A month ago now, people were still celebrating the holiday, and no one thought it would be the longest Spring Festival holiday in history.

More than halfway through February, people gradually got used to the days of "working from home" after a weekly newspaper became a daily newspaper, WeCom collapsed and nailed a "one-star movement". According to the latest news, the large-scale telecommuting will continue this week, and the resumption time of some companies has been postponed to beyond March.

Along with the office scene, there is also the production mode of offline enterprises. Xibei, Haidilao International Holding, and the King of singing have sent out distress signals. Goods, services, communication, and creation are all moving online where there is no virus.

Whether telecommuting or online self-help, the enterprise has become the protagonist. The problem in front of the Internet giant has finally changed from "how to let consumers use my products" to "how to let enterprises use my products".

"the number of core users quadrupled"

It has been a month of anxiety and hope for graphite documents.

Wuhan Chuxin Technology Co., Ltd., the stronghold of graphite documents, is located in the center of the epidemic. After the outbreak, more than 50 employees of the company were "trapped" in Wuhan due to the closure of the city, while a number of Wuhan colleagues working in offices in Beijing and Shanghai stayed there and did not return home for the Spring Festival.

At the same time, it is also an opportunity for a company that makes SaaS products (software services), especially focusing on telecommuting and online collaboration tools.

On January 27, the State Council announced that the Spring Festival holiday would be extended to February 2. From the end of January to early February, local governments and companies have issued notices to extend holidays and postpone on-site work resumption. at the same time, in order to maintain the normal operation of the company and the development of the industry, the mode of "telecommuting" has been put on the agenda.

In the first week of February, 70% of workers turned on telecommuting, according to the "Workman start Survey" released by pulse on February 5. According to data from Ai Media Consulting, during the return to work during the Spring Festival in 2020, more than 18 million Chinese enterprises adopted the online telecommuting mode, mainly in the Internet industry, with more than 300m users using telecommuting applications.

Sensitive Internet companies soon know that the wind is blowing.

On January 25th, WeLink, Huawei Cloud's mobile collaborative office product, first announced that video conferencing would be available free of charge from now on to June 1, and more than 5000 small and medium-sized enterprises would open WeLink accounts on the 26th.

On January 27, Feishu decided to provide telecommuting and videoconferencing services free of charge to all users, and then announced on February 9 that it would provide free access to the commercial version for a period of three years to all small and medium-sized enterprises and anti-epidemic organizations. On the same day, Tencent document announced the free opening of all remote collaborative office functions.

WeCom announced on January 28th that it would increase the number of videoconferencing participants to 300. on January 29th, Nail, owned by BABA, also announced that it would offer a full set of free "work from home" solutions to 10 million enterprises and organizations.

Graphite documents officially launched the "telecommuting version" on January 31, raising the upper limit on the number of collaborators and the number of times to use some functions, opening advanced tabular features and adding telecommuting templates, which are available free of charge to individual and corporate users during the epidemic.

According to Graphite documents, from planning to landing, this version mobilized more than 40 team members, who were isolated at home and worked remotely, putting this idea into practice in just four or five days.

Nie Wei, a partner in graphite documents, told Hedgehog that the number of active core users of graphite documents has at least tripled since the outbreak; after the launch of the telecommuting version, the number of new product applications and launches has more than quadrupled from December last year and January this year.

Among them, there is not only the "last resort" during the epidemic, but also closely related to the development of the entire Internet.

"talents are not as closely tied to the region as they used to be, and talents as far away as second-and third-tier cities can also be United with first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Nie Wei believes that the company needs to make better use of multi-regional talent advantages on the basis of local human resources, which puts forward higher requirements for the office model.

Nie Wei said that the Internet / pan-Internet and online education are the two industries that are the easiest to accept and need telecommuting online collaborative products most. In specific types of work, as long as there is communication, you need to use video and communication tools; as long as you use Microsoft Corp office series, you need to use online documents.

