Tencent to B.

Based on the information revealed by Tencent Global Digital Ecology Conference, we can roughly measure the exploration tone of Tencent in the next few years, especially the industrial Internet. Embracing the industrial internet is Tencent's long-term strategy at the group level, and no department can stay out of it. In this regard, Tencent is ready to fight a protracted war.

Editor | Qi Jielun

Head map source | stone map

In September last year, Tencent made major adjustments to its corporate structure, and established CSIG (Cloud and Smart Industry Business Group) around Tencent Cloud, and put most of its to B business into this business group, which is different from Tencent's traditional consumer business BG (Business Group) in terms of business direction, organizational form and team culture.

After the adjustment, Tencent has always been concerned about where to go. In late May, many senior executives of Tencent CSIG and PCG (Platform and Content Business Group) gathered in Yunnan, and used dozens of intensive forums and interviews to explain Tencent's thinking and direction on industrial Internet and consumer Internet.

During this period, China Entrepreneur communicated with many Tencent executives. Compared with the state after the "930" major adjustment last year, most of them now have a clearer idea of their own business, especially in the field of industrial Internet.

"Industrial Internet is the key word for the industry in the next 20 years, and Tencent has enough patience and confidence." Tang Daosheng, senior executive vice president of Tencent and president of Cloud and Smart Industry Group, said firmly.

At the conference, Tencent did not give a clear and consistent statement on how to do B-side business as expected. However, the multiple signals revealed by Tencent in the meantime determine the exploration tone of the technology giant at the B end in the next few years.

Open policy update

A widely ignored signal is that the expression of Tencent's open strategy has been adjusted.

Liu Chiping, president of Tencent, said that Tencent had implemented the opening strategy on 20 10, and now this strategy needs to be updated, from "open ecology" to "ecological opening".

In his definition, Tencent's external ecology includes three groups: C-side partners, including developers, entrepreneurs and digital content creators; Class B partners, focusing on vertical areas such as physical industries and public services; And investment companies.

This is the first time that Tencent has explained its ecological definition in an official capacity, from which we can see two clear signals: First, after investing in more than 700 enterprises in 10, the M&A business has been promoted to the same important position as CSIG and PCG by Tencent, which has opened up a large number of new areas of B-end and C-end for Tencent and laid an external ecological foundation; Secondly, Tencent's to B business will become a long-term plan, not a short-term response. Tang Daosheng said that Tencent is not another department that continues to take root in the consumer Internet. Only CSIG embraces the industrial Internet. This is a strategy at the whole group level, and everyone is involved.

The opening of industrial Internet is particularly important. Tang Daosheng told China Entrepreneur, "It's hard to imagine (Tencent) becoming an enterprise with 654.38+10,000 sales". The number of customers a company can contact is always limited. Tencent needs a lot of partners to complete the development, promotion and delivery of service products.

For example, Tencent has set up a special team for digital tourism in Yunnan and digital Guangdong, but this model cannot be promoted, and it is impossible to set up a team of hundreds of people for each company to create a solution. Tencent needs to cooperate with third parties to provide personalized solutions for different corporate customers and provide development and product capabilities.

Emphasize customer orientation

As a leading enterprise in the field of games and social interaction, Tencent has formed a user-centered product design idea in the past ten years, and the whole company is also full of product manager culture. After entering the field of industrial internet, the definition of "user" has been enlarged, and the concept of "customer" is being strengthened within Tencent.

"I used to be a to C product and I was a user. I can find problems when I experience the APP; Now doing to B business, we are no longer end customers, and we have to communicate with many customers to understand their needs. " Since last year, Tang Daosheng has frequently visited enterprises and government customers to listen to different feedbacks.

So within Tencent, we can see many customer-oriented changes. For example, in the past, each BG of Tencent generally built an organization with products as the core; After facing the B-end, Tencent began to adjust its organizational structure according to different customers.

Take Tencent Cloud as an example. At present, under the industrial center structure within Tencent Cloud, there are three departments: pan-Internet, pan-government and smart enterprise, which respectively correspond to Internet companies, government agencies and traditional enterprises.

Qiu, president of Tencent Cloud, told China Entrepreneur that Tencent Cloud has initially formed a customer-centric organizational form, bringing all related businesses together to serve customers; The end result is that CSIG is not the only productivity of Tencent's B-end products, but it is the only external window.

Wang, vice president of Tencent government cloud and president of Digital Guangdong, has a deep understanding of this. He told China Entrepreneur that it is difficult for the government to make a profit in information construction. In the long run, this business may only be guaranteed or slightly profitable; Tencent's e-government mainly hopes to support the government, and more reflects the sense of mission.

