原创·文/路至伟
Founder of the "Trend, City, Matter" methodology
Professor-level senior economist and researcher
Industry expert, strategic consultant, CEO mentor
Schumpeter ("Economic Development Theory" published in 1912) when discussing the theory of innovation, he emphasized that the so-called innovation is to find or establish a new "boundary", and its image feature is the production function of "discovering and satisfying the boundary" and the recombination of production factors.
Finding the "boundary" between needs and those needs that cannot (or can no longer meet) is a must-answer for companies to crack the path of innovation transformation. However, the advent of 5G and the pandemic have added some variables to the path to successive transformations: cognitive uncertainty.
This article is a practice that studies and elaborates on the in-depth awareness of industrial chains, supply chains, and value chains. Initiating the "recombination of production functions and production factors" of the three "boundaries" of "closed loop of business model", "consistency of brand image perception" and "integration of fashion (art) and technology" can thus reduce the risk of cognitive uncertainty in the choice of innovation transformation path.
The era of cognitive uncertainty has arrived. In this era, it is necessary to break through the "boundary" of cognitive uncertainty in order to solve the business logic that re-dredges enterprises.
01
The first key: the closed loop of the business model
The commercialization of 5G, the development of 5G, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other technologies have promoted the transition from consumer Internet to industrial Internet, and the rapid response of diversified business links and the complex model requirements of various supply chain systems are gradually being solved, and it has become possible to provide personalized digital technology solutions for enterprises, thereby accelerating the evolution and iteration of the "closed loop of business model".
The business form presented by the market will no longer be siloed competition between consumption forms, supply chains or industrial chains, and online and offline, but will take consumers' taste and product demands as the origin, and can be perceived by the commercial digital ecosystem built by the industrial Internet of brand enterprises at the moment of reaching the terminal experience.
At this time, the terminal experience not only generates a connection, but also an interactive adaptation service process, and finally the system provides consumers with personalized solutions in real time. This process of digitizing the business model by the system is called "instant reset" (hereinafter referred to as "reset"). The integration of retail, warehousing and distribution and production (including R&D, design, suppliers, etc.) is the "closed loop of business model".
In fact, the "closed loop of business model" shows different "reset" capabilities of logistics, capital flow and information flow at different stages of evolution. Shanghai Jahwa, a fast-moving goods enterprise with a history of more than 100 years, took the lead in setting a benchmark in the industry: in 2001, it strongly introduced the third-party service of CDC (Central Distribution Center)\RDC (Regional Distribution Center), and through optimizing four competitiveness indicators: operating costs, efficiency, service and inventory structure, although the cost reduction rate reached 25% in two years, it also tried to cancel the stranding of logistics and capital flow of agents/distributors, reduce the detention time of FMCG products and effectively improve the channeling capacity of the control area, nominally realizing the channeling capacity of the channel. Reset" - However, it still regrets the limitation that the real-time data of the terminal of the closed loop of the business model cannot be "reset".
In the early stage of the commercialization of the consumer Internet, the business model of terminal real-time data "reset" has been brewing. The B2C model opens up online and offline, but this mode is only a simulated linear connection, there is a starting point and an end, although the starting point and the end point can not be perfectly "reset", but it can be regarded as a "reset" bridge to realize the closed loop of the business model at the terminal. RT-Mart is one such case.
Piggly Wiggly opened in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, marking the dawn of modern commerce. It's been 105 years since this event. In the past 100 years of development, the business models and business channels that offline rely on and rely on have not undergone qualitative changes before 2017. Basically, it is still the distribution agency or circulation model that we are familiar with, including department stores, store stores and roadside shops, and instantaneous data such as capital flow, material flow and information flow belong to each other.
However, on December 24, 2017, RT-Mart was acquired by an Internet technology company for 22.4 billion Hong Kong dollars, taking a 36.16% stake. RT-Mart founder Huang Mingduan still said this when he had a sales scale of 100 billion, 446 stores, and no records of stores for 19 consecutive years: "I defeated all opponents, but lost to the times!" This means that the closing loop of the traditional mode occurs at one of the landmark events of the terminal "reset".
Driven by different technologies and concepts, enterprises are exploring the emergence of closed-loop "boundaries" of business models in order to compete for competitive advantages in the market.
Jialan Group is one of the leading enterprises in the beauty industry that is the first to use "digitalization" to redo "eating crabs". The three-step strategy of "business dataization, data productization and product operation" conceived by Jia Lan Group has instigated the first hand chess of "closed loop of business model": "one pallet of goods", "data middle platform" and intelligent retail system.
