Editor's Note:
Small and medium-sized enterprises are an important pillar of the national economy and an important carrier for solving people's livelihood and employment. At the 2021 United Nations Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day Summit Forum, Xiao Lihua, Vice President of Alibaba Group and President of Alibaba Cloud Research Institute, made a speech with the theme of "Breaking the Situation and Reborn, Bucking the Trend: Digital Transformation and Upgrading of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" > introduction</h1>
The rapid development of the world economy is inseparable from the important contribution of small and medium-sized enterprises. On June 27, the 2021 United Nations Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day Summit Forum, jointly sponsored by the China Association of Small and Medium-sized Commercial Enterprises and the China Chamber of International Commerce, was held in Beijing. With the theme of "Small but Powerful, Dream Champion", more than 50 representatives from industry, academia and research circles exchanged views on the themes of digital transformation practice and exploration, double carbon era and rural revitalization, new youth forces and scientific and technological innovation and risk management.
This article is based on Xiao Lihua, Vice President of Alibaba Group and President of Alibaba Cloud Research Institute, in his keynote speech at the Summit Forum, "Breaking the Situation and Reborn, Going Against the Trend: The Digital and Intelligent Transformation and Upgrading of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="42" >01 "crisis" and "opportunity" of SMEs</h1>
On the one hand, small and medium-sized enterprises have a strong ability to absorb employment, the proportion of large-scale enterprise legal person units reached 99.8%, the proportion of employed personnel is nearly 80%, the proportion of enterprise assets accounts for 77.1%, and the annual revenue accounts for 68.2%, the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises in the national economy can be seen. On the other hand, since the epidemic in 2020, the downward pressure on the economy has brought great pressure to small and medium-sized enterprises, as of Q1 of 2021, the number of small and medium-sized micro and medium-sized enterprises that can achieve year-on-year growth has risen to about 30%, about 10-20% is basically the same as in 2019, and about 50% is declining year-on-year.
The more distinctive enterprises in the head and the middle and long tail can achieve high growth, and the other 50-60% of the enterprises are negative growth. What are the biggest pressures and problems they face? The first is insufficient demand, customer churn, and order reduction; the second is rent, employee wages, and rising raw material costs; other pressures come from cash flow, resumption of work and production, recruitment, and so on. In order to solve the difficulties faced by small and medium-sized enterprises, we must not rely on a single means, but need to support multiple dimensions including policy support, industrial services, platform empowerment, and technological innovation.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="44" >02 Broke the game and went up against the trend</h1>
So what has Alibaba done to support and empower micro, small and medium-sized enterprises?
Alibaba supports small and medium-sized enterprises in cross-border e-commerce trade and opens up international markets through the "Spring Thunder Plan", helping small and medium-sized enterprises to accurately obtain customers and expand the market.
In terms of supply and demand coordination of industrial clusters, many small and medium-sized enterprises are in the industrial belt, through taobao, Tmall, 1688.com and other plates, can create ip in the industrial belt, so as to achieve accurate matching of demand and supply.
Of course, Alibaba also provides a lot of technical means to help the digital and intelligent transformation and upgrading of small and medium-sized enterprises. For example, DingTalk provides a large number of free services for small and medium-sized enterprises, so that enterprises can communicate with customers and partners more efficiently; CloudTalk provides one-stop digital intelligence solutions to realize the digital and accurate management of the production, supply and marketing of people and property.
(1) Alibaba's "new retail" strategy
What is the essence of doing business? It's buying and selling, in other words, supply and demand matching. There is buying and selling, supply and demand, how to match the "life" of consumers with the "business" of merchants more efficiently is the key. China leads the world at the consumer Internet end, and there is huge room for optimization on the industrial Internet end. Global marketing, retail experience, distribution precision, product personalization, and manufacturing flexibility are all major trends in the future.
When it comes to retail, it is certainly inseparable from the people's freight yard, but what I want to talk about is what has changed and what has not changed.
When it comes to "people", consumers must be thought of, but who do consumers rely on to serve? Shopping guides, store managers, dealers, brand owners, manufacturers, logistics providers, etc., if any link does not understand the needs of consumers, there will be many breakpoints and blockages in the middle of the connection, and serving customers well has become an empty phrase. Before the epidemic, the number of DingTalk users was only 100 million, and now it has exceeded 400 million, and more than 17 million enterprises and organizations have settled in DingTalk to achieve more efficient collaboration and communication.
The second "goods" section, the traditional "goods" basically refers to the goods arriving in the store, and now we have to consider whether we can quickly realize the circulation of goods through live broadcasting and through many new ways and methods.
Finally, the "field" section basically refers to the store business, can it do the home business and do sales through live broadcasts through the whole network and omni-channel? There are many concepts that need to be rethought and defined, including today's conference, although it is only in Beijing, but also the Shanghai venue and the global online broadcast, which may be able to transcend the limitations of time and space.
