regions, including core capabilities from the underlying infrastructure and network to the upper layer of computing, storage, and security.
According to the person in charge of NetEase Games' related technologies, by continuing to pay attention to and track the new services and technologies of Amazon Cloud Technology, the technical team of NetEase Games can analyze and find business entry points at any time, and through docking the technical and R&D teams of both sides, conduct joint commissioning tests on some services, and even jointly carry out customized development, which will eventually be applied to their own online business. "This approach better guarantees netease games' strategy in overseas markets, and also obtains the strongest support from the most infrastructure." The technical leader said.
It can be seen that in more fields, including Luoyang Molybdenum, Huami Technology, Huiliang Technology, AIWAYS Automobile, Anker Innovation, Yingyun Technology, PatPat and other industry-leading enterprises, in the process of expanding overseas business, they have cooperated with Amazon Cloud Technology, and have achieved excellent results in security compliance, infrastructure construction, R&D cost control, data integration capabilities and business intelligence.
These cases also reflect that in the context of the digital economy, overseas companies have gained leading technology and business model advantages in some fields, and these experiences will also bring benefits to more companies that are about to go overseas in the future. For more enterprises, going to sea means meeting challenges, and in the face of wind and waves, we must accurately find the "ballast stone" for steady progress.
「 03 」
Create a booster and "ballast stone" for enterprises to go to sea
"From the trend, we can see the rapid growth of the global digital economy, which provides a broad prospect for Chinese enterprises to go to sea. How can Chinese companies go global and how can they succeed? The answer is to think globally and operate locally. Li Xiaomang gave such an outline from the perspective of Amazon Cloud Technology's success in helping Chinese enterprises go to sea for many years.
Experts from all sides jointly discussed that "the journey is thousands of miles, and there is a good way to go to sea"
Of course, this "generalization" needs to be embodied downwards and dismantled into every "tactic" that can help enterprises go to sea.
Before talking about "tactics", let's first say "the same way, only with the conspiracy." Overseas enterprises and Amazon cloud technology both have a similar spirit of exploration, which is also the trust basis for enterprises to use the latter as a "ballast stone" in the wave of breaking the waves, and the latter is also willing to share and empower themselves to explore the experience and perception of many years of scientific and technological innovation. This is the essence of the phrase "global thinking and local operation".
In the understanding point of view, Amazon Cloud Technology, as the "ballast stone" of Chinese enterprises going to sea, its unique advantages and resources can be embodied into two dimensions: dimension one is technology and services that can be "taken and used", mainly summarized into four keywords: steady escort, breadth and depth, ecological environment and customer practice; dimension two is conceptual (spiritual) level, including market education and theoretical output of "teaching it to fish".
Li Xiaomang pointed out that to help Chinese enterprises establish "global thinking and localized operations", we must first escort them in terms of safety operations and compliance. Amazon Cloud Technology has complete security compliance capabilities and practices in globalization, and at the same time pioneered the security responsibility sharing model, "while ensuring their own security and compliance, we will help customers establish security compliance with applications and data, and have complete control over their own data." ”
The second point is that Amazon Cloud Technology has cloud infrastructure (globally consistent technical architecture) in 26 geographical regions around the world, covering 245 countries and regions, and after the core business system of the enterprise is transferred to the cloud, it will help it achieve data integration and unified management, improve the insight and analysis capabilities of business data as a whole, and fully meet the technical and service needs of enterprises going to sea in breadth and depth; the third point is to provide a sound ecological environment, including a perfect service chain built with more than 100,000 partners around the world, and provide more than 12. Amazon Cloud Technology Marketplace with 000 software provides third-party software and services required for all businesses of enterprises; the fourth is customer practice, that is, the practical experience accumulated over the years to serve users in various industries, and Amazon's global business system in e-commerce, intelligent logistics, intelligent voice assistants, smart retail and equipment, etc., to help users solve diversified business needs when going to sea.
As for the conceptual (spiritual) dimension, I understand and summarize it into two aspects, that is, to help enterprises build confidence, and the "teaching and fishing" of methodology and innovative ideas. Liang Yan, general manager of Amazon Cloud Technology China's digital native business unit, said that the actual effect should be to educate the market, "We empower small and medium-sized enterprises through the cloud to reduce their trial and error costs of going to sea." Obviously, this "rate of return" can stimulate the initiative of SME managers and encourage them to try harder than any publicity.
"In addition, we will continue to empower through methodological and cultural aspects." Liang Yan said that Amazon has invested a lot of resources and faculty to communicate with customers about its own leadership standards and digital innovation methodologies (such as reverse work methods) to help Chinese companies be targeted at the "strategic and tactical" level of going overseas.
【Conclusion】
Chinese enterprises are entering the era of "all-round going to sea", in this process challenges and opportunities coexist, Amazon Cloud Technology as a pioneer explorer, will transform their own experience and ability into the "ballast stone" of enterprises to break the waves, which is its spirit of constantly looking for new possibilities and better solutions, but also its strongest ability to change the existing rules of the game and promote industrial progress.
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