From the international situation to the new crown epidemic, the impact of the “new normal” in the past three years has filled the external environment with uncertainty, and also left people in this era in unprecedented confusion.
However, the germination and development of technology always brings abiding confidence and guides people through the cycle.
At the end of 2022, in order to give confidence to every practitioner who is willing to maintain growth and stay in the game, Geek Park combined a full year of in-depth industry tracking and observation, as well as two months of special interviews, surveyed more than 130 people Experts, investors, entrepreneurs and senior practitioners have launched a special issue “Emergence – 2023 Trends of Chinese Technology Entrepreneurship”.
This special issue focuses on seven technology tracks that have seen positive variables in 2022. They are: live short video, enterprise services, robots, Metaverse, Web3, globalization, and the new energy vehicle industry chain. By finding the most critical players in the industry and extracting their cognitions—and sorting out and accumulating them, we hope to leave some public assets for China’s technology industry.
At present, “Emergence” has launched a physical book and an electronic version, which has been officially exposed at the Geek Park IF 2023 conference. In the next 7 days, the official account of Geek Park will push one of the chapters in the form of a refined version every day.
If you are interested in the full report, you can click the link below (issue2023.geekpark.net) to read the full content of the special issue.
Author | Duan Wanchen, Zhao Weipeng
Editor | Wang Wei
With the outbreak of COVID-19 at the end of 2019, many people around the world were forced to shift their work, entertainment, and consumption online. Collaborative office software represented by Zoom is ushering in an explosion; the contraction of offline business has also made enterprise services represented by Shopify, an e-commerce SaaS (Software as a Service, software as a service) service provider, the darling of capital, ” “Digitalization” has become one of the few certainties in an uncertain era, and a huge amount of capital has poured into it.
Take Shopify as an example. The Canadian e-commerce SaaS company founded in 2006 had only 1,900 employees until 2016, but this number will exceed 10,000 in 2021. The reason for the expansion is the surge in demand for e-commerce shopping during the epidemic, and many small business owners have created online stores to sell goods and services. Under such dividends, Shopify’s revenue will increase by 86% in 2020 and 57% in 2021. At that time, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke had optimistically asserted: “We bet: the dollar share of e-commerce rather than physical retail will be permanently ahead by 5 or even 10 years.”
However, in July 2022, Shopify’s stock price fell by 80% in less than a year, and it had to start a large number of layoffs. Lütke wrote: “The gamble that was made did not pay off. The gamble was my decision, but in the end, I was wrong.”
U.S. e-commerce demand has returned to pre-coronavirus growth levels. | Source: US Census Bureau
It’s not just Shopify that has paid for the “irrational optimism” of the past two years. The market value of star SaaS companies such as Zoom and Snowflake has fallen by more than 70% from the highest point. Behind the sharp drop in stock prices is the pressure on performance brought about by changes in the macro environment. What happened to Shopify is just a microcosm of the enterprise service market in 2022.
The whole world is the same cold and hot, and Chinese enterprise service entrepreneurs will also feel the sudden chill in 2022. According to the investment and financing data in the IT orange enterprise service field, a total of 557 financing events occurred in the domestic enterprise service field in Q1-Q3 of 2022, and the financing amount was about 54.132 billion yuan. Compared with the same period in 2021, the financing events decreased by 30%, and the financing amount 56% reduction.
Many entrepreneurs explained to Geek Park: The epidemic seemed to be good for digitalization at the beginning, but until the third year, all walks of life have entered a tightening cycle. The industrial Internet relying on various industries cannot be unique, and the economy is closely linked. of. The e-commerce industry that Shopify relies on may still be growing, but some other industries have entered a down cycle, and it is more difficult to start a business in these tracks.
From capital booming to facing the cold winter, how do enterprise service entrepreneurs in the era of great transition get out of their respective roads of evergreen business? For young practitioners, is today a good time to join in corporate services? Is it possible for the mature R&D, product managers, and operational business talents cultivated by the mobile Internet in the past ten years to realize value in the direction of enterprise services? At the end of 2022, the Geek Park team researched and interviewed dozens of entrepreneurs, investors, and practitioners in the direction of enterprise services, trying to explore the answers with these entrants.
01
Dress up for winter,
Overvalued as “Sword of Damocles”
The turning point in 2022 is a “double kill” for enterprise services: the difficulty of internal hematopoiesis is escalated, and the possibility of external blood transfusion is reduced. “This turn is like driving at 120 mph, and suddenly being told to make a 90-degree turn immediately, the car will overturn, and many companies overturned at the stall.” Said Lan Xi, founder and CEO of the enterprise expenditure management platform Fenbeitong.
This is because: the macro economy has changed from an upward cycle to a tightening cycle, and the KPI of corporate services has changed—from focusing on income to focusing on profit/cash flow. Correspondingly, the valuation model around KPI and the competitive strategy of enterprises (including business strategy and organizational structure) need to be changed.
In the past two years, a lot of hot money has poured in, and the KPI of enterprise services is revenue. Correspondingly, SaaS companies will use aggressive methods to increase revenue, that is, focus on ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue, annual recurring revenue) multiples or ARR growth rate. This is reflected in several ways:
- In the selection of customer groups, as long as they can sign orders, even customers who do not fit the PMF (Product Market Fit, the best fit point between product and market) portrait will also sign in.
