Author | Blue Lotus Xia Wenqi
Every year after Double 11, Ali adjusts the organizational structure. This seems to have become a convention.
Today, Zhang Yong, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba, issued an internal letter announcing the company's upgrade of its "diversified governance" system. It contains three important personnel appointments.
Among them, Daishan and Jiang Fan are respectively responsible for the newly established "Chinese Digital Business" and "Overseas Digital Business" two major sections. The "China Digital Business" section includes Dataobao (including Taobao, Tmall, Alimama), B2C retail business group, Taocaicai, Taote and 1688 ; the "Overseas Digital Business" section includes global speed Sellthrough and international trade two overseas businesses, as well as Lazada and other subsidiaries oriented to overseas markets.
At the same time, Alibaba Group CFO Wu Wei will step down from March 31, 2022, and Xu Hong, the group’s chief financial officer, will be the group’s CFO.
The people who eat melon are "rejoicing" on social media. Jiang Fan is finally transferred from Taobao and Tmall and other important Taoist posts. This is what the "scumbag" deserves. But people in the industry are more concerned about the division of labor between Dai Shan and Jiang Fan this time.
This is another important adjustment of Alibaba 's organizational structure since the “big and middle stage” in 2015. It is also the first time in Alibaba's history that the B-side business and the C-side business have been connected for the first time.
Industry analysts believe thatFrom a micro point of view, Ali’s organizational structure adjustment this time is literally divided into two major parts, domestic and foreign. In fact, it is equivalent to integrating the entire domestic Tao system. 淘菜菜 and Taote can be regarded as big The extension of Taobao's module is one family service scenario, and the other is the new user increment brought by the sinking market. The core figure is Dai Shan, the new head of the domestic sector. She is the creator of Taote and Taocaicai, who has expanded Ali's business map in one hand. This appointment shows that Zhang Yong has also fully recognized her ability and entrusted all the core business to Dai Shan.
From a macro perspective, in the past few years, the management model of large and medium stations has brought success to Alibaba. It can be said that it has improved the overall service efficiency of Alibaba. This underlying support logic has almost supported the entire B The department’s product service model eventually doubled the service revenue of the entire B series.
But the middle station is not a panacea. With the evolution of the environment, technological iteration, and the in-depth implementation of a huge organization and business structure, one middle station obviously cannot support everything. Therefore, in July this year, when Alibaba announced another round of organizational restructuring, it first proposed a sector governance model.
Zhang Yong mentioned in his internal letter with the topic "Make the organization more agile and make the culture simpler", "In the face of fast-changing and highly competitive markets, our organization must become more agile. The construction of agile organizations We must start from the top of the group."
In the past one or two years, Ali has faced unprecedented market pressure inside and outside. In this case, breaking the original B and C business division model, and in accordance with the domestic and foreign competition pattern, may be more conducive to the integration of joint venture resources, so that Alibaba can deal with a more uncertain business environment.
So, what is the past and future of the three protagonists in this organizational adjustment?
01 How did Dai Shan move to the Ali power center step by step?
From Jack Ma’s last student, the first generation of Ali customer service, sales director, to chief talent officer, venture capital chairman, B2B business group business president... As the only Ali "eighteen arhats" still on the front line, she The status of the group continues to rise.
After the organizational structure adjustment,For the first time, Ali's domestic B-series and C-end e-commerce business power centers are concentrated in one person. A report by Caixin.com quoted an insider as saying that Ali hopes to find new increments from the supply chain end that Daishan is good at when the consumer traffic peaks.
Dai Shan, her nickname is "Su Quan", her job number is 11, and Ali people are used to calling her "MM/美眉". Although the university majored in engineering, when the teacher Ma Yun resigned to start a business, Dai Shan, Jiang Fang, Han Min, and several close students immediately agreed to join and gave a sum of money to become the earliest Ali shareholders.
"In 1999, Ali was just established. Every one of us is a customer service." Dai Shan said with a smile, " Peng Lei, now the CEO of Ant Financial, was our customer service backbone at the time."