The "one pallet of goods" model creates a supply chain platform that unifies warehousing and logistics. Connect order, sales, logistics and other data including each channel. Through the analysis of these data, sales forecasting and intelligent replenishment can be realized to provide services for all to B and to C customers, reduce inventory costs, and improve supply chain operation efficiency; The "data middle platform" is based on opening up multi-system data, realizing data upload and visual analysis (data productization) for different business needs, and applying it to multiple business scenarios including marketing for a second time, forming a positive feedback loop, and truly utilizing and multi-using data. The intelligent retail system of "Cloud Store System" empowers store retail with digital tools, puts the data of the three important variables of store sales - store owner, customer and BA - online, and connects online and offline sales, building a digital full link from inventory to multiple front-end systems of store retail. The iteration of the new wave of closed-loop business models mainly shows that the core competitive advantages of the market are the reach time, traffic cost and resource turnover rate created by the business "digital" ecosystem, that is, the reliability, completeness and timeliness of digital "reset" to meet personalized consumer needs.
It can be summarized into three major elements: the deep integration of consumer Internet, industrial Internet and terminal experience "reset" is the key to the closed loop of business models; Shaping the "five clouds" (cloud products, cloud O&M, cloud manufacturing, cloud platform and cloud ecosystem) model empowered by "incremental" scenarios to maximize the benefits of business value multipliers, benefit and drive "stock" innovation and growth, will become the carrier for building a closed-loop business model; The management theory of "five-dimensional space", that is, Euclid's traditional three-dimensional space + Einstein's relativistic time dimension + Bergeronfi's system theory hierarchical dimension (see Lu Zhiwei: Five-dimensional space, the antidote to enterprise innovation and transformation) is the underlying logic to realize the closed loop of business models.
The closed loop of the business model is a "reset", and the second key will open the reset of "consistency".
02
The second key: consistency in brand image perception
The consistency of brand image perception is another cognitive topic, with two core levels:
1. Brand portrait
Brand portrait is the basic cognition of brand operation know-how and strategic behavior, the former mainly includes brand story, brand positioning, brand tonality, product standards, and even cost-effective planning; The latter is a multi-dimensional and multi-level measure: first, the brand side actively outlines the brand portrait of basic cognition according to the target consumer group and positioning, in order to guide the development and design of consumers to understand and position the brand's symbols and labels;
Secondly, it is a brand portrait jointly drawn or "achieved" by stakeholders in the entire industry chain and supply chain. The maintenance of brand portrait requires all parties in the industry chain ecology, including investors, brands, supply chain parties, channel parties, terminals and target consumers to perceive, connect, recognize and effectively manage in order to achieve consistent and effective emotional results.
All upstream and downstream processes of the manufacturing process should also participate in the introduction and collaboration of brand portraits;
Third, the ultimate appeal of brand portrait is the category placed at the value chain level. The basic service or benefit of the product being purchased is the category, and its positioning gives the brand portrait a suitable entry point. Categories have a life cycle, but to some extent determine the future of the brand, and the brand is the basis for continuing the category. The "category" revealed here is the physical characteristics of the brand portrait, which can help the brand's continuous operation and short-term outbreak. The "continuation category" is precisely the chemical characteristics of the brand portrait and the instinctive response to the interdependent perceived consistency of value chain stakeholders.
2. "Consistency"
The accurate brand portrait determines the breadth and depth of the company's business circle, presents the starting point of the logic behind the value of the product/service, and is also the destination. The perceived "consistency" is transmitted to the system: through the system's perception of the "consistency" of the whole chain (the whole chain: the whole industry chain, the whole supply chain, the whole value chain, and even between the upstream and lower processes in production, etc.) The brand portrait jointly drawn or "achieved" by stakeholders can be landed, which will be the focus of core competitiveness, which is also the most effective moat for business competition. The perceived "consistency" is passed to the endpoint:
Win the popularity of market merchants and achieve sales tools; Show consumers' own value and generate a strong impulse to repurchase. Therefore, only brands that perceive "consistency" can reflect value; A system that perceives "consistency" is what demonstrates competitiveness. The perceived "consistency" is the "engine" that forms the closed loop of the business model and the market multiplier effect.
Enterprises that regard "consistency of brand image perception" as the top-level design of digital innovation and transformation must have their unique easy-to-operate, landable and executable "Digital Crossconnected System" (DCS) field in terms of management:
The system creates an ecosystem of "consistency of brand portrait perception" that optimizes terminal experience and resource turnover efficiency.
On the eve of Coca-Cola's 135th birthday, Swire Coca-Cola unveiled its "intelligent manufacturing engine" to the market. This is the iconic puzzle of creating a digital ecology and industrial Internet of "brand perception consistency" after the implementation of digital technology solutions such as identification engines and rule engines, and channels. The system completed within two years will fully tap the unlimited potential of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data analysis and MindSphere (MindSphere is a cloud-based open IoT operating system launched by Siemens) to improve the whole link and intelligent manufacturing flexibility of the beverage industry, strengthen the digital leadership of the industry of "brand perception consistency", form a "reset" of the closed loop of business models, and further enhance its brand premium ability.