- In terms of team size, there is redundancy in each department to prepare for expansion.
- On the business frontier, keep trying new product lines, and do things that may not be profitable in the short term.
- In terms of talent reserve, compete with big factories for talents at a higher premium.
In the upward cycle, because of good business expectations and strong external capital transfusion capabilities, this set of business logic may be able to operate effectively. Entering the tightening cycle, external blood transfusions can no longer be counted on, and the KPI of enterprise services has become profit and cash flow. When revenue growth cannot be exchanged for financing, enterprises can only exchange profits through refined operations, so that enterprise services can develop in a healthy and high-quality direction.
“The ARR of companies that perform better in China may be more than 200 million yuan, and some companies that have been established for a short period of time and have a relatively fast growth rate have an ARR of less than 100 million yuan, but the market in the past two years has given them dozens of times their income. Valuation.” Lan Xi, the founder of the enterprise expenditure management platform Fenbeitong, said, “Actually, today’s SaaS industry in China, the leaders in each track are facing the problem of upside down valuation. There is no shortcut to solve this problem, it is time. Friends, use time and more solid growth to digest the valuation.”
Many entrepreneurs described to Geek Park the feeling of experiencing this turning point in corporate services: Before March 2022, due to the influx of hot money, everyone can’t wait to “how bold and productive people are.” Now, many good companies cannot survive because of their high valuations in the past two years. An entrepreneur believes, “If the cash flow on the book cannot last for more than three years, it will definitely not be able to pass through this wave of cycles, and don’t expect to be able to raise another sum of money.”
Compared with 2021, the amount of financing and investment in the field of corporate services in 2022 will drop precipitously. ｜Photo source: Jingya Capital
Next, the KPI of enterprise services is profit, and the corresponding business strategy becomes increasing revenue and reducing expenditure. In terms of throttling, refined operations have become a necessary strategy for corporate services this year. On open source, some companies are exploring growth models that can see returns in the short term.
Lanxi, the founder of Fenbeitong, believes that refined operations can help SaaS companies survive the winter better, but the long-term development of enterprises requires open source and active exploration of new growth models that suit them.
“What we are facing today is not just the test of cash flow. When a SaaS company’s ARR (annual recurring revenue, annual recurring revenue) exceeds 100 million yuan, it is really challenging to ensure an annual growth rate of more than 100% or even 200%, because it means So, the best wave of customers who are willing to buy from you has already been covered by you.” Lan Xi said.
When continuing to make breakthroughs around open source, the first step of Fenbeitong is to further secure large customers and increase ARPU (Average Revenue Per User, revenue per customer). The second is to take root in second- and third-tier cities, such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. A city may support 100 customers who fit the profile. The third idea is SaaS+X. The underlying logic is: Can the same CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost, customer acquisition cost) earn a second share of money and a third share of money from customers? This X is various, including services, transactions, and finance. Of course, there are also differences in the track to find X. The X found by Decibel is a “trade”, and “X really needs to be pondered.”
Decibel SaaS+ transaction mode. ｜Image source: Decibel Tong
In addition, Lanxi is also trying to interconnect with other partners’ products to expand the market together. “This also applies to a lot of SaaS companies,” he said. “To allow customers to use your product well, you must make customers feel that this is an integrated product. You cannot make customers feel that there are hidden costs.”
Lanxi believes that there are several benefits to opening up and cooperating with partners: First, all manufacturers have become friends with Fenbeitong. Second, after customers use Decibel, they will not lose easily because it is deeply bound. Third, it is precisely because of the integration of various systems that customers are more willing to spend more on decibel.
02
The next five years,
Five key trends in the enterprise service industry
After the bubble is removed, the market space is still huge. But the balance of supply and demand has changed.
Under the “Great Leap Forward” development of the capital market in the past two years, many enterprise service companies have promoted software (even free) to enterprises at the expense of the unit economic model and at any cost. Therefore, under this condition, the supply and demand of the market have changed. balance point. Today, the evacuation of capital has changed the supply-side curve. “It is unlikely that anyone will do projects in a way of bloodshed and sacrifice.” Instead, we should think more rationally about what value customers need and the health of the software company itself.
As far as the demand side is concerned: on the one hand, China’s software market is still in the stage of continuous quantitative change before qualitative change; on the other hand, from the actual investment of Party A’s enterprise, digitalization is a deterministic trend at present and in the future.
Against this background, many entrepreneurs believe that only by being the first in the subdivided track can there be a prospect. Under the current conditions, the valuation model is changing and the external environment is changing. It is even more necessary to re-study and judge the trend determined by the enterprise service in the next five years, so that it is possible to find the best fit point between the product and the market one step ahead of others.
Trend one:
Lean operation management is a compulsory course
“These two years are a very important period of strategic opportunities, and lean operation management is the key.” Almost every entrepreneur interviewed by GeekPark expressed a similar view. Not only for enterprise service entrepreneurs, but also for enterprise service customers, improving organizational efficiency through lean operation management has become a core demand.