At that time, this group of co-rented entrepreneurs worked madly, staying up until three or four in the morning, sleeping in a sleeping bag in the office, but with a monthly salary of 500 yuan and eating a box lunch for 3 yuan. One day, Dai Shan, who loves dried plums, was eating a box lunch in the lakeside garden house, and suddenly said to everyone, "When I have money, I will buy a house of dried plums!"
For more than a decade, Dai Shan held various management positions in Alibaba's sales, marketing, chief talent officer, and user interface departments, and was familiar with the business operations of various departments of the company. In the eyes of employees, Dai Shan once told the media, “If the company asks me to do sales, I will do sales, and if I do customer service, I will do customer service. I don’t think too much, so I am willing to do it happily.”
When Dai Shan became the chief customer service officer of Alibaba Group, at the monthly executive meetings, Dai Shan was always the first to be named by Zhang Yong, asking her to talk about the problems she saw from the server in the past month. In this internal letter She also mentioned her "unique female experience perspective."
In January 2017, Dai Shan served as the president of the B2B business group, in charge of the group’s international and Chinese domestic wholesale trading platforms Alibaba and 1688, and the international retail trading platform AliExpress.Responsible for B-side and overseas business.
In August 2018 and March 2019, Dai Shan successively served as the legal representative of Alibaba Group, the legal person and chairman of Alibaba Ventures, Dai Shan's position within the group further increased, and Zhang Yong and Alibaba CFO Wu Wei He withdrew from the ranks of directors of Ali Ventures.
In order to fully open up the three agricultural business lines of Hema, rural Taobao, and smart agriculture, at the end of 2019, Dai Shan began to take charge of the Hema business group. 侯毅 changed from reporting directly to Xiaoyaozi to Daishan Report; At that time, it was also discussed by the outside world about the decline of Hou Yi's status.
In March 2021, Alibaba established the MMC business group and is in charge of Dai Shan. Insiders call it "buy shopping", mainly focusing on community group buying business, and integrating the community group buying business of Retail Link and Hema Ji City business,
In the past, the B-end business led by Dai Shan was relatively marginal in Ali. But now, the joint factory directly supplies the low-priced Taote, with more than 240 million annual buyers, and a net increase of 40 million users this quarter, accounting for 60% of the new users of Alibaba Group. Dai Shan has shown great strength. In March of this year, Taocaicai, which was established after integrating multiple community group buying businesses within Alibaba, was also in charge of Dai Shan.
B2B has always been one of Alibaba’s core strategies. In Zhang Yong’s words, the industrial Internet will bring changes and opportunities in the entire manufacturing, production, circulation, trade, channels and management. Such historical opportunities can only be achieved by The B2B team will take care of it.
02What kind of strategic investment territory did Wu Wei leave for Alibaba?
In 2019, Alibaba Group CEO Zhang Yong announced a new round of future-oriented organizational upgrades for Alibaba through a full letter, and appointed Alibaba Group CFO Wu Wei to replace and Cai Chongxin as the head of the group’s strategic investment department. In order to realize the integration of strategic investment business and financial system.
Inside Ali, Cai Chongxin's name has almost the same prestige as Jack Ma, and his successor Wu Wei has a great background.
According to the information, Wu Wei was a partner of KPMG Huazhen Certified Public Accountants, providing auditing and financial consulting services for many large overseas listed companies and multinational companies in China. In July 2007, Wu Wei joined Alibaba Group as the chief financial officer of Alibaba (B2B company). She led the construction of the company's financial system and helped Alibaba (B2B company) successfully go public in Hong Kong in November of that year.
In 2012, after co-led the privatization project of Alibaba (B2B company), Wu Wei became responsible for the key departments of Alibaba Group's financial organization, including operational finance, financial reporting, internal control, taxation and capital management. In 2013, Wu Wei formally took over the position of CFO of Alibaba Group from Cai Chongxin.
