Information technology experts: Why do leading enterprises pay more attention to digital construction?

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Today we want to tell you: Pei Yousi, President of the Fourth Paradigm: What is the standard paradigm of digital transformation?
In 2022, the outbreak of epidemic in various places will make the consumer industry, especially the offline service consumer industry, suffer great impact and challenges. In the face of uncertainty, it has also become an industry consensus for enterprises to improve their internal skills and operational capabilities.
In this process, the ability to digitize is seen by many enterprises as a weapon to deal with uncertainties. After several years of construction, the digitalization of enterprises has gradually moved from the stage of breaking the information island, building the digitalization capability in marketing, customer acquisition, supply chain and other links to the deep-water area of overall promotion.
In the deep water area of enterprise digital transformation, how can enterprises find new growth through digital transformation?
For this question, Pei Yousi, president of the Fourth Paradigm, gave his own answer by summarizing a large number of enterprise transformation experiences.
Peidus believes that digital transformation has no end. Different enterprises have different ways and effects of transformation. There is no right or wrong, only choice. For example, through AI empowerment, the efficiency of enterprises will undergo a qualitative change, which will open up a blue ocean that could not be involved before.
01 Why is AI the key to digital transformation?
In the future competition of brand retail industry, it is very important to apply new technology as its core system.
Everyone has high hopes for AI, but what can AI do? In fact, today’s digitalization is not just digitalization, but “digital intellectualization”. We have experienced the transformation from informatization to digitalization to intelligence.
Whether it is the earliest integration of financial and business data, or the production system we have built now, better collaboration at the dealer level, and better insight into store data, it is actually based on the previous informatization, and more data of each business department can be controlled, and the fields that are not covered by digitalization can be collected.
But in fact, we still work under the same paradigm. This paradigm means that the logic of collecting data and consuming data has not changed.
The efficiency is an important indicator of seabed fishing.
How to better transfer these data, whether the analyzed data can be better used, and whether there is a better iteration for future management decisions. An important part of this is that people make decisions through data.
The biggest difference of AI is that when the amount of data reaches a certain level, it can make its own decisions.
But on this issue, we will have some misunderstandings, such as what decisions can AI make?
AI, for example, can make decisions on balance between supply and demand. This is a decision at the top of the decision-making pyramid, our supply and demand balance.
AI can also do a lot because we can see that like “alpha dog”, we can obtain the optimal solution in various complex situations, which is also the result of AI.
However, we see more that AI can better serve a customer, and AI can better guide the daily operation of a store manager.
Through communication with customers in recent years, AI can not only enhance the existing digital chain, but also create a new enterprise operation mode and development mode. AI is the core engine in this mode.
In fact, we see that more and more AI plays a key role in the division of enterprise roles and values. If we can break through his growth set, AI will play a very important role in it.
Such key roles may be store managers, shopping guides and dealers, which are very important in the process of enterprise growth. But you find that it may be difficult for us to cultivate and shape such people very efficiently.
For example, a retail enterprise with tens of thousands of chain stores may only have 3000 store managers with excellent management skills. The mechanism that can better cultivate these store managers is actually insufficient. AI can play a very important role here.
You may have some misunderstandings. Is AI going to replace people? From our experience, AI is not replacing people. AI is lowering the threshold of doing this, so that more people can do this, and more people can enjoy the dividends of technology.
02 What is the standard paradigm of digital transformation?
In fact, there is no end to digital transformation. The word transformation is also worth our careful consideration. When we turn, when we accelerate, when we persist, or when we take a break.
From the other side of intelligence, we can see that some enterprises are in rapid iteration, and some enterprises are indeed saving the country with some curves. But I think there is no right or wrong here. There may only be choices.
Because in the whole process of digitalization, there are informatization, data governance, core system enhancement, business innovation, and the introduction of new generation of technology. You will find that there are many layers and many power points.
Moreover, different customer groups are in different competitive ecological positions, and it is difficult to distinguish between their demands for and dependence on digitalization.
In fact, many leading enterprises in subdivided industries often think about more than survival.
Although we are experiencing great uncertainty in the whole market and external environment, the more so, these enterprises are actually thinking about how to develop better, how to develop across the cycle, and how to improve human efficiency more significantly.
This improvement of efficiency is not like in the past. We increase human efficiency by 5% or 10% every year. Instead, we are thinking more about how to improve the moat with some new technological means, which can open a huge gap between such a competitive advantage and competitors.
From the essence of enterprise operation, there are some core business indicators, which are more important than financial indicators, and are crucial for enterprise operation.
For example, the brand side’s management efficiency at the channel or dealer level has been improved. There is a core indicator called “cost efficiency ratio”, which is how much money is spent to get enough sales. This is a very important indicator for the brand.
There are others, such as the payback cycle of the store and the flat effect. Some enterprises are actually looking at the customer’s online time in the process of online.
These indicators may not reflect the operation status of an enterprise as comprehensively as the financial indicators, but they can actually see the development and competitive advantages of an enterprise at every moment of every day. These are the key points of digital transformation.
My thinking is that we should pay attention to these indicators and think about what will happen if it changes qualitatively?
Because of today’s technology, today’s capital has brought us unlimited possibilities. If these key operating indicators are significantly improved, it is likely that they will be significantly higher than the average industry level, or, for example, break the limit of investment return.
For example, many banks’ private wealth management services may only serve people with about 5 million net worth. If their net worth is lower, they will not be able to achieve cost efficiency in all aspects. That is to say, their sales personnel are not so capable to serve people with lower net worth.
But in fact, from the perspective of China’s entire wealth spectrum, the number below 5 million is actually a huge blue ocean. At this time, the problem for banks is that if they have a very suitable cost-performance ratio to serve people below 5 million, or even reach the bottom of 2 million to 1 million, then I will reap a huge market. What should I do at this time?
In fact, it is difficult to support such a dream by relying on traditional digitalization at this time, so we need more technology. For example, AI, how to get to the point and think about qualitative change through new technologies is the methodology to be considered.