On the one hand, as far as business service entrepreneurs are concerned, this is an inevitable requirement for KPI to change from revenue to profit. Because “this year, everyone felt that if the ground floor is not rammed, the building will fall easily, so they are all doing this.” Lan Xi told Geek Park.
Unlike C-end products, enterprise services involve a long chain of internal departments. If the function-oriented “department wall” cannot be broken, the “customer-centric” appeal is easily deformed. Therefore, in 2022, many enterprise service companies Started to drive internal process changes in order to respond to the flexible and changing needs of customers in a timely manner.
On the other hand, on the customer side of enterprise services, the requirements for refined operations are also increasing. Especially for corporate customers who are “living well”, practicing internal skills and accelerating digitalization have increasingly become the consensus of customers in the current environment.
Yilu is a SaaS company with a salary calculation engine as its core. According to traditional stereotypes, salary calculation engines are not easy to maintain product differentiation. However, due to the uncertainty of the external environment and the increasing demand for lean management after the maturity of various industries, the financial indicators of Yilu’s old customer repurchase and additional purchase (NDR) are outstanding. The reason behind this is that more and more More and more companies are beginning to pay attention to improving human efficiency in a digital way.
Specifically, under the background that enterprises are increasingly pursuing human efficiency, the proportion of floating wages/performance wages in the compensation structure of many enterprises is increasing, and the incentive methods are becoming more and more flexible. more complicated. Today’s challenge has become how to integrate all applications and data beyond the scope of HR into a platform for HR professionals to use. For example, the human resource management of some retail industries needs to introduce epidemic risk control data to carry out intelligent scheduling; different stores of the same chain store require different real-time incentive parameters.
Panoramic digitalization of human resources with salary as the core. ｜Image source: Yilu
Yilu Chairman Wang Tianyang shared a number with Geek Park: Taking the logistics industry as an example, behind the piecework salary of a courier means more than 200 parameters – such as the size, weight, source of delivery leads, and destination Whether it is a building or a bungalow, whether there is an elevator, whether the object can be placed in the elevator, the time required for the route, etc. Through the increasingly refined management of these parameters, it can help the logistics industry to tap the space for further improving human efficiency in real time.
When lean operation management becomes a compulsory course for enterprises, “how to make a standardized SaaS satisfy different complex business scenarios becomes an industry barrier, because it means that its software architecture, technical implementation, and data processing are completely different from the past. “Wang Tianyang said.
Trend two:
The division of labor and refinement promote the birth of incremental market
Although enterprise services have experienced ups and downs in the capital market in the past two years, an irreversible trend is that the digital penetration rate of all walks of life is constantly increasing, which has led to the generation of more subdivided demands, and the further refinement of industry division of labor will also bring The birth of a new incremental market.
Dai Junjie, partner of Saiyi Industrial Fund, believes: “When entrepreneurs and investors become more rational, and China’s Party A becomes more and more professional, I believe that the division of labor must be the mainstream. Of course, this trend will first start from the big B (B-side big customer), because he is building a more and more professional team from top to bottom. For small B (small customer), it may be more urgent to run the current business, so all-in-one (integrated ) software form may be more suitable for them.”
Even for small B companies with limited volume compared with traditional companies, their seemingly inconspicuous needs are giving birth to an incremental market.
A typical segmented incremental market is SaaS companies, large and small. Programmer recruitment SaaS platform ShowMeBug founder & CEO Li Yafei observed, “There are now many SaaS companies serving SaaS companies. This is an obvious trend. In order to solve the needs of a very small SaaS company, another company came out unexpectedly. .For example, every SaaS company today needs to monitor the ARR model, which is actually a service provided by another SaaS company—specifically making AI models for SaaS companies. The track will continue to be subdivided.”
With the further improvement of the digital penetration rate of enterprises, it has brought about the division of labor in society, and it has become more professional. “Just like the separation of front and back ends in the programmer circle at that time, it was actually separating the organizational structure to make it more efficient. ShowMeBug is deeply involved in the TSA (Technology Skill Assessment, technical skills assessment) track, and it is also a general trend of division of labor and refinement. , to solve the precise problem of programmer recruitment.” Li Yafei said that the performance of ShowMeBug this year was better than expected, which proves this trend.
Trend three:
Collaboration tools have become rigidly needed, and customers are more willing to pay
One result of the increase in digital penetration is that the number of software engineers in all walks of life is increasing year by year. When the number of software engineers in an enterprise increases, software engineering management becomes a necessary proposition, and collaboration tools become a rigid need.
“When ONES started in 2016, many industries may not need R&D, but now all walks of life need software R&D. This is a very big change. Software is driving the entire society.” Founder of R&D management SaaS service provider ONES & CEO Wang Yingqi said.
The distribution of software development needs in various industries. ｜Image source: ONES
Qian Jinkai, managing director of Xinyi Capital, also explained the reasons why users are willing to pay from another perspective: “In the past, the CTO of many Chinese companies was a very difficult role. They did a lot of work, but their voice and financial power were relatively small. , especially for non-technical product companies, it is difficult for him to explain clearly to the CEO why he wants to buy this thing instead of making it himself. Some CTOs will also think: expanding the team is equivalent to expanding the site. Only then did I realize that it is obviously better to buy than to build, so the cycle is very long. But today, more and more companies have realized that there is no need to reinvent the wheel themselves from day one.”