A head of the entrepreneurial team of collaborative tools also told Hedgehog Commune: "large-scale online collaboration is a very important change in the development of the Internet today, and it is also a trend for people to work and study in the future." "

Based on such a large environment, the concept of remote collaboration is mentioned more and more frequently. The special period under the epidemic has become a key point to accelerate the maturity of the market.

User habits are the biggest challenge

February 3, the first Monday of February, is also the first day for most companies to telecommute. Nail, WeCom, WeLink, Tencent conference and other online office products collectively collapsed, nail and WeCom had to carry out emergency repair and expansion.

Nie Wei believes that before that, domestic telecommuting products have hardly experienced such a large-scale influx of users, and many potential problems have been exposed. In this case, only mature and complete office products can stand out from them.

The clearest evidence is that shares of Zoom, an American videoconferencing software company, rose nearly 15% after the first day of work, the biggest one-day gain in eight months.

Ryan MacWilliams, an analyst at investment firm Stephens, said there was a big increase in investor interest in stocks like Zoom: "the use of cloud videoconferencing is increasing because of concerns about physical meetings caused by the coronavirus, and investors are betting on the growth of paying users. "

Zoom was launched in 2011 and currently provides video conferencing services to 1/3 of Fortune 500 companies. Zoom entered China in 2013, and according to Zoom's financial report in the first quarter of 2019, only 8.56 per cent of Zoom's revenue came from the Asia-Pacific region and 80 per cent from the US region.

Although the market share of Zoom is not high, the user experience is better. When domestic peers collapse one after another, the advantages of Zoom become more prominent. Former employees of a large Internet company and a start-up both told Hedgehog that they had encountered stutters during audio conferences on nails on Feb. 3 and had never encountered problems with Zoom before.

Nie Wei believes that this is a necessary process for products. "Zoom has been working for 9 years now, and the founder (Yuan Zheng) is from WebEx. He has been doing video conferencing all his career. The entire architecture of Zoom is supported by WebEx, so stability can be guaranteed. He said that the graphite document was founded in 2014, and when it was first launched, it also collapsed every day, and it took "several years" to slowly achieve its current stability and withstood the test of this period of time.

Another interviewee told the hedgehog commune that people's habits are the biggest challenge for telecommuting products compared to technical problems. Most telecommuting products in China are still in their infancy, and the concept of "telecommuting" has not been widely popularized.

According to Global Workplace Analytics, the number of telecommuters in China was 1.8 million in 2005, 3.6 million in 2014 and less than 5 million in 2018. In the United States, the number of telecommuters (Work From Home,WFH) is as high as 30 million, accounting for 16% to 19% of the total working population.

The higher the degree of internationalization, the higher the acceptance and adaptability of telecommuting. In particular, Alphabet Inc-CL C, Facebook Inc, Twitter and other Internet companies even set working from home as a kind of employee welfare.

A technician at Facebook Inc headquarters told Hedgehog Commune that Facebook Inc's employees can telecommute every Wednesday and can work from home as long as they say hello to their boss, which is also the norm for many American companies.

Against this background, G Suites, the office suite of Work Chat,Google, Facebook Inc's chat application for the company, includes collaborative and efficiency applications such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Calendar and Meet, as well as emerging vertical companies such as Zoom, Slack, Smartsheet, Airtable, Coda and other office products, which are popular in Silicon Valley and other technology industrial districts.

Although overseas products were born early, it has been difficult to open in the domestic market, which leaves the possibility for the domestic market, especially for Internet giants such as byte beat, BABA, Tencent and so on.

Determination and uncertainty after the epidemic

In the domestic market, the history of telecommuting products is not short, but it is the first time that telecommuting products have received so much attention. A large part of the reason is that not only individual employees, but also Chinese companies have not yet formed the habit of paying for office supplies.

Compared with the SaaS market between China and the United States, the number of potential customers of Chinese SaaS enterprises is more than 80 million, which is three times that of the American SaaS market. However, from the average account price of enterprises, the average account price of Chinese SaaS enterprises is 147.2 yuan per year, while the unit price of the United States is as high as $255,255 (about 1780 yuan) per year, which is more than ten times that of China.

