For a long time, domestic SaaS companies have been defensive of their competitors, often trying to occupy more market share by lowering their prices and constantly developing new products.
Transmitted to the front line, sales from time to time to hear questions from users: "Peers have developed new products in new fields, don't you?" When the sales person feeds back the question to the product department, Zhao Tianshu, the product director of Wise, usually explains to the sales colleague: "We choose to provide solutions with ecological partners, and both parties provide the best products in their own professional fields, and the final solution must be the best for the customer." ”
Internally, Huice believes that although the continuous expansion of product boundaries can bring short-term profit growth, from the perspective of long-term value, doing ecology is the choice that truly respects the laws of the industry. Therefore, Huice has always adhered to an open and shared mentality, collaborated with ecological partners to provide better solutions, and always focused on creating more value for customers.
Throughout the development of the overseas SaaS industry, almost all industry leaders have formed their own unique ecological service systems by integrating and complementing each other with ecological partners on the basis of focusing on their core business. For example, mainstream SaaS products in the U.S. can integrate with an average of 300 other types of SaaS products.
In this sense, to evaluate whether a SaaS company has the potential to lead the industry for a long time, it is not only based on its own excellent products and services, but also on its ability to build ecology and business collaboration.
"We have long thought about doing ecology, and we only do our own core things." Zhao Tianshu said, "In the long run, the law of the industry is like this, the pioneers of the industry are doing ecology, and we will see what happens in ten years." ”
01
Respect the laws of the industry
Enough specialization is necessary to have product boundaries
In the SaaS industry, due to the complexity and professionalism of the B-side business, it is difficult to find a universal solution in the market that can meet the needs of all customers. Taking the e-commerce customers served by WiseCe as an example, the business chain is long and complex, from operation, customer service, purchase, sales and inventory, invoicing to business analysis, and each link needs corresponding tools, and whether the tools can be connected smoothly greatly affects the work efficiency.
In the past, many SaaS companies mobilized a lot of resources into areas that they were not good at in order to meet the product needs of customers in the front and back chains. This kind of practice can eat the dividends of existing customers in the early stage, and the sales performance is simpler, and it also has a significant effect on the company's short-term income increase.
But in retrospect, this means that such SaaS vendors have launched a comprehensive competition with all the vendors on the corresponding track in a large number of links covered by themselves, including the top vertical vendors that have been deeply cultivated for many years. "When your own customers are almost covered, you will encounter a big obstacle when you go out to find customers." Zhao Tianshu explained.
Caption: Panorama of the Huice ecosystem
In the long run, borderless product expansion will not only hinder customer acquisition and intensify competition, but also affect existing customer reputation and deviate from the iron law of value creation. B-end product research and development needs to be specialized enough, and rely on providing customers with real value to obtain renewal, so as to accumulate good reputation and cash flow. However, if you rush into a new track, it is very likely to ignore the difficulty of its professional problems and make a product of poor quality, which will affect the actual delivery of the entire customer success team in the future.
Based on a deep understanding of the laws of the industry, Huice resists the temptation of short-term interests, but finds its own advantages and capabilities, and continues to cultivate multiple SaaS products such as e-commerce ERP series products, Wangdiantong WMS, and supply and marketing platforms to meet the needs of different customer groups, and provides users with efficient business process management tools from the front end to the back end. At the same time, in the front and back links outside the core business chain, Huice actively opens up product docking to professional partners, breaks down the barriers of interests and resources between enterprises, and builds a more competitive and mutually beneficial ecosystem.
02
Based on its own advantages
Lead the industry ecology with openness and trust
In recent years, many SaaS vendors have gradually realized the importance of ecosystem, but not every enterprise has the ability to build an ecosystem. In order to establish a SaaS product ecosystem, it is not only necessary to simply gather enterprises, but also to realize the interconnection between different enterprises at multiple levels, such as data interoperability and business integration. Therefore, in the early stage of the ecology of the entire industry, it is often necessary to have some leading enterprises with sufficient competitive advantages and industry appeal to provide the industry with ecological industry cognition and cooperation paradigm.