When it becomes a consensus to pay for organizational synergy, what entrepreneurs need to do is to find the most painful pain points of users and realize them with a good experience-connecting things with SaaS, because collaboration has become the pain point of the organization. Through SaaS products, the chaos is reduced, which ultimately points to the improvement of production efficiency.
Trend four:
Concentrate on core competencies and fight with friends to win
The severe test facing enterprise services in 2022 will in turn prompt entrepreneurs to lose their delusions of the past: on the one hand, they will focus on polishing their product capabilities within the boundaries of what they are good at, and on the other hand, they will open up cooperation and seek win-win results in areas where they are not good at.
In the past, China’s corporate services naturally had an inertia of “I want to take in and eat everything myself”. Especially those who have been “rolled” out of the Internet industry, when they see new opportunities, they instinctively do everything by themselves, making it big first, and then making money, which is not caring. This introverted culture creates low-quality competition.
But today, when the KPIs of enterprise services become profit and cash flow, this trend of “wanting to do everything” and “doing everything by yourself” is loosening.
Yang Jiongwei, founder of Weiling Technology, observed: “More and more software has begun to talk about opening up cooperation. You do what you are best at, and I do what I am best at. Instead of entering into each other’s field.”
Not only entrepreneurs have figured it out, but the demand side is no longer blindly obsessed with all-in-one solutions. Wang Yingqi, founder of ONES, believes: “Subscription is the best payment strategy for the purchaser of Party A. The operating cash flow is very small, and it can be changed continuously. There is an opportunity to find the best products in the industry.”
Trend five:
Big platforms embrace partners, do something and not do something
Not only enterprise service entrepreneurs are aware of the benefits of openness, but the platform has also gradually defined its own positioning and started to invest heavily in ecological construction. In recent years, corporate WeChat, DingTalk, and Feishu have all followed their corporate genes and worked with their partners to build an ecosystem.
For example, since DingTalk clarified its positioning of “only doing PaaS”, it has already had more than 4,000 partners, and dozens of ISVs (Independent Software Vendors, independent software developers) who obtained clues through the DingTalk platform. Collect over ten million. These ecological partners perform their duties, providing SaaS, hardware, solutions, consulting, custom development, etc.
For the clear ecological positioning of the platform, Xinyi Capital Qian Kai gave an example: “Among the top three third-party plug-ins in the Shopify App store, one is for SMS marketing and EDM (Email Direct Marketing, email marketing) , In theory, Shopify can do it by itself, but he chose to invest 100 million US dollars in this company instead. The platform does nothing, so there are a large number of teams willing to tie their lives to Shopify. He is not worried that one day the platform will take My meat was taken away. This is a boundary that a platform should have.”
In fact, Dingding made it clear that the current ecological style of play also paid tuition.
“In the early days, DingTalk did not have a clear boundary between what it did and what its partners did. Maybe partners made some products, DingTalk thought it was good, and started to do it themselves, and even formed some competitive relationships. But with the recognition Deeper and deeper, DingTalk has clearly discovered that the needs of enterprise services are complex, and it is impossible for any enterprise to fully cover them. If I want to do everything, I will not be able to do many things. But as a platform, I have the ability to lay the foundation , make the base, then we should do this well, and then give the opportunity to grow on it to our ecological partners.” Dingding CTO Cheng Caohong said to Geek Park.
This is mutually beneficial. For partners, “infusion” (customer acquisition) is a direct appeal; deep integration with the base is also a path for product service innovation; for the platform, it can use ecological services to “thousands of industries”. In terms of serving major customers, PaaS development capabilities and partner ecology have become DingTalk’s competitive advantages.
Usually, the needs of large customers are numerous and detailed. Many SaaS companies die because they cannot meet the needs of large customers, or need to invest huge costs, but using ecological methods can spread costs and risks. Ku Wei, COO of Dingding, said: “Some of our partners have strong customization capabilities, such as Lanling in the field of corporate collaborative office, Accenture, a consulting company, etc. Accenture and Dingding are working on the delivery process of a head power battery customer We have done a lot of platform work”; “We also found that customized needs can also find partners within customers. For example, FAW has a company called FAW Qiming, which is responsible for the company’s internal digital work. It must know FAW better than us.” .
03
Under the new trend,
How Entrepreneurs Break Out
Enterprise services in different fields face different industries and market environments. It is difficult to have certain rules for how to break through, but the attempts of pioneers can be used as a stone for others.
Innovation based on “efficiency improvement”
Zhai Xuehun, the founder of G7 Yiliu, has been providing SaaS services around the logistics industry for more than 20 years. He told Geek Park, 2018 to present. As the endogenous growth of consumption has been fully released, the logistics industry has ended its period of rapid growth and has begun to return to normal, and the strategies of enterprises have also changed accordingly—the demand for cost reduction, efficiency increase and digital transformation has increased significantly. On the other hand, since 2022, due to the increase in macro uncertainty, the road freight volume has dropped sharply, and customers’ lives have become more difficult. The income of rigid-demand products directly related to scale will naturally be affected.