Professionals refer to those with an enterprise size of 20-2000 people and SaaS products that have been used for 3.24 years as "deep practice users" or "fan level" users. Among all the enterprises in the domestic market, 78.8% are deep practice users of SaaS products, but only 0.4% are stable users.

Judging from the expenditure of Chinese and American enterprises on SaaS products, in the past decade, corporate customers in the US market spent US $343000 on SaaS, and maintained a rapid annual growth rate of 78 per cent. In China, the annual investment of "fan-level" SaaS enterprise users is only 111500 yuan.

"the business logic of 2B and 2C is completely different. 2C products are mostly free, because 2C enterprises do not make money by selling products, but 2B enterprises make money by products and services. Nie Wei explained that at present, the use of many products is still based on personal choices, rather than the decisions of the whole company. "in terms of the purchasing power of the company, they will not decide to buy your things until they confirm that your products can benefit the company's business. "

Graphite documents, for example, has been upgrading and optimizing products in the three years since its launch, from simple documents (Word) to a full range of products, including tables (Excel), presentations (PPT) and mind maps, and adding more collaboration features. It was not until 2019, when a set of services for enterprises was formed, that commercial activities were gradually carried out.

"both information security and human errors are common problems in daily work, and telecommuting undoubtedly magnifies the possibility of these risks. "from the individual version to the enterprise version, Nie Wei envisioned a threshold of about dozens of people. Beyond this number, enterprises will involve specialized division of labor projects, and more professional versions are needed to support more complex collaborative work.

At present, telecommuting products on the market are mainly divided into five types in terms of function: 1, voice / video conferencing, such as nailing, WeCom / QQ, Welink;2, instant communication, such as nailing, WeCom / QQ, Welink;3, task management, such as teambition, trello, worktile;4, online documents, such as graphite documents, WPS, Tencent documents; 5, cloud disk, such as Baidu, Inc. net disk, Nuts Cloud, billion Fangyun.

As far as developers are concerned, there are three main sources: 1. Hardware giants moving towards the integration of software and hardware, such as Welink;2 under Huawei, Internet giants from C to B, such as BABA's nails, Tencent's WeCom and Tencent documents, byte bouncing Flying Books, etc. 3. New start-ups in the vertical field, such as Graphite documents, teambition (which has been acquired by BABA), Huichang Communications, which focuses on the education market, and Suzhou Koda, which provides video assistance to the government.

After the outbreak, it was a highlight moment for these telecommuting products. Nailing surpassed Wechat to top the list of free App Store App for the first time. On Feb. 3, WeCom's usage tripled that of the same period last year. WeLink added hundreds of thousands of new enterprises, added more than 1 million daily active users, and increased business traffic by 50 times.

But a reality that must be faced is that this is a special opportunity for telecommuting products and related enterprises. When the epidemic is over, telecommuting products change from free to charging, and whether enterprises are willing to spend a lot of money on a system upgrade is not optimistic.

Sun Peng, product manager of iFLYTEK, told Hedgehog Commune that telecommuting is not very popular in China. "it just happened that there was an outbreak of demand. After the epidemic, this "rigid demand" is likely to return to "non-rigid demand".

However, all respondents confirmed to the hedgehog commune that telecommuting and online collaboration are the inevitable trend of the future. For the market, this is a rare period of testing and improvement, and for companies, it is also an opportunity to discover good tools and explore new models. Considering the upcoming technological changes brought about by cloud and 5G, cloud management and instant messaging will have more application space in the future.

"people are gradually familiar with and begin to use telecommuting products. In the future, with the continuous optimization of technology and products, the user experience is getting better and better. I believe that more and more people will use telecommuting products to assist work and improve office efficiency. "Sun Peng said.

Market behind telecommuting

In fact, there is a huge 2B market behind telecommuting products. For the offline real economy, it is the data and online supply chain; for Internet companies and other new economic forms, it is the optimization and upgrading of team cooperation and management level.