As a cloud service provider that has been deeply engaged in the field of retail SaaS for more than ten years, Huice used Wangdiantong ERP to cut into the core management pain points of order management in e-commerce operation in the early stage, and formed a professional product matrix through continuous extension and upgrading in the later stage. In the e-commerce business chain, the core product ERP that Wisdom specializes in deals with the core link of e-commerce fulfillment, so it has business intersections with the products of many manufacturers at different nodes in each link. If the vendors in other links and the system of Wisdom are connected, the products of both parties can better collaborate and jointly bring higher efficiency and better experience to customers.
Caption: Huice product matrix
When communicating with SaaS companies, Ebang Power found that the high cost of customer acquisition is a major problem in the SaaS industry, and the important role of the ecosystem is to obtain customers from each other among SaaS companies and reduce the sales cost of enterprises. So far, Huice has served more than 100,000 customers, serving many listed companies, well-known brands and top merchants, and its customer base coverage is industry-leading. This data not only means that the product strength is excellent, but also represents the strong sales and service capabilities. For the ecological partners of Wise, the joint launch of solutions with WiseCe is also conducive to attracting customers faster and at a lower cost, and jointly enhancing the competitive advantage in the market.
In addition, the key factor in the long-term failure of the domestic SaaS industry to form an ecosystem is the lack of trust between enterprises. In the market, some companies choose to develop and acquire new products without borders, while others are afraid of being replaced and swallowed up, and will inevitably fall into a prisoner's dilemma. Zhao Tianshu said that Huice has not invested in or acquired other upstream and downstream business related companies over the years, and still insists on doing its core thing. This shows Huice's determination to continue to build an ecosystem and achieve a win-win situation with its partners.
03
Return to value creation
Connectivity leverages the ecosystem
How to amplify the value of ecological cooperation is the next important proposition for enterprises to go out and build an ecosystem. Some vendors' assumptions of ecosystem cooperation are limited to a random patchwork of different systems, and only introduce a new functional module. However, only by achieving the effect of "1+1>2" can the competitiveness of the ecosystem be truly stimulated. This involves how SaaS companies think about the path to achieve the ecosystem and have the product ability to achieve innovative integration in technology.
Huice does not stop at simply introducing functions, but chooses to dig deeper into application scenarios to create more value for customers. Zhao Tianshu said, "When exploring the ecosystem with partners in the early stage, it is relatively simple to get through the system, and the real difficulty lies in identifying the business scenario so that the final solution can really bring value to customers." ”
For example, Wisdom and Banniu jointly launched a work order solution to realize the interconnection of data between the two systems. Before the data of the two sides is not connected, if the customer service needs to check the product inventory, order progress, reissue and other operations, it is inevitable to switch frequently between the e-commerce background and the ERP system. In the joint solution, the customer service can directly query the information in the ERP on the reception page, and the created return and replacement orders can also be automatically synchronized to the ERP. It would have taken a minute or two to process a return or exchange, but now it can be done in 10 seconds. "Some large e-commerce teams have more than 100 customer service personnel, and each consultation is reduced by one minute, and the labor cost savings are very considerable." Zhao Tianshu said.
The cooperation of the ecosystem is not only the innovation and integration at the product level, but also the business linkage at the sales level to jointly acquire customers and cultivate the market. When WiseCe and the ecosystem partner launched a joint solution, both parties promoted the solution at the sales level. If the sales team encounters the right demand opportunity on the front line, both parties will recommend each other's products. According to Zhao Tianshu, in terms of front-line feedback, customers value the value of joint solutions more than just choosing a single tool. In just two or three years of cooperation with Banniu, Huice and Banniu have jointly expanded hundreds of customers. "The most essential thing is that we can create more value for our customers, which is the foundation of the Wisdom ecosystem." Zhao Tianshu concluded.
From the perspective of the industry as a whole, ecology is the future of the SaaS industry, and it is also the only way to maximize the value of products. Huice has always insisted on working hand in hand with ecological partners, and promoted an interlocking and interconnected ecosystem with the concept of win-win cooperation. In the context of exploring the ecology of the domestic SaaS industry, Huice actively innovates and cooperates with ecological partners with a highly open attitude to create more spillover value for customers, providing a useful reference for the ecology of the entire industry.