“But there is also good news. The demand for SaaS related to cost reduction and efficiency increase management has increased significantly . We have two products related to cost reduction and efficiency increase. It has achieved a success that I am quite satisfied with.” said Zhai Xuehun, chairman of G7 Yiliu.
Regarding digital transformation, G7 Yiliu believes that, unlike general-purpose SaaS , which is oriented towards management efficiency, SaaS in all vertical industries must be oriented towards productivity. The so-called productivity must be people + equipment. Therefore, the model of G7 Yiliu is a combination of software and hardware from the very beginning.
Since the equipment in the logistics industry (such as trucks) is mostly mobile, through IoT (The Internet of Things, Internet of Things), it helps customers to digitize the mobile assets and equipment, so that it is easier to create value, which is determined by the logistics track itself determined by uniqueness. This requires a large and long-term investment in the early stage, but at the same time it also forms barriers in the later stage. This has also become a clear development strategy choice for G7 Yiliu in the era of change.
Zhai Xuehun clearly remembers the experience of being approached by a client on his own initiative.
“The boss of a coal trading company in Inner Mongolia came to our office one day and took the initiative to ask us for a product demand for instant settlement (no manual labor, automatic settlement of freight payment), and strongly demanded that it must be realized.”
It turns out that manual weighing may take 2 and a half minutes to pass a car, but after the unattended equipment is installed, it can be completed automatically within 30 seconds. ｜Image source: G7 Yiliu
In the coal industry, the unspoken rule in the past was to pay drivers on a monthly basis to ensure sufficient liquidity for easy turnover. But from the perspective of a freight driver, it is not so settled.
“The driver thinks that if you pay one month late, I will charge 10% more freight, and two months late will charge 30% more, because the driver hates risks and uncertainties. The freight company needs cash flow, but the real pain point of the driver is not the shortage. Cash flow, but lack of security.” Zhai Xuehun analyzed.
Traditional bulk freight is an industry with highly asymmetric information. A master driver often doesn’t know how much work there is before he goes to pull coal; sometimes he queues up for 6 hours to pull goods, and three or four hundred master drivers sleep at the entrance of the coal mine, and the queue can be one kilometer away; If you are bullied during the loading process, you need to have a good relationship with the master who puts the coal or the security guard, and you even need to have a low-key relationship with the accountant when you check out. From the perspective of the driver, the poor user experience increases the friction when cooperating with the cargo owner; from the perspective of the cargo owner, this friction actually brings more loss costs.
After discovering this pain point, the team of G7 Yiliu and the customer in Inner Mongolia began to promote the “lifting pole second knot” on a small scale.
“It’s actually very difficult to make a quick settlement, because in the past, almost everyone in this chain, including the people at the management station, if they didn’t like a certain driver, they could say that they were waiting by the side and wouldn’t sign for you, and the driver couldn’t take it. The signing and payment process couldn’t even start. Later, we used IoT devices to integrate with the settlement process. When the truck driver lifted the pole to enter, the weighbridge could weigh the weight of the coal. Through the IoT device, the cargo weight information and the system Through this, the driver doesn’t need to ask anyone to sign when delivering the goods, and the person who originally guarded the door will disappear.” Zhai Xuehun said.
Today, in a container terminal in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, there are successive drivers driving coal trucks into the unattended digital terminal. The master driver leans his body out of the car window, swipe the card at the designated position of the load pump, and the pole will automatically lift up. When the unloading is completed and the driver leaves the station, the freight will be automatically charged to the designated account.
It turns out that manual weighing may take 2 and a half minutes to pass a car, but after the unattended equipment is installed, it can be completed automatically within 30 seconds.
“After the trial of the function of lifting the pole and instant settlement, other drivers saw that they would rather charge a lower freight rate and would be more willing to cooperate with that consignor. Not only because of efficiency, but also because they don’t have to hand over cigarettes and don’t ask for help, which makes them more dignified.” In Zhai Xuehun It seems that this case made him see the greater value of SaaS products after solving the pain points of the three parties: not only improving production efficiency, but also helping the industry improve production relations.
Don’t just take “customer success” as a concept,
To become the organizational capacity of the company
In today’s enterprise service industry, eight out of ten founders are talking about customer success, because everyone is deeply aware that the era of barbaric growth and scale expansion has passed, and the service level for customers determines the renewal rate, which is directly related to the sustainability of the enterprise develop.
In mid-2017, Sensors Data founder & CEO Sang Wenfeng began to realize the necessity of customer success management tools. This decision originated from a detour in the early days of entrepreneurship.
The founding employees of Sensors Data, with Baidu’s big data team as the core team, are deeply influenced by the C-end product culture in Silicon Valley. They once published a 300,000-word help document on the official website to provide customers with self-service query services. But even so, customers don’t seem to buy it. Many customers still can’t even operate basic data access, and they don’t know how to read the ready-made documents.
“I began to realize that as long as customers can’t use it, it is our problem.” Sang Wenfeng, founder of Sensors Data, recalled.
