The development of e-commerce supply chain has three stages:

The first stage is B2C, online operation, traffic is king. Each big platform runs horse enclosure land, the purpose has only one, obtains the largest flow. Because GMV= flow rate x conversion rate x passenger unit price. Traffic is a prerequisite for all operations. And to supply chain, put relatively minor position.

At this stage, the focus of the supply chain is only logistics. In the era of B2C, the logistics network is not so complicated. It mainly deals with the touch from B end to C end. Therefore, some platforms are self-built and some are outsourced, but both can meet the basic needs of c-side customers. Logistics enterprises that grow up around e-commerce have become one of the biggest beneficiaries of this era. But it has also led many people to the misconception that e-commerce supply chain = logistics.

Let's talk about the second stage, B2B2C (BBC). At this stage, the online B2C traffic peaked, and the e-commerce platform actively expanded the offline channels, using new retail, unbounded retail, smart retail and other ways to get through the online and offline, and enter the 2B market in a big way. Although the ultimate target is still 2C, the upstream 2B market is a virgin territory. Of course, the land is still home to many powerful indigenous people: traditional retail!

At this moment, the supply chain competition has just begun! This kind of competition is not the pure supply chain competition between enterprises, but the efficiency competition between the new retail supply chain and the traditional retail supply chain.

Online and offline supply chain operation ideas have a violent collision. One is the inherent digital operation thought of online Internet enterprises, and the other is the refined operation thought honed by offline traditional enterprises for decades. Once these two ideas collided, a chemical reaction occurred, which resulted in the operation mode of the new retail supply chain. It has several typical features:

From each end to multi-end fusion

In the B2C era, the supply chain was misunderstood as logistics, but in the BBC stage, the supply chain was finally clarified and returned to its essence. Supply chain not only includes the logistics side composed of CP (warehouse end, end), also contains a business side and end product, as well as the stores, the strength, the consumer and so on, the past were dispersed in each company, each department of supply chain nodes, gradually be collapsed and qi, in accordance with the unified strategy and tactics, the end-to-end management and control.

End-to-end also naturally contains the three most core elements of a supply chain: physical flow, information flow and capital flow. Physical flow is at the level of logistics network, information flow is at the level of system products, capital flow is at the level of transaction payment and finance. The idea of three-stream integrated supply chain architecture driven by business top-level strategy has been gradually accepted.

Multi-terminal integration is not only the convergence and integration of ideology, but also the opening and straightening of production relations. Its most typical manifestation is from "separate government" to "government comes out of one", thus, the efficiency and ability of supply chain management have been greatly improved.

"Platform chain owners" and "commercial chain owners" began to cooperate

There is a concept of chain owner in the supply chain. The traditional chain owner is in a closed supply chain system. A certain enterprise has the largest right of speech in the supply chain, so it can command and coordinate the upstream and downstream to jointly create the value of the supply chain. The author calls it "commercial chain owner".

In the BBC era, "platform chain-master" came into being. If "business chain master" does the construction of vertically integrated supply chain, "platform chain master" is responsible for the integration of horizontal integration.

In the past, the core of a "platform" was operational traffic. Nowadays, the core of "platform chain master" is to operate the supply chain. From flow operation to supply chain operation, platform capacity is in urgent need of improvement.

The operation of the new retail supply chain includes merchant operation, commodity operation, goods operation, network operation and store operation. On the platform of mass merchants, goods, products, and offline network and stores, chain "Lord" platform for the intensive and scale operation in the form of horizontal integration, which reduces the operating costs of the single master "" business chain, improve its operating efficiency, can make it more efficient to manage its unique business supply chain.

The construction of this ability, on the surface is put forward for logistics management requirements, is actually to business management, product management, demand management, integration of the high integration of the logistics management ability put forward the request, and behind these abilities, there are two key ability is necessary, the whole link simulation decision-making and whole link plan as a whole the ability! This point is often ignored by managers!

After the completion of the BBC stage, the e-commerce supply chain enters the third stage, that is, the stage of S2B2C (SBC for short, where S refers to the platforming service of the supply chain).

The differences between BBC and SBC are as follows: at the stage of BBC, the relationship between "platform chain owners" and "commercial chain owners" is still in a game, and the trust relationship between each other has not been established, and the supply chain capacity of "platform chain owners" is relatively weak. In SBC stage, "platform chain owners" and "business chain owners" achieve each other. "platform chain owners" provide supply chain services for "business chain owners", while "business chain owners" provide basic traffic for "platform chain owners".

In fact, there is no essential conflict between the interests of "platform chain owners" and "business chain owners". In a long time to come, the mutual trust and cooperation between them will be deeper and deeper! In the SBC stage, this relationship will lead to a high degree of tacit understanding between each other and create new value.

The emergence of "digital lean operation idea"

Digitization is the gene of Internet enterprises, and fine operation is the gene of offline traditional retail. The combination of the two has produced the idea of "lean operation based on digitization".

After decades of development, offline retail has reached a very high level of cost and efficiency, and its lean process is often gradually dug out in details by every minute. Take plastic containers for example. How big are they? What color containers contain what goods? How much pressure can the box withstand standing up, and how much space can it save when it is unfolded and stacked? How to prevent theft? ... These are the traditional retail people in the day to day work, experienced numerous failure experience summed up.

In the past ten years of development, online Internet enterprises have formed a set of digital operation ideas. Everything is digitized and then digitized and intelligently operated through algorithms. Take the case of turnaround boxes as an example. With the size of boxes, traditional retailers rely more on standardized procedures or employee incentives to let front-line employees choose the most suitable box type. But the Internet people will think through the algorithm to automatically match the box, so as to reduce the waste caused by human error.

This is a perfect combination of the two ideas, and will inevitably drive productivity to a higher direction.

conclusion

From B2C to B2B2C to S2B2C, this is an inclusive and gradually open process. It is also a process of upgrading and reengineering from the consumer Internet to the industrial Internet. It will inevitably push China's e-commerce supply chain to become the most mature supply chain system in the world.

Source: euronext