Like all CFOs, Wu Wei is quite low-key and rarely appears in the public eye, but it is not an exaggeration to say that she is one of the most successful CFOs in China. She has helped Ali go public three times, and became the "Ali Shuangshu" within the group with Peng Lei, one of the eighteen arhats.
Zhang Yong once spoke highly of Wu Wei from a personal point of view. She believed that she was humble and tough in the face of ups and downs. She was humble and tough. She has been a close comrade-in-arms and a close sister of many core management team members. .
There are also VC analysts who believe that many Internet stars are dazzled, and their treatment of analysts and others has become terrible, but Wu Wei insists on being the same. The internal staff commented that she is a CFO who does not only look at numbers, she is a doer who can understand Alibaba's diversified business departments in a down-to-earth manner.
Since she became the head of Alibaba's strategy in 2019, she has also invested heavily in many times to build the current strategic investment map of Alibaba.
According to media statistics, Alibaba Group invested a total of 97 companies in 2019, with a total investment of 171.4 billion. From the perspective of industry layout, Alibaba has deployed a total of 15 industries in 2019. Among them, the top three industries for investment are corporate services, finance, and entertainment media, with 21, 14 and 12 investments respectively.
is different from other giants in thatIn 2019, Ali paid great attention to the layout of enterprise services. It invested 23.3 billion yuan in the construction of the rookie network service platform alone. In terms of cultural and entertainment media, Alibaba's Yunfeng Fund and Tencent jointly invested approximately US$3 billion in financing in Kuaishou.
In 2020, according to incomplete statistics from the media, Alibaba also led 35 investments, including investment and mergers and acquisitions in platforms such as Zebra Motors, Best Group, Southeast Asian e-commerce platform Lazada, and Xinyi Technology, covering local life, Smart Logistics_ span6span, new retail, big health and other fields. Among them, Alibaba acquired the local catering platform Keruyun for 800 million, and the new retail company Gaoxin Retail for 28 billion.
Wu Wei once publicly stated that once the investment project has no strategic value, Alibaba will slowly withdraw. Investors in the industry also analyzed that the strategic investment in the period when Wu Wei was dominated is closer to the group's business.
A person familiar with the investment department in Ali said that starting this year, investment matters have been reported to Xu Hong, who is the new CFO to succeed Wu Wei.
03 Can Jiang Fan build the "next Taobao" overseas?
In China, the revenue growth of Taobao's e-commerce business has almost stagnated, while the growth rate of overseas business has reached 40%. The Shopee platform invested by Tencent has occupied 57% of the Southeast Asian market. Jiang Fan's transfer may be confirmed Ali attaches great importance to overseas business.
In 2015, Alibaba wrote in an internal letter announcing Zhang Yong as Alibaba’s CEO that he hopes that in the five years from 2019 to 2024, Alibaba’s business ecosystem will be further globalized, and a global scale that can serve 2 billion will be established. A business ecological platform for consumers and tens of millions of companies to "buy globally, sell globally". At present, Ali has 1.24 billion annual active consumers, which is still far from the target.
In the context of weak consumption this year, Taobao and Tmall’s revenue including advertising fees and commissions accounted for 36% of total revenue from 50% two years ago.The year-on-year growth rate was only 3%, which was the slowest growth rate among all Alibaba's businesses except for the entertainment industry. Prior to this, the net profit of Ali Q2 was only 28.52 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 39%.
At present, Alibaba’s global business map includes , Alibaba International Station (ICBU) and AliExpress. In recent years, they have successively joined the Southeast Asian e-commerce platform Lazada, Turkey Regional e-commerce platform Trendyol, South Asian market e-commerce platform Daraz and other new roles.
In the third quarter of 2021, Ali's overseas sector generated 11.3 billion yuan in revenue, a year-on-year increase of 34%, accounting for 7% of Ali's total revenue. Among them, the biggest increase mainly came from Lazada, and the number of orders doubled year-on-year.
