Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

More than a decade ago, Salesforce on the other side of the ocean shouted and took the lead in putting forward the concept of "cloud computing and software as a service". Then, the world began to enter an era of integration of Internet 1. 0 technology and management software. For a moment, hundreds of birds competed for the current, grew savagely, and ran naked.

At that time, Shi Yanze, a senior executive of a foreign company, sensed that even though the domestic Internet was in a "horse-racing enclosure" of the giants, the management software industry still had little to do with Internet technology and was deserted.

He thought, based on the Internet 1. 0 technology to move the software to the cloud, it can bring such a big change, if the technology behind the Internet and the management software process are integrated, will it bring more possibilities and changes?

This is a vast world full of countless unknown imaginations.

So he quit his job and entered the field of CRM.

Easy sales was established in 2011, the mission is to use advanced years of technology to digitize and intelligentize the connection between enterprises and customers.

This is not an easy journey. The direction is not favored by the market, the platform can not recruit the right talent, customer service and high costs for a long time, and so on.

This is also an exploration and adventure full of flowers and applause. Keep up with the trend, continue to integrate big data, AI and other new technologies into the CRM scene, catch up with the technology-bestowed market dividend ushered in the first wave of growth, has won Lenovo, Shanghai Electric, Haikangwei, Schneider Electric and other top 500 enterprise customers.

And in 2017, as the only local CRM company in China, it was successfully selected into the Magic Quadrant of Gartner global sales automation and stepped onto the international stage. Since then, he has been selected in the Gartner SFA Global Magic Quadrant for six consecutive years.

Now, when the world enters the AGI era, the big model is hot, Shi Yanze naturally will not give up this opportunity.

Recently, Leifeng net had a dialogue with Shi Yanze. Shi Yanze told Leifeng net that he is also curious about what opportunities CRM will usher in in the new era. What kind of historic changes will the big model bring to the field of CRM?

After all, "since the establishment of easy sales, genetics has been thinking about how to apply Internet technology to CRM scenarios."

More importantly, he expects that big models will continue to emerge in the market, because both he and the seller are ready to apply them. "there are plenty of scenarios in CRM."

The following is a conversation between Shi Yanze and Leifeng Network:

To some extent, user experience is the first essence of CRM

Leifeng net: what do you think of the CRM industry? What are the problems and pain points that need to be solved?

Shi Yanze: in my opinion, a major feature of the CRM industry is that the user base of the product is mainly divided into two categories, one is management users, who care about process and control; the other is process users, including front-end sales, marketing, and back-end services, they will think that management is not very friendly, especially sales and other roles actually do not want to be controlled.

It can be said that this is a big pain point facing the development of the CRM industry so far, that is, if the demands of the management are met, then at the user level, they will feel that they let me enter information without empowering me, even if they can get some information in the process, it is not very helpful to the daily user experience. This is the problem encountered by the original process-oriented CRM.

Leifeng.com: what kind of opportunity made you decide to enter the CRM field?

Shi Yanze: before I started my business, I worked on traditional software at SAP. After returning home, I found that the Internet in China is in a state of rapid development, but in the management software industry, such as SAP, it still does not have much to do with Internet technology.

As we all know, Salesforce first put forward the concept of "cloud computing and software as a service". When it does enterprise applications abroad, everyone thinks that Salesforce has ushered in an era of integration of Internet 1. 0 technology and management software However, at that time, people did not think it was so great, but it did bring some market shocks.

So immediately after that, the major traditional software companies also launched their own cloud software products, which unfortunately disappeared in the end, only Salesforce's cloud software products have been moving forward. Before I returned home, Salesforce had developed very well in North America, and the trend was already obvious.

Later, I moved from abroad to work in SAP in China. I wanted to see what the current market situation in China is like through SAP. Two years later, I found that the Chinese market is still facing great difficulties, whether it is Kingdee, UFO, or SAP, Oracle, it is actually very difficult to change the process logic, user experience and so on.

Leifeng net: so there was the idea of starting a business at that time?

Shi Yanze: at that time, I thought that the Internet represented the most advanced productivity. Because before 1999, people who did IT, including Microsoft, took ToB as the main body, and it was not until the emergence of the Internet that it suddenly became ToC.

In 2010, the mobile Internet reached the best part, everyone thought that the mobile Internet was very important, Wechat has just been launched, everyone is in the "horse enclosure", enthusiasm is running high.

So I thought that moving software to the cloud could make such a big difference and create a new business model. If the new Internet technology is integrated with the process of management software, will it bring more possibilities and changes? There is not much room to imagine the integration of cloud, Internet technology and ERP, but the front-end integration space of its relationship with customers is particularly large.

Because the front end is full of people, if you do business, every enterprise is to get customers, there are marketing, sales, service personnel, outside are end customers, there are channels and dealers in the middle. No matter which industry, its customers are actually these roles