Wu Bing, founder of Graphite documents, said in a recent live public course that China's 2C companies are booming because of China's large population base, but in the 2B field, Chinese companies are far inferior to American companies.

In terms of market capitalization, the market capitalization ratio of 2B and 2C companies in the United States is 4:6, while that in China is only 1:20. General data also show that 2B enterprises in the United States are relatively large, with a proportion of 2C enterprises reaching 1:1.

Back in 2013, Jeff Fagnan, a partner of Atlas Venture, a famous early-stage investment firm, mentioned in an interview with Techcrunch that the US capital market favors 2B companies: "We see a strange phenomenon: Angel investment swings between 2B and 2C startups." 2C startups can still get investment, but it is clear that investors' attention is also shifted to the 2B side. "

Take the SaaS market as an example. In terms of capital markets, the US SaaS market accounted for 70% of global VC financing in 2019, while China's SaaS market accounted for only 11%. In the past five years, the Nasdaq index has risen from 4000 to 8000, while the SaaS index has quintupled, according to Alpha workshops, while most domestic SaaS companies are in their infancy, let alone going public.

Compared with China, the development history of the Internet in the past 30 years is almost the development history of 2C enterprises. From Baidu, Inc., BABA and Tencent to byte beat, Meituan and DiDi Global Inc., all focus on providing content and services for consumers. Most of the products are concentrated in the personal application layer and platform layer, lacking the expansion of the infrastructure layer.

Until recent years, Internet companies have more or less begun to transfer from C to B, increasing the strategic strength of B-end business. In September 2018, Tencent carried out a new round of organizational structure adjustment and newly established "Cloud and Smart Industry Group" and "platform and content Enterprise Group". The former is the attempt of this 2C giant company to transform 2B. On December 18 of the same year, Baidu, Inc. also upgraded the smart cloud business department to the smart cloud business group.

In 2019, Ma Huateng said in an interview with Xinhua: "Today we are faced with a new problem, that is, the transition from consumer Internet to industrial Internet." The Internet will fully infiltrate the industrial value chain and transform and upgrade its production, transaction, financing, circulation and other links. "

According to the "2019 China Industrial Internet Series Research report II" released by iResearch on December 31, 2019, the disappearance of the C-end traffic dividend has promoted people's attention to the B-end and promoted the transformation of the consumer Internet to the industrial Internet.

The report also mentioned: "the core links in production, such as R & D and design, production and manufacturing, content creation, operation and sales, and collaborative management, can become the objects of industrial Internet penetration and transformation through technology." "the most important thing is to get through the supply side and the demand side to form a flexible production model.

This was supposed to be a long process, but the various "black swan incidents" triggered by the epidemic pressed the acceleration button for everyone's actions. Wu Ke, dean of Tencent Penguin New Media School, said in an interview: "the new format spawned by this epidemic will really promote the opening of the second half of the industrial Internet." "

During the epidemic, a number of investors told the media that digitization and online are crucial to the survival of enterprises in the epidemic. According to the report of Burning Finance, one investor thought: "the typical difference between this epidemic and the last wave of SARS is the data and online on the B side." The epidemic will continue to lead to the digitization and online of the supply chain, the so-called industrial Internet. "

The living space of offline enterprises has been frustrated, and online self-rescue has become the only way out.

For example, Taobao buyers, sellers and factory suppliers have been nailed through, and buyers can check the factory's production progress at any time; catering, fashion and other offline stores rely on the private domain traffic between WeCom and Wechat, completed the closed loop from shopping guide to transaction in moments and Mini Program; byte opened the endogenous product Flying Book into 2B products, and has opened online and offline retail industry solutions.

Like telecommuting products, these moves have always been bold attempts born in a special period, but they are the key to the maturity of the domestic Internet. To be sure, the internet is looking for new outlets to replace traffic dividends, and more than 30 million small and medium-sized enterprises, which contribute more than 50 per cent of tax revenue, may be the next target.

With the increasing competition among consumers, the bugle for enterprises has been sounded.