The British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman pointed out in the concept of “liquid society” that in today’s world, the relationship between individuals and the environment is constantly changing and has always been in a “fluid” state.
This concept will be particularly evident in 2020. The “black swan” incidents of the new crown epidemic are frequent and the international situation has undergone tremendous changes…The future is undergoing constant changes.
The business world is also in “flow”. On the one hand, the old business model is being broken and reshaped, and the wind direction of the business world is changing; on the other is the rise of new business models and business models, wireless medical robots, remote cloud conferences, 5G-driven smart sensors, VR interaction, live broadcast, etc. based on 5G The digital economy of China highlights its strong resilience and is also accelerating the transformation of new production methods.
Behind the drastic changes, there are countless new opportunities and new possibilities.
TO B business ushered in spring
In just a few years, the degree of popularity between TO B and TO C has dropped a bit.
Generally speaking, TO C business is mainly responsible for mining the pain points of a certain type of highly similar group of people in several main scenarios, directly facing C-end (customer) consumers; while TO B business is for government and enterprise end, providing various Various products and services.
Back in time a few years ago, the market is still immersed in the excitement and carnival of TO C. The consumer Internet, social e-commerce and other fields have attracted a lot of attention. Behind the ultra-high traffic is a deep insight into user behavior and needs. But right now, after more than ten years of battle for traffic, the cost of acquiring customers is getting higher and higher, and the war between user traffic has almost reached its peak.
The following trend is that keywords such as 5G and industrial Internet have gradually become the mainstream of the business world. Both the capital market and the small and medium-sized enterprises have set their sights on the TO B business. In the past 2020, “corporate services” has almost become a common topic of comprehensive funds in the market. Many newly established investment institutions have set their sights on “corporate services” and “technical service industry upgrades” at the beginning of their establishment. B business.
Leading companies in many industries have also seen this trend early, such as Canon (China), a leading business office brand. As early as 2017, Canon (China) announced the strategic goal of TO B business-“By 2020, B2B business will account for 50% of the company’s overall turnover.” At the same time, it also proposed a “good customization” program in the corporate office field. Provide “tailor-made” customized solutions for different industries and enterprises.
The new crown epidemic in 2020 has accelerated the trend of TO B business. Under the home policy, remote office has become the glue for the normal operation of society. The popularity of cloud class, cloud office, cloud karaoke and other businesses has brought new momentum for economic development. As the “new engine of the digital economy”, the “new infrastructure” represented by 5G not only means faster internet speeds and higher-definition pictures, but also represents the underlying infrastructure for accelerating digital transformation in all walks of life.
Whether it is the popularity of these remote services in the capital market, or the fact that the incremental market for TO C services brought about by the demographic dividend is becoming saturated, it is a trend that shows that TO B services are becoming the next new mine in the business world. .
How to grasp the opportunities of the next era?
Behind such a golden opportunity, there are also many companies’ magic skills. For TO B business, the following three points are particularly important.
The first is to carry out a full-link digital transformation.
Cloud services that flourished during the epidemic have gradually solidified into people’s new lifestyle habits. Digital transformation represented by cloud services can greatly reduce the construction costs of enterprise informatization and subvert the traditional IT deployment methods. Therefore, digital transformation has become a no-brainer. Survival that few companies talk about.
At the same time, “digitalization” has been proven to be an effective means to help companies improve their management efficiency in many fields. Take the retail industry as an example. In the first three quarters of 2020, which was hit hard by the epidemic, China’s total retail sales of consumer goods fell by 7.2% year-on-year, while online retail sales increased by 9.7% year-on-year.
However, many companies scattered in various places have uneven levels of digitization in the links of operation and sales. Many companies only carry out digital construction in a single scenario, causing the digitization of enterprises to float on the surface and become unsustainable.
In this case, the digital transformation of the entire link becomes more urgent.
New IT technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence not only constitute the “new infrastructure” of future business, but are also transforming the operating mode of existing enterprises. The realization of full-link digital management is the foundation for realizing enterprise business model innovation, customer experience innovation, and even realizing enterprise development and transformation.
Only by connecting online and offline and realizing the digital transformation of the entire link including the supply chain, industrial chain, terminal stores, terminal sales, etc., can a closed loop of user conversion be formed and a true product-efficiency unity can be achieved.
Secondly, it pays attention to corporate marketing.
“The Godfather of PayPal” Peter Thiel once pointed out in “From 0 to 1” that companies should understand that “self-sold” products do not exist. No matter how good the product is, it needs to reach the majority of consumers through sales.
In fact, in today’s new retail era, marketing plays a more important role than ever before.