(2) Alibaba's "Spring Thunder Plan"
In 2020, Alibaba once again launched a special action to support small and medium-sized enterprises - "Spring Thunder Plan", specific action measures include expanding the domestic market through platforms such as 1688, building 10 digital industrial belt clusters with an output value of more than 10 billion yuan in the country, helping 1,000 factories to sell more than 100 million yuan in three years, etc.; and comprehensively supporting small and medium-sized enterprises in terms of helping farmers and agricultural development and financial support. On Alibaba's entire large platform, there are about tens of millions of merchants, most of whom are small and medium-sized enterprises, and it is Ali's mission to help them better tide over the difficulties.
So what exactly is Alibaba going to do? The core is that small and medium-sized enterprises are basically at the origin end, that demand at that end, how to digitize the entire industrial belt, including the government, associations, production / goods, and achieve more efficient and accurate matching with the demand side, is actually particularly important. Therefore, Alibaba through 1688, AliExpress, Lazada, Taobao market, Taobao live broadcast and other all-round integration needs, so that supply and demand efficient and accurate matching, since March last year, the growth is still very fast.
For example, as the first stop of the "Spring Thunder Plan", Shantou and Alibaba have worked together to create the "City of Beauty" industry business card, and shantou will be built as a city as a whole for the IP of the place of origin. During the epidemic period, many exhibitions cannot be carried out offline, foreign manufacturers cannot come in, and the pressure of epidemic prevention and control will be relatively large, so through online digital exhibitions, good results have also been achieved. Other measures, such as the branding of foreign trade factories, the long-term development of factory goods explosions, the exclusivization of procurement ceremonies, and the localization of infrastructure, have helped Shantou become a "new wholesale city".
(3) Digital platform empowers Taobao Village
Looking at Taobao Village, there will be about 700 billion yuan in the whole of 2020, and 63 Taobao villages located in poor counties in the country have created a turnover of about 2 billion yuan, driving 6.38 million jobs in the country.
Specifically, let's look at a more typical case, the epidemic situation has been repeated, what should I do if the customer cannot arrive at the store? Last year, the holographic store helped 10,000 cross-border enterprises to inspect the factory online, improve the user experience and conversion rate, more than half of the traditional foreign trade needs to do field visits, the factory inspection cycle can be as long as 21 days, the cost is as high as 1,000 US dollars or more, and now through the 3D Showroom directly to the world to do online factory inspection, the cost effect is very good, but also got the praise of customers. Therefore, we must use innovative ways and methods to serve more small and medium-sized enterprises more efficiently.
(4) The first step in the digitalization of small and medium-sized enterprises: DingTalk
Speaking of this, I have to mention DingTalk, why are there more than 17 million enterprises and organizations, and more than 400 million users are using DingTalk? Let's think about it carefully, now everyone is a consumer, consumers are already online, the problem is that our organization, goods, ecology, services are not online, so the first thing is to build the digital bottom of the organization. DingTalk provides free online classroom services for primary and secondary school students, and can open up to 302-party video conferences; Mengniu used DingTalk during the epidemic last year, with more than 20,000 online video conferences per week.
There may be a variety of contingencies, how to deal with it? In fact, the core is to use this tool and method, and at the same time to make the business online. Whether it is from foreign trade or import, if the goods and services are not online, how can foreign customers find you and contact you? Therefore, enterprises should connect all kinds of ecological partners inside and outside the country more efficiently, evolve from offline industrial society to digitalization to society, and accelerate the entire process of digital transformation.
(5) Cloud nail integrated digital factory
Alibaba Cloud has more than 3 million enterprises on the top, of which 38% are among the world's top 500 companies, 60% are A-share listed companies, and 80% are technology companies, the vast majority of which are still small and medium-sized enterprises. With the cloud as the base, the digital factory integrates the production process, quality management, equipment management, warehousing management, and supply chain management in an all-round way to realize the online organization, production and equipment.
Taking an alloy company in Jiangsu as an example, through the solution of cloud nail integrated digital factory, it only takes 1 second to view the progress of the work order, and the problem of order extension has been fully solved. "If you want to do well, you must first use the tools and methods to make the organization more flat, transparent, efficient, and better coordinate with the ecological partners inside and outside the top, which is the key.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="45" > conclusion</h1>
China's consumer Internet is far ahead and is forcing the Industrial Chain Internet upgrade. In the next 5-10 years, if Chinese enterprises can do a better job of digital and intelligent transformation and upgrading, they will certainly be more competitive in the world. The greatest certainty of all the uncertainties in the digital economy era is change, and we need to accelerate the embrace of change. The curtain of the digital economy era has just opened, and small and medium-sized enterprises must seize the opportunity to achieve new breakthroughs.
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