Redefining "intermediate station"

The structure of Alibaba's "large, medium and small front desk" in the past few years has been well known to the outside world, so when Tencent put forward the word "China Taiwan" last year, it attracted a lot of confusion and doubts.

On behalf of the whole company, Tang Daosheng explained Tencent's understanding of China and Taiwan Province, and what Tencent has in Taiwan Province, China. Tencent is exploring its own concept of China-Taiwan.

In the face of doubts, Tang Daosheng made it clear that Tencent did not do cloud and enterprise services today. The capabilities of Chinese mainland and Taiwan Province existed before, but most of them were for internal business. These technologies began to be gradually opened to the outside world in the era of industrial internet. He believes that Tencent has industry-leading technology and data intermediary platform capabilities. Technology intermediate platform includes communication intermediate platform, artificial intelligence intermediate platform and security intermediate platform. Data intermediate platform includes user intermediate platform, content intermediate platform and application intermediate platform.

In the interview, Tang Daosheng divided Tencent's concept of "China Taiwan" into different products and capabilities. For example, the user center can provide complete tools such as user growth, user communication, user data protection and membership management for B-end customers, and enhance the ability of enterprises to acquire, entertain and retain customers; The content center can provide copyright management tools; A secure intermediate platform can improve the ability of database to resist attacks.

The task of building an intermediate platform involves Tencent's technical committee and the whole technical system. Tang Daosheng said in an interview that TEG (Technical Engineering Group) spared no effort in supporting CSIG. As for the latest progress of the Technical Committee, Tencent did not disclose more information at the conference.

The first is benchmarking.

Tang Daosheng said at the conference, "In the Industrial Internet Building, Tencent provides various industrial solutions from rough houses to hardcover houses, and enterprises can carry bags regardless of their needs."

Tencent's way to achieve this goal is to set a benchmark first and then promote it. The needs of head enterprises are usually complicated. Tencent can develop a set of solutions in the process of cooperation with them, and then attract small and medium-sized enterprises to seek cooperation and provide them with targeted products.

Tencent has made many typical cases in important market segments such as retail, medical care and travel. Among them, retail, as the closest and most direct part of the industrial Internet, has naturally become one of the main battlefields of Tencent's transformation to the industrial Internet.

Tencent Smart Retail Strategic Cooperation Department was established in March last year. At present, it can provide a variety of solutions for retailers, such as digitizing shoppers, adding members to merchants with small programs, helping retailers operate digitalization and business on the cloud, improving operational efficiency, and providing data analysis. These solutions have penetrated into various fields, such as Shang Chao, clothing and beauty, real estate, mothers and babies.

Tian, deputy general manager of Tencent's smart retail strategic cooperation department, told China Entrepreneur and other media that Tencent and more than 20 head customers have jointly created a large-scale business growth of 10%.

On the other hand, industrial internet is a concept that runs through the whole cycle of R&D production, assembly, circulation and service. The needs of most enterprises and governments are diverse and complex. Tencent needs to provide customized services to facilitate system integration with partners, and even deploy some modules on private clouds.

Therefore, after Tencent launched these successful benchmark cases, how to promote relevant solutions among users of large-scale long-tail enterprises will determine whether Tencent's B-side business can really penetrate into various fields and cities.

Acceleration at sea

Tencent Cloud has been engaged in internationalization since three years ago, which is basically consistent with the pace of going to sea at the group level. Its main driving force is to match the internationalization strategy of Tencent customers, the needs of overseas customers to enter China and the needs of Tencent's overseas investment enterprises.

Answer Zhi Zhi, vice president of Tencent Cloud, said that Tencent Cloud has opened 25 geographical regions including the United States, India and Russia, and operated 53 feasible regions.

From the perspective of overseas business distribution, Tencent Cloud's mainstream customers are still concentrated in Tencent's traditional advantages such as games and videos.

In recent two years, due to domestic regulatory pressure and other factors, China game companies have chosen to go out to sea, and Tencent Cloud, which provides services for them, is also accelerating to go out to sea. Last year, Tencent Cloud's market share in the Asia-Pacific region has entered the top four. 20 19, Tencent Cloud's target overseas revenue increased by 3-4 times.

Wei Wei, general manager of Tencent Cloud's international business, told China Entrepreneur that after "930" last year, the collaboration between Tencent Cloud's overseas teams and domestic teams was significantly enhanced, the internal resource allocation was more planned, and the communication and feedback with multinational companies were accelerated.

As other business departments of Tencent continue to expand overseas markets, going to sea is becoming one of Tencent Cloud's advantages over its competitors.