Author | Deng Yongyi
Editor | Su Jianxun
After a lot of questioning$BABA-SW (09988.HK) $Decided to regroup and make an appearance in the enterprise services market with version 2.0.
On June 29th, BABA announced the establishment of a new subsidiary, "Jianyang", which is positioned to "provide digital growth capacity for enterprises". Peng Xinyu, vice president of BABA, served as CEO. He was a founding member of BABA's China Taiwan system, and later served as Youmeng + CEO.
Luoyang is integrated by a number of digital departments within BABA, including the original data center, business center, data staff, Jushi Tower, key account team, and so on. These teams originally belonged to different business groups of BABA, but each provided services to the enterprise.
No matter from the positioning or configuration, we can see the high strategic position of the sheep.
Yuyang is an independent subsidiary of BABA, which belongs to the same level as Hema, Cainiao and other companies.At the press conference, Zhang Yong, chairman and CEO of BABA Group, stood as its platform."the launch of Luyang is an important step taken by BABA Group after long-term consideration." He said.
CEO Peng Xinyu gives a definition, pointing out that Hillhouse Sheep is "the exit of BABA's internal capabilities." If you want to make an analogy, just like Ali Yun more than a decade ago, it is a unified export of all BABA's technical capabilities.
Sheep's existing products are divided into five modules, including analysis cloud, marketing cloud, production and marketing cloud, customer service cloud, development cloud, including Dataphin, Bizphin, Quick Audience, Quick BI, business staff, management staff and other 11 core products.
The establishment of Han Yang is closely related to BABA's annual routine adjustment. In December, Zhang Yong mentioned in an internal letter that China Taiwan was BABA's most important organizational strategy in the past few years, but now "diversified governance" is a new strategic direction.
BABA's implementation of the "China-Taiwan" strategy at that time was to solve the strong contradiction between business demand and IT resources under the rapid development. BABA's e-commerce business continued to rise and implemented the reform in China and Taiwan, and then there were "China-Taiwan" products and services exported to customers.
Huan Yang is the product of today's "diversified governance" strategy. Compared with China Taiwan, Hillhouse Sheep focuses more on growth-the slogan "data-driven as the growth engine", and now BABA's e-commerce business is slowing down and turning to fine operation. the trend of going deep into the industry echoes.
In a turbulent macro environment, as a subsidiary, it is not easy for Niyang to be responsible for its own profits and losses. In the future, they will have to face a much more mature enterprise service market than in the period of China and Taiwan. The opponent is not only CCTV, but also a large number of Martech, big data manufacturers, as well as byte, Tencent and other large manufacturers.
To jump to the top of the To B wave again, Hillhouse Sheep will have to make an effort.
Play the growth card
In the field of To B, BABA has always been good at bringing a concept to fire. It used to be "Zhongtai", but now it's "DaaS".
The concept of DaaS (Data intelligence as a Service) can be traced back to around 2010. In 2009, an article in the Wall Street Journal compared DaaS to an "information gold mine" and gave an interesting example: if there is a sock exchange in the world, you can find the socks you once lost, and with these socks can make you work and live better, aren't you willing to spend money to get help to find them?
Socks are actually data. DaaS is built on top of the three major architectures of cloud services-IaaS, PaaS and SaaS-to provide further services. The most basic thing that DaaS can do is to collect the basic data that users need and do data analysis. Customers are equivalent to paying for the relevant capabilities of data processing and analysis.
But the DaaS mentioned by BABA is equivalent to betting on a "growth" card on the platform of the original data and business.
BABA specially distinguishes the ability of DaaS from that of SaaS. "traditional SaaS is mainly about workflow transformation, while the essence of DaaS is to use data-driven as the growth engine," says Peng Xinyu. Translation, that is, not to do a single point tool, but to apply the data more deeply on the basis of SaaS.
What is more important in this sentence is the word "growth". Internet dividend peakedWhat enterprise customers need now is no longer simple tools, only by bringing them real growth can they reflect the value of enterprise service products.
BABA has served millions of stores in the retail sector, accumulating huge amounts of data and processing power, and Hillhouse Sheep hopes to reuse it in more areas.
Take Pumpkin Movie, a short and long video service, as an example. Yanyang uses intelligent recommendation technology to tag more tags and improve recommendation accuracy. By setting up multiple sections such as guessing your favorite and interest floors, pumpkin movies increase the viewing time of users by more than 20%, and increase the conversion of users.
It's hard not to think of byte's volcanic engine. The volcano engine business was officially launched in June 2020, and the idea is to export Douyin's growth methodology to different industries. To some extent, the establishment of Hillhouse Sheep is also a confrontation with volcanic engines.
Compete in a more mature market
BABA exported China Taiwan in 2017, when the wave of enterprise service entrepreneurship had just begun. But now, Yue Yang has to face more mature market competition.
The advantage of Hillhouse Sheep is that it has accumulated a large number of customer cases, not as a newcomer. Today, the team of nearly 500 people has already exceeded the size of startups. In the customer case, Hillhouse Sheep has also served the digital construction projects of LVMH, Hongxing Metro, XPeng Inc., McDonald's Corp, Pop Mart International and other enterprises.
Organizations and products will also be more efficient today. As a subsidiary, Yuanyang has a higher degree of freedom in operation. According to later LatePost, during the integration period, Lianyang put together the products originally belonging to Aliyun, e-commerce and other departments, and finally integrated 59 products into 11, excluding many products that did not meet the business direction.
In spite of this, the plate of Yue Yang's products is still not small. Luoyang involves big data, Martech, China Taiwan and other tracks, and undoubtedly has to face the competition from third-party manufacturers. For example, "Analytical Cloud" and "Marketing Cloud" are the main battlefields of Shenze, Minglue, TalkingData and other manufacturers, all of which have been working in their respective fields for many years.
On the other hand, the border issues with partners also need to be sorted out. During the period of Central Taiwan, BABA did business with many partners, and many small and medium-sized customers were handed over directly to their partners. Now, Hillhouse Sheep not only serves big clients, but also covers small and medium-sized clients-which needs to be sorted out more clearly in order to avoid being both a referee and an athlete.
For the boundary problem, Peng Xinyu also put forward the logic of "two-way integration". "the existing five major product matrices are the first boundary of the sheep. If customers already have tools that are well used, we will integrate with them based on the development cloud, open interface, and existing tools, as well as our standard products such as Quick BI, business advisors, and so on. " He told 36Kr Holdings.
Yi Yang is trying to take a more open route, as evidenced by supporting multi-platform and cloudy.
This corresponds to the trend that the channel is becoming more and more fragmented. Customers are far more than just Amoy to have a growing demand, while Amoy hopes to be able to serve.
Take Yuanqi Forest as an example, BABA helped Yuanqi Forest to establish a consumer experience monitoring platform, Yuanqi Forest can see the management feedback of various e-commerce platforms in real time. And Beihai Ranch under Yuanqi Forest, based on BABA's omni-channel membership, uniformly manages the membership system in different e-commerce channels.
However, there are still a lot of comments expressing doubts about neutrality. "after all, it is still a subsidiary of BABA. Can customers let data from multiple channels fall on Jianyang?" A big data practitioner said to 36Kr Holdings.
The trust of partners and customers may be a more difficult issue in the next stage than technology, and it is also the key to expanding the battlefield beyond the retail industry.