author | Anita Deng
editor | Su Jianxun
After experiencing many doubts, Alibaba decided to regroup and debut in the enterprise service market with the 2.0 version of the platform.
html On June 29, Alibaba announced the establishment of a new subsidiary "Lingyang", which is positioned to "provide enterprises with digital growth capabilities." Peng Xinyu, vice president of Alibaba , serves as CEO of Lingyang. He is a founding member of Alibaba's middle platform system and later served as CEO of Umeng +.瓓 Yang was integrated from multiple digital departments within Alibaba, including the original data middle office, business middle office, data consultant, Jushita , key account team, etc. These teams originally belonged to different business groups of Alibaba, but their respective All provide services to businesses.
No matter from the positioning or configuration, we can see the high strategic position of Lingyang.
Ling Yang is an independent subsidiary of Alibaba and is at the same level as Hema, Cainiao and other companies. At the conference, Zhang Yong, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group , gave his platform. "The launch of Lingyang is an important step taken by Alibaba Group after long-term consideration." He said.
CEO Peng Xinyu gave a definition, saying that Lingyang is "the export of Alibaba's internal capabilities." If we want to make an analogy, it is just like and Alibaba Cloud more than ten years ago. It is the unified outlet for all Alibaba's technical capabilities.
's existing products are divided into five modules, including analysis cloud, marketing cloud, production and sales cloud, customer service cloud, development cloud, including 11 cores such as Dataphin, Bizphin, Quick Audience, Quick BI, business consultant, and operation consultant. product.
Source: Alibaba Group
The establishment of Lingyang is closely related to Alibaba’s annual routine major adjustments. In December last year, Zhang Yong mentioned in an internal letter that China-Taiwan was Alibaba’s most important organizational strategy in the past few years, but now “diversified governance” is a new strategic direction.
Alibaba implemented the "middle platform" strategy in order to solve the strong contradiction between business needs and IT resources under rapid development. At that time, Alibaba's e-commerce business continued to rise, and it implemented the middle platform reform, and then there was a "middle platform" exported to customers. product and service.
Lingyang is a product of today's "diversified governance" strategy. Compared with Zhongtai, Lingyang is more focused on growth - the slogan "data-driven as the growth engine", and the current slowdown in Alibaba's e-commerce business. , turning to refined operations and echoing the trend of deepening the industry.
In the turbulent macro environment, as a subsidiary, it is not easy for Lingyang to be responsible for its own profits and losses. What they will face in the future is an enterprise service market that is much more mature than that in China and Taiwan. The opponents are not only the middle office, but also a large number of Martech and big data manufacturers, as well as major manufacturers such as Byte, , Tencent and so on.
If you want to "jump" to the top of the To B wave again, you must make a big leap.
plays a bright card for growth
In the To B field, Alibaba has always been good at making a concept popular. It used to be "middle platform", and now it is the turn of "DaaS". The concept of
DaaS (Data intelligence as a Service) can be traced back to around 2010. In 2009, an article in Wall Street Journal compared DaaS to an "information gold mine" and gave an interesting example: If there was a sock exchange in the world, you could find the socks you once lost. These socks can make your work and life better. Wouldn’t you like to pay someone to help you find them?
socks are actually data. DaaS is built on the three major architectures of cloud services - IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, and provides further services. The most basic thing that DaaS can do is to collect the basic data that users need and perform data analysis on it. Customers are equivalent to paying for the related capabilities of data processing and analysis.
But the DaaS mentioned by Ali is equivalent to betting on a "growth" card on the original data and business platform.
Ali specifically distinguishes the capabilities of DaaS from SaaS. "Traditional SaaS is mainly about the transformation of workflow, while the essence of DaaS is to use data-driven growth as the engine," Peng Xinyu said. To translate, it means not to be a single point tool, but to apply data more deeply on the basis of SaaS.The more important thing about this sentence
is actually the word "growth". The Internet dividend has peaked. enterprise customers now no longer need simple tools. Only by bringing them real growth can the value of enterprise service products be reflected.
Alibaba has served millions of stores in the retail field and has accumulated massive data and processing capabilities. "Lingyang" also hopes to reuse it in more fields.
takes "Pumpkin Movie", a long and short video service provider, as an example. Lingyang uses intelligent recommendation technology to add more tags to improve recommendation accuracy. By opening multiple sections such as Guess What You Like and Interest Floors, Pumpkin Movie increased users’ viewing time by more than 20% and also increased user conversions.
This is hard not to remind people of Byte's volcano engine . The Volcano Engine business was officially released in June 2020. The idea is to export the growth methodology of Douyin to different industries. To a certain extent, the establishment of Liao Yang was also a confrontation with the Volcano Engine.
competes in a more mature market
Alibaba exported its middle platform to the outside world in 2017, when the wave of enterprise service entrepreneurship had just begun. But now, Lingyang has to face more mature market competition. The advantage of
is that it has accumulated a large number of customer cases and is not a newcomer. Today's team of nearly 500 people has long exceeded the scale of a startup company. In terms of customer cases, Lingyang has also served digital construction projects for LVMH, Red Star Macalline, Xpeng Motors, McDonald's, Pop Mart and other enterprises.
Organizational and product efficiency will now be even higher. As a subsidiary, Lingyang has a higher degree of operating freedom. According to LatePost, during the integration period, Lingyang put together products that originally belonged to Alibaba Cloud, e-commerce and other departments, and finally integrated 59 products into 11, eliminating many products that did not meet the business direction.
Despite this, Lingyang’s product portfolio is still not small. Lingyang is involved in multiple tracks such as big data, Martech, and middle office, and will undoubtedly face competition from third-party manufacturers. For example, the two products "Analysis Cloud" and " Marketing Cloud " are the main battlefields of manufacturers such as Shence, Minglue, TalkingData, etc. They have all been working in their respective fields for many years.
On the other hand, the boundary issues with partners also need to be clarified. During the China-Taiwan period, Alibaba worked with many partners to do business in China-Taiwan, and many small and medium-sized customers were directly handed over to the partners. Now, Lingyang not only serves large customers, but also covers small and medium-sized customers - this needs to be sorted out more clearly to avoid being both a referee and an athlete.
Regarding the boundary issue, Peng Xinyu also proposed the logic of "two-way integration". "The existing five product matrices are the first boundary of Ling Yang. If customers already have tools that are being used well, we will integrate them with existing tools based on development cloud, open interfaces; our Quick BI, business consultant and other standard products will also be integrated with them,” he said to 36氪.
Lingyang is trying to take a more open route, as evidenced by its support for multi-platform and multi-cloud.
This corresponds to the trend of increasingly fragmented channels. Customers have growth demands in more than just one channel, Taobao, and Lingyang hopes to serve them all.
Taking Yuanqi Forest as an example, Alibaba helped Yuanqi Forest establish a consumer experience monitoring platform. Yuanqi Forest can see the operational feedback of each e-commerce platform in real time. Beihai Ranch, a subsidiary of Yuanqi Forest, is also based on Alibaba’s omni-channel membership link, which uniformly manages the membership system in different e-commerce channels.
However, there are still many comments expressing doubts about neutrality. "After all, it is still a subsidiary of Alibaba. Can customers let data from multiple channels fall on Ling Yang?" A big data practitioner said to 36Kr.
Compared with technology, the trust of partners and customers may be a more difficult issue in the next stage, and it is also the key for Lingyang to expand its battlefield beyond the retail industry.