Sang Wenfeng directly transferred a core developer at that time to a project manager, allowing him to face the needs of customers directly. Four months later, he established a delivery process for major customers.
Sensors data service system. ｜Source: Sensors Data
“Different from the simplicity and convenience of ToC products, ToB products have high customer acquisition costs and few potential customers. Maintaining long-term customer relationships is very important, so customer service is the top priority. Just as users buy Lego, they buy more than just scattered modules. , it is the instruction manual of the entire kit and kit, without the manual, few people can spell out a decent model. The role played by the customer success team is like the manual for Lego.” Sang Wenfeng in “Enterprise Service From 0 to 1 “Introduced in the book.
Within Sensors Data, customer success is not just a slogan, but an important part of organizational capabilities. This team needs to carry four major tasks, namely:
- Landing (transition platform), after the product is sold, it is transferred to the customer success system. The customer success team is responsible for checking the needs with customers and coordinating resources.
- Training (Training), take the initiative to provide customers with high-quality training, and the customer success team provides a large number of documents or teaching videos from the use of products to the methodology level.
- Solution (solution), providing targeted solutions rather than standardized instructions.
- Service (direct customer service) is not just customer service, but the bottom line on the basis of the above three links.
Since the establishment of the company, Sensors Data has insisted on only signing one-year contracts with customers, and is not allowed to sign multi-year contracts. The purpose is to let the customer take the initiative and put the knife on the neck of Party B, but force the team to do a good job in the service. This kind of competition with myself is not because of any obsession, but because “to a certain extent, customer success is directly proportional to the possibility of renewal and renewal.”
Starting in 2021, the G7 and E6 will begin to merge. Zhai Xuehun, chairman of G7 Yiliu, spent a year promoting the adjustment of the internal organizational structure and successfully integrating customers into the organizational capabilities of the company.
“We will require a customer success commitment letter to be signed directly when the sales order is signed, and then from CR1 to CR7 (leads, business opportunities, customer touches, conversion signings, first value, renewals, repurchases) each step must be quantitatively measured. How is success? Originally, we were divided according to vertical business lines, but this year we began to divide according to customers, because the focus of customer success for small and medium-sized customers and KA customers is different, so the organizational structure has undergone fundamental changes.” Zhai Xuehun introduced.
On the surface, as early as 20 years ago, enterprise service companies had already done very in-depth refined customer service after sales. Is this a kind of reincarnation? Is the “customer success” that is sought after today new wine in old bottles?
Zhai Xuehun does not think so, “The biggest difference between SaaS companies’ customer success today and IBM’s solutions 20 years ago is that the efficiency improvement brought about by SaaS companies’ customer success is two-way. In the IBM era, it is necessary to establish Expensive elite teams, which determine that they target large customers with more scale effects, cannot cover 90% of small and medium customers. By integrating customer success into organizational capabilities, SaaS companies have the opportunity to improve both customer efficiency and their own efficiency, The iteration speed can be faster and the customers can be served more, which is the biggest difference from traditional software companies.”
PLG is the future, but still walks on two legs
In the past two years, from abroad to China, PLG (Product-led Growth, product-driven growth) has become more and more prominent in the enterprise service track. The fundamental reason is that entrepreneurs pay attention to the cost of customer acquisition and changes in the industry environment.
The concept of PLG was the first to become popular among American enterprise service companies. In addition to the fact that this market developed earlier than in China, the more important reason is that labor is expensive. This not only brings the opportunity to double the efficiency of software services to replace manual services, but also enables SaaS entrepreneurship Investors don’t have to hire expensive and huge sales teams like their predecessors IBM and Oracle.
In the past ten years, with the rise of a new generation of enterprise service companies such as Slack and Zoom, many companies have considered how to grow at a low cost during the product definition stage. They usually acquire customers by providing free trial versions for individual users. Customers provide more advanced value-added services for revenue. In the stage of customer acquisition, they are less and less dependent on the sales team, but rely on product reputation to achieve growth fission.
The reason why this model is effective today is not only the consideration of enterprise service companies to save sales costs, but also based on a premise on the demand side – the improvement of the digitalization of enterprise services has given end users more and more voice, especially in the collaborative office Field, when facing small and medium-sized teams.
In China, a typical case of practicing PLG is Feishu.
For example, for individual users or small and medium-sized enterprises, just register a free version and use it without having to deal with Feishu’s sales team. After using it for a period of time, if the collaboration efficiency is indeed improved, it will be easier for users to convince the team to become a paying customer, and then the purchase of this paid plan can be completed directly on the website.
Although PLG is good, it also has its applicable boundaries. For example, it is more suitable for products with network effects such as office collaboration, which can greatly reduce the cost of customer acquisition through word of mouth; it is more suitable for dissemination among people with higher technical (self-service use) literacy, such as programmers, because they have independent use The tool is used to Amway without face-to-face sales; it is more suitable for small and medium-sized teams, because their internal decision-making chain is relatively simple.