Traditional marketing methods are being subverted. On the one hand, with the explosive growth of information today, traditional marketing models can no longer effectively bridge the communication between users and enterprises, and traditional marketing models cannot effectively reach a broad audience; on the other hand, as the z generation has become the main force in society, users Demand becomes more personalized. According to the “Qingshan Capital 2020 Mid-Year Consumption Report”, in the future consumption trends, whether it is product functions or the value concept and cultural attributes conveyed by the brand, people are more seeking individualization and paying attention to self-catering and expression.
These changes in the communication environment and consumer preferences make marketing more important in this era. The birth of a series of new marketing methods such as cloud conferences, live streaming, and private domain traffic is injecting more vitality into marketing in the new era.
Finally, pay more attention to user experience.
The digital age is an era of experience economy.
With the improvement of the level of enterprise digitalization and the transformation of user consumption concepts, product functionality, brand and price are no longer the core of competitiveness, the importance of the emotional and spiritual attributes of products has become increasingly significant, and user experience has gradually become the consumer’s pay. And the reasons for obtaining high premiums are also the core starting point and demands of enterprises.
For a long time, due to the particularity of object-oriented, the focus of B-side business is often understood as business process and business efficiency. However, in the digital age, user experience needs to be placed first in the priority of the enterprise.
The ongoing digital transformation eliminates communication barriers between enterprises and users, reshapes the customer experience, and leads new products and services to be reached by consumers. However, this also means that users are more sensitive to simplicity, personalization and interactivity. And other aspects have put forward higher requirements and standards.
In such a trend, how to grasp the details and get close to the users has become the key element for the success of the B-side business. For enterprises, “personalized customization” is an effective way to deal with this problem, because customization can greatly save time, improve efficiency, meet the different needs of different industries, and become a solid foundation for efficient development of enterprises.
Conquer the market with customized services
Different from the universality of C-end enterprises, the customers that the B-end market faces often come from different industries and their needs are more diversified. Then, how to better meet the individual needs of customers in various vertical industries is a difficult problem faced by all To B products.
Canon (China) gave a reference answer on how to quickly occupy the market by TO B business. From 2017 to 2020, Canon (China) completed the strategic goal of B2B accounting for 50% of the company’s overall turnover in only 3 years. In this process, Canon’s commercial printers provide personalized services for different industries. Important contribution.
The fundamental reason is that Canon (China) has a clear control over the different needs of different industries. For example, in the real estate industry, the first priority of bidding and advertising determines that the color quality of posters becomes the first priority for publicity. Therefore, Canon has “tailored” printing standards for the real estate industry, trying to restore true and rich colors. , So as to meet the needs and quality requirements of the real estate industry at the same time.
In the financial industry, there are other ways to play. The special feature of the financial industry is that the fault tolerance rate is extremely low. Any data recognition error may cause huge losses. This also means that the industry has extremely high requirements for the security of sophisticated data. According to the characteristics of this industry, Canon has greatly improved the quality of data processing through encryption processing, information removal, authorization management, risk management and other dimensions, so as to help customers avoid security risks in all links as much as possible.
In the education industry, frequently occurring test scenarios require that students’ answer sheet scanning must be accurate, clear, and highly recognizable, in order to reduce the burden of teachers’ corrections and improve feedback efficiency. Therefore, Canon has developed a high-sweeping entry for this need, which can realize big data statistics with the help of correction software, so that teachers can customize different learning methods for students and realize further changes in the education field.
In order to meet the unique needs of more companies, Canon has also opened a “Customized” website service with the purpose of “customizing suitable intelligent printing services for different industries”. If the company has special management requirements or print output requirements for the printer, you can download a mature SDK (Software Development Kit) or submit a customized application through “Good Customization”.
Nowadays, in the logistics industry, Canon printers can meet the requirements for rapid printing and output of data; in the medical industry, Canon printers can clearly display various details such as fundus reports, making the diagnosis results more clear; in the imaging service industry, high-speed and stable output ID photos; in government agencies, Canon supports red-head spot color and secure printing to enhance the professionalism and confidentiality of operations; in the process of serving the sharing economy, Canon can save printing costs on the basis of ensuring quality to meet the needs of shared office printing .
Guided by service customization, we continue to develop new product features, create and meet the needs of diversified office scenarios, and expand the business printing market. This is Canon’s digital kit for TO B business. In a word, Canon (China) relies on its own efforts to solve the “pain points” of different industries and enterprises.
It can be said that the different products tailored for different industries by “Good Customization” point to the personalized ultimate service of “Thousands of People”. And this is exactly the password to unlock future business.
After all, when TO B business became the mainstream, the professionalism and difficulty of competition in this originally fortuitous track became more professional. Facing vertical customers from all walks of life, the “one size fits all” service is no longer able to satisfy rapid development. The needs of the times. Whether it is a product or a service, it needs to work hard in the direction of “individualization”.