Enterprises may wish to pay attention to two more points on the road of facing the future, pursuing sustainable operations, and forcing their own digital transformation:
First, according to their own resources and advantages, how to choose a more appropriate "consistency of brand image perception" problem-solving path, because the consistency of brand image perception is not only tonality, brand story, standard or cost performance; It also needs a kind of taste, temperament, social circle layer and the recognition of the whole link in the symbiotic system; Even in the era of cognitive uncertainty, it is necessary to have the invoicing/receiving and receiving engine driven by real-time "data" of the terminal, the identification engine, the distribution engine, the rule engine, and the intelligent manufacturing engine... The logic of self-consistency.
Second, under the pressure of time, we should see through the internal logic of scientific and technological innovation and "consistency of brand portrait perception". Scientific and technological achievements such as 5G and AI have been rapidly commercialized and industrialized, which is manifested in the increasingly drastic changes in the industry, two apparent characteristics, the first is that the amplitude of industry changes is increasing, and the second is that the shock cycle of industry changes is getting shorter and shorter. If the technical means of big data analysis are superimposed, the positive/negative fission amplification effect of "consistency of brand image perception" will be more accurately revealed, which will inevitably lead to the result of increasing brand concentration in the market. Therefore, another macro-transformative effect of "consistency of brand portrait perception" in the post-epidemic era: the spring of brand concentration led by the call for capital in the industry is coming soon. Two factors exacerbated this change. First, the awakening of capital consciousness; Second, breakthroughs in scientific and technological achievements.
03
The third key: the fusion of fashion (art) and technology
According to the study, when the per capita income reaches the threshold of $4500, the public's consumption psychology will show a strong desire to buy to improve taste; At the same time, the original innovation impulse of the enterprise will focus on fashion and internationalization in order to meet this change in the psychological needs of consumers. It can also be expressed in another way, that is, the continuous consumption upgrade of the market triggers consumers' consumption taste and corporate innovation to meet at the intersection of the two demand points of "fashion" and "internationalization". Keen enterprises have timely captured the two changes in consumer experience and industry chain, and empowered to achieve continuous value-added of brand premium:
First, the exploration and transformation of digital scenarios such as terminals, CDC/RDC, and logistics and distribution will produce a relatively long-term outbreak expectation. Digital transformation is not only reflected in the shelves, cabinets, and islands displayed in terminals, but also the popularity of wearable devices further makes scenario-based products or services mainstream. There is also the "digitization" of the display scene by the "digitalization" of one product and one code cloud products, and under the blessing of the inspector of image recognition and rule engine, the data is generated by the combined analysis of algorithms, making the concept of "business data, data business" a reality. The use of all these technologies is reflected in the consumption upgrade and the humanization of the terminal experience. Therefore, the presentation of the scene digital retail model will accelerate the continuous iterative optimization of "closed-loop business model" and "consistency of brand image perception".
Second, enterprises break the introverted thinking of traditional industry bureaus and carry out cross-border scientific and technological cooperation with artists, scientists, and science and technology enterprises. It is necessary to have a subversive mobilization of cross-industry and cross-border, and among them, the knowledge and digitalization of subdivided fields is an important symbol of industrial Internet transformation. Enterprises and products should seize the digital opportunities in vertical segments, so that the knowledge and data being digitized can play a fashionable and tasteful music in the whole chain. Belle, once the "King of Chinese Shoes", has made a comeback, providing a benchmark for the integration of fashion (art) and technology for subdivided fields. Belle Shoes created a C2M industrial Internet transformation model (consumer factory model + Belle Design Smart Store System) on Singles' Day in 2018, Belle's three major business lines of shoes, sports and clothing sold a total of 968 million yuan, with a net profit of about 2.2 billion yuan that year. At that time, among the top 10 in the Tmall fashion footwear industry, Belle's brands occupied 5 seats, relying on real-time feedback of consumer information to (fashion design) factories and Belle stores that promoted product update and iteration, and accurately counted customer flow, consumer feature identification, shopping flow analysis, specifically collecting people, goods, and venues in the store, including the flow of entering the store, the movement route of customers in the store, forming a store heat map and a visiting flow map. This system helps stores understand customer preferences to optimize product placement, display, etc. Supplemented by terminal enablement tools that collect the fitting rate and purchase rate of each pair of shoes, the data is fed back to the (fashion design) factory, so as to realize the instant reach (reset) of the digital supply chain to improve the output of a single store. Stores using the smart store system increased sales by 17% for the full year.
The integration of fashion (art) and technology is eclectic with 5G, Data, Cloud, Iot, AI technology, and adapts to the changes of the industrial Internet to capture the brand premium with temperature.
Crossing the triple door of "closed loop of business model", "consistency of brand perception", and "integration of fashion (art) and technology", we have created a miracle in the industrial Internet era that belongs to the influence of corporate brands. The three-dimensional deep integration of enterprise consumer Internet, industrial Internet, and terminal experience will be a necessary "story" to reconstruct the business logic of enterprises, otherwise it will not be able to integrate into the new industrial ecosystem and avoid being excluded from the new market in the future.
Integrating into the industrial Internet era is already the only choice for enterprise innovation strategies in the 5G era; Don't lose to times of cognitive uncertainty.