Media reports show that the average age of the Indonesian population is 27 years old; the median of the Turkish population is 28.5 years old, which is the youngest country in Europe; Pakistan’s population is younger, with a median age of only 20 years. The population under the age of 30 reached 104 million, which means that there is still a lot of potential to open up users in these countries.
Prior to this, Zhang Yong had sent four of his former assistants as the co-president of Lazada and the CEO of Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, but it was still difficult to break through overseas markets. In addition, Peng Lei, one of Ali's 18 founders and partners, served as the chairman of Lazada as the "highest level of overseas business in Ali's history," but he resigned only 8 months later.
Jiang Fan, who is sent this time, is a general who has made great contributions to mobile Taobao. He is good at innovating and developing products and is known as Ali's "traffic king".
In the derailed Zhang Dayi incident that caused a public opinion crisis in 2020, Jiang Fan’s power in business was not substantially affected. He was only removed as an Ali partner and his rank was downgraded from M7 (Group Senior Vice President) to M6 (Group Vice President).
Born in 1985, Jiang Fan, a young man, began to show great talent in computing when he was in junior high school. He won the first prize of the provincial division in the informatics competition of the National Middle School Student Subject Olympiad.Later, he was recommended to Fudan University .
It is said that he is a bit dissatisfied with the teaching of the Department of Computer Science of Fudan University. He feels that the level of the professor is not so good. For this reason, he guessed that he passed the exam every time, so he didn't answer the questions. In his opinion, this kind of examination is a waste of life, it is better to do something meaningful, such as programming. Therefore, he got an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Fudan University with an average score of 61 points.
In 2006, after graduating from Fudan University, Fan Jiang joined and Google . "Li Kaifu's Autobiography" records that Jiang Fan was very good at the interview, but because his graduation transcript was only 61 points, an American engineer resolutely opposed his admission.
At that time, Google engineers saw that his subject score was only 61 points and thought he was not responsible for himself. They wanted to use 's one-vote veto . After communication, they discovered Jiang Fan’s unique ideas and programming. talent.
Since then, Jiang Fan has participated in the research and development of many projects such as Google Maps, search quality, and content advertising. In 2010, Google retired in the Chinese market, and Jiang Fancai resigned from Google China. At this time, Kai-Fu Lee had established the innovation workshop , and he was appreciating Jiang Fan, so he invited Jiang Fan to join him. From this, Jiang Fan started his own business and founded the " alliance ".
Three years later, Youmeng has covered nearly 600 million active devices, 180,000 apps and 60,000 developers. Since then, Umeng has received multiple investments from Kai-Fu Lee and Jingwei, with a valuation of 50 million U.S. dollars at one time.
Finally, Ali acquired Youmeng for US$80 million. Jiang Fan had achieved financial freedom when he was 28 years old. He was young and promising.
According to the takeover treaty, Jiang Fan is going to work in Ali. At that time, Zhang Yong, who was the COO of Ali, hit Jiang Fan. In 2013, under the direct leadership of Zhang Yong, Jiang Fan started working as the "Senior Director of Taobao Wireless Business Unit". In 2014, Jiang Fan was responsible for leading the wireless transformation of 's .One-handedly created Taobao's content ecology.
After that, there is an open-hanging type of job jump. But Jiang Fan is considered a different kind of Ali. According to tradition, all new recruits who enter Ali must go through the course training of "Hundred Years Ali" before entering a job. At the director level and above, they must also participate in the "Hundred Years Lakeside" course, which mainly trains Ali’s vision. Corporate culture, and strategic business planning, etc.
However, Jiang Fan didn't go through these processes when joining the company, and he didn't even have a name. It is such a "hairy boy" who has become a key figure in Shoutao.
Before Jiang Fan joined, the mobile Taobao experience was relatively poor, only searching, purchasing, and inquiring logistics functions, but no interactive functions such as communication. After the revision, on Double 11 in 2015, Handtao made the first large-scale application of personalized recommendations. Of the 91.2 billion transactions that day, the mobile terminal contributed 62.6 billion, which was the first time that the mobile terminal surpassed the PC terminal.
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