翟学魂曾经带着团队深入研究过国内外的PLG 实践，他一方面认可PLG 的理念，另一方面决定投入更多资源建立客户成功团队，升级客户服务能力。
原因在于他发现一个现象：不少PLG 的公司在营收超过1 亿美元之后普遍遇到瓶颈，包括Slack。「越是面向中小企业的时候，PLG 发挥的价值越高，它能靠着网络效应降低获客成本，但是不是说有了PLG 就可以废弃销售了，要想成为行业顶尖的公司，不做大客户没有希望，而服务中大型的客户必须要有成熟的销售体系，只靠PLG 是不行的。SaaS 公司没有平庸之路，一个产业SaaS 公司，只有深入头部客户，引领生产力的提升，才能长治久安。」
聚焦少数产品，将垂类赛道做精
帆软的联合创始人& CEO 陈炎观察到，「很多企业为了拿下大客户，都是做定制化，（这）严重影响了公司的产品化。」这是一个陷阱，定制化会阻碍SaaS 企业自身的发展。原因在于，定制化不可持续，产品看着再好，一定会被经过广泛用户验证的产品所超越。
谈及帆软在做「中国特色报表」方面的成功，陈炎将其归因于战略定力，「其实最后就是自己不瞎折腾，坚持做这个产品，专注做这个事情」。
但在创业早期，帆软也曾犯过错误。「我们曾经也觉得，三五个人就可以做一款工作流、做一款新的BI （ Business Intelligence ，商务智能）工具。程序员容易有那种野心：觉得只要是代码都能写出来。」但干了一段时间后，陈炎发现做出来的只是实验室的产品，没法真正满足企业客户的商用，「其实一个好的产品，它是要靠用户的需求不断打磨，才能进步。」
最后，帆软痛定思痛，将其余产品都砍掉，只保留一款产品精心打磨，这款主力产品就是卖给中大型企业里的IT 部门的报表软件。 「我们现在的产品，我相信现在创业的人很容易写出原型，但是里面针对用户体验的一些细节，它不是你靠自己能想象出来的。」
当你的产品集合了所有用户的精华需求，客户还会重新选择你。
也是在用户需求的驱动下，帆软逐渐察觉到一个趋势：「边缘系统实际上需要信息化，但是没有主流的产品能覆盖得了，这是一个长尾市场」。于是，2015 年前后，帆软在内部立项了「简道云」这个项目，做SaaS 化的填报。这个项目后被投资人称作「低代码的标杆」。
钉钉生态2022 低代码类目线上销冠——简道云。｜图片来源：帆软
2015 年4 月，简道云上线。当时定了两个底线：一是不能亏太多；二是不能用帆软来给简道云背书，这就意味「简道云」只能自己探索。帆软传统业务的收入大头来自于本地化+买断式的商业模式，而简道云是公有云+订阅式的，2021 年，简道云的收入已经过亿元了。
就在许多友商用三四百人去做与阿里矩阵差不多的产品数量时，帆软用同等规模的研发仍然聚焦在现有几款产品中。这些年，不管是面对产品线的拓展、技术的应用还是资本的引入，帆软都是克制的。陈炎认为，选择不做什么比选择做什么更难，将企业有限资源集中在核心业务上，才能做到「一个拳头打人」。
在企业主赛道的选择上，面对大数据领域的众多分支，帆软十六年来始终专注于商业智能和数据分析（BI）领域，始终没有偏离这个方向，并做到了垂类第一。在商业智能工具的组合上，帆软主推两款核心产品：FineReport 和FineBI，分别定位于满足传统IT 模式下的数据展现需求，以及数字化IT 模式下的自助数据分析需求，其中FineReport 单款产品年营收已经过了5 个亿。目前中国的五百强企业中，有超过三百家企业是帆软的客户。
陈炎认为，小型SaaS 企业要在垂直的产品领域做好做精，才会有价值。
04
企业服务需要
什么样的人才？
随着市场规模的增大，过去几年企服领域的人才需求水涨船高。一些传统行业的人才，如2022 年的互联网人，在不确定性的环境下，也开始流向发展空间更大的企服行业。
影刀RPA 创始人金礼剑认为，未来企服人才供给一定会越来越多，C 端人走进B 端是必然的趋势。「产研（产品和研发）以前大部分都来自C 端大厂，我们内部C 端大厂可能占了60% 以上，有两三百号人。而且不是某一个大厂，我们现在是各个大厂都在进人。」
但与ToC 的消费互联网不同，企业服务创业者链接的是各行各业的企业客户，其业务逻辑与人才需求，与传统互联网和科技公司大为不同。企服公司业务的复杂性，加之不断上升的业务和人才需求，决定了企服公司很难简单找到完全适配、即插即用的合适人才。
G7 易流董事长翟学魂认为，对于人才，企服公司不能太「拿来主义」。他告诉我们，「其实不存在大批的有成熟方法论的人才，也就是说如果你想把ToB 的产品搞好，你找一个ToC 的人来搞，这个不是特别靠谱。如果你想把客户成功搞好，你就搞一个ToC 的人来也不会太好。从我们看人才的角度，不要有不切实际的预期。」
