![]() ![]() ![]() A large and widely distributed workforce that is coordinated almost entirely by mobile-based enterprise software. Meanwhile, the main office can use these digital tools to communicate and manage this large distributed workforce. And they can use CRM for increasingly sophisticated relationships with their customers. The agents can handle sales and inventory ordering with just their phones. And these agents are increasingly doing this via WeChat Work. They talked about how they have tons of sales agents (employed and contracted) all around the country that do their sales, handle their inventory and do CRM. But how will they change digital B2B?Īt the WeChat conference, there was an interesting presentation by Oppo. We have seen big differences in consumer China because of these differences. What will enterprise management look like in a country that is both massive and has overwhelmingly mobile-first in behavior? Issue 4: Large distributed workforces could be managed entirely with smartphones Digital tools at companies are going to create a whole new list of issues, discussion and probably government rules about privacy and data. Facial recognition is being rolled out rapidly in companies and everywhere else in China. But unsurprisingly, the word Orwellian came up pretty fast about this function (mostly in the Western press).Ĭheck-in and check-out and other employee tracking functions are being implemented. One of the more popular features of these enterprise tools is employee check-in, where staff must check in their location and time and such. Issue 3: Lots of new privacy issues and rules will be created. A lot of the foundation is not there yet. One problem with this is Chinese companies have not been implementing IT systems for the past 30 years. So you could see the same hybrid approach to corporate sales. And companies themselves are widely using group chats for projects and department functions. Because as mentioned, everyone in China is already using WeChat, personally and when at work. I think we could definitely see something like this on a much larger scale in China. Note: this may not be enough for Slack against Microsoft long-term. Lot of individual adoption within and between companies – and then a direct sales team to upsell to a larger contract. But do you know what they are doing? Are if they in compliance? You should have a corporate contract so there is administrative oversight and control.” And they can pitch something like “well, lots of employees are already using our service in your company, and for company business. And when enough individuals within a large organization just happen to be using Slack, the Slack direct sales team then calls the management to discuss a corporate contract. Meanwhile, digital attackers like Slack, Zoom and Box are strong with SMEs and with individuals. And this positions them well for selling cloud-based enterprise services (like Office365 and Teams). Microsoft has the long-term client relationships from its days of selling on-premise servers and software, especially for larger companies. In the US, there is fascinating competitive dynamic between Microsoft and Slack happening. Issue 2: Guerilla sales into enterprises (like Slack and Box) could really take off in China. Plus, there was never a communication, connectivity and payment tool so widely adopted. And it is very different to how things happened in the West, with ERP systems being built into companies long before iPhones and other consumer-facing devices emerged. How this is going to evolve over time is an important question. Plus tons of businesses have WeChat Official Accounts, so that also integrates communications and marketing into WeChat Work. Customer experience (CX) in an omnichannel journey.Their digital tools use WeChat for external relationships, such as: And they emphasized this during the Guangzhou meeting. So any company’s digital tools have to deal with the fact that all the employees, customers and suppliers are already using WeChat every day.įor WeChat Work 3.0, the ubiquity of personal WeChat in China is their biggest strength obviously. And it is fueling some interesting stuff in e-commerce right now (i.e., Mini-Programs). It is universal for communication and connectivity. WeChat is required for business and life in China. My standard question for anyone arriving in China is: How long did you last before you joined WeChat? And the answer is usually a couple of hours. Issue 1: The pervasiveness of WeChat will shape how companies interact with external parties – especially in sales and customer relationship management. ![]()
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