「其实移动互联网创造了大量非常优秀的学习能力强的人，所以我们的方法还是吸引优秀的人才进来，我们共同创造这个方法论。我们公司的中高管培训，我们叫做极光计划，我们培养什么人呢，懂SaaS，懂经营，有理想，有结果。」翟学魂总结。
但要注意的是，可以慢慢培养的是腰部力量，这点并不适用于核心管理岗。班牛创始人熊晓东认为在团队搭建上，leader 一定要有经验，「腰部力量更强调的是意愿+执行力+学习力，但leader 要有经验。不然的话这里面马拉松长跑，你说教练没有跑过马拉松，很容易把人跑猝死。」
与互联网公司或者其他传统行业相比，企服公司在业务上有两点关键的不同。
第一是公司的客户来自具体的行业，其业务本质就是为客户解决具体的业务问题。上文中我们提到了要将「客户成功」刻进企业的组织能力，在人力资源管理层面，这意味着公司的员工，从销售、研发，到市场、PR，都需要熟悉客户所处的行业。
规定销售一周至少三天跑去见客户已经是「常规操作」。AfterShip 甚至在创业前几年，会要求软件工程师们在入职后至少做一个月客服，自己跑业务做BD，让他们接近和感受客户。
第二是业务长链条联动，因此不能有短板。分贝通创始人兰希表示，SaaS 是典型的长链条联动，企业提供的所有服务和产品都面向同一个客户，如果某一个环节出问题，不是创造的收益减少百分之几，而是这个客户会直接流失。就像造汽车一样，某个环节断了整个生产线就会停掉。
这就意味着每个版块的人才对企业都非常重要。班牛创始人熊晓东认为，好的人才CEO 一定要亲自面试，今天ToB 行业吸引人才还没有像大厂一样，好的人还是需要三顾茅庐、礼贤下士，优秀的人才对于公司帮助很大。
对于企服公司最难招到合适人才的岗位，创业者普遍认为是技术和销售。
技术人才不是普通的程序员，缺少的是年薪两三百万的顶级架构师。帆软联合创始人陈炎告诉极客公园，目前在市场上很难找到好的企业软件架构师，即使有也被股权绑定，甚至好的企服软件产品经理都很稀缺。
背后的原因，一方面是国内软件领域相比于国外起步较晚，经验仍有欠缺，而做ToB 的架构跟做ToC 的架构有一些区别，部分国际大厂可能有这一类的人才，所以可以看到国内很多头部企业都在挖人；另一方面，相较于硬件，软件领域中国企业的规模还待提升。
相比技术，销售团队的搭建更加困难。分贝通创始人兰希告诉极客公园，过去多年其他团队都已经实现了很好的人才梯度建设，基本上越打越强，但是销售一直挑战很大。里面的背景是SaaS 在中国发展时间短，没有人才储备，于是就出现人才断档。
一部分企服公司尝试建立更完善的SOP（Standard Operating Procedure，标准作业流程），用系统的方法论来降低销售人员的门槛。比如分贝通创始人兰希在2022 年就和团队花半年时间写分贝通基本法，即：战略、体系、制度、方法、流程、工具的SOP。
而行业内的最佳典范是Salesforce。兰希认为Salesforce 做ToB 已经做到极致了，「他们的SOP 可以智能到，今天你去拜访一个新客户，假设他是生物医疗行业的，直接可以用一个小插件生成拜访这个客户的PPT 模板，包括对应的案例，所以他们可以做到高人效。而我们今天还靠我们的小朋友自己手动去做，靠我们的大数据团队去做。」
企服公司的业务特点，决定了其人才需求画像一些共通的关键特质。
班牛创始人熊晓东认为：在企服行业，对业务有热情，能够弯腰实现客户价值很重要。无论是市场、销售、产品、技术还是前端的营销、销售、运营，这些角色都需要对业务敏感，需要钻研客户的业务，钻研消费者，研究洞察，研究服务体验。
熊晓东透露：「关键岗位的人才引进，几乎都会让我们的客户参与面试环节，甚至直接让他去贴地飞行。我要让客户给我们评一评这位候选人能不能跟你聊到一起，聊出点行业火花，这个我觉得是个很重要的方法。」
影刀RPA 创始人金礼剑也持相似的看法，他将做企业服务总结为「平凡人干非凡事」，人才特质需要倾向于务实，而不是靠一个天才，需要能走进客户，多了解客户。
案例：一个企服公司的企业文化。｜图片来源：影刀RPA
此外，做企服本身的工作压力很大，所以金礼剑在招人的时候特别注重候选人对公司产品热不热爱，对文化认不认同。他认为这两个特质是员工愿意付出，愿意干的前提。这涉及到组织氛围，这样的员工多了，组织氛围就会好。
分贝通创始人兰希则用五个标准来总结目标人才画像：年轻、聪明、背景好、皮实，以及「火光」。
聪明和年轻不难理解，背景好就是学历和经历足够优秀，皮实是能够经得起挫折，经得起批评。而对于「火光」，兰希解释，「就是心中有火，眼里有光。就是想折腾，想干大事，不甘于平庸，自己就是一个燃烧的永动机，不需要别人额外去激励你，市场越难，你越兴奋，而不是躺平。」
本文转自： https://www.geekpark.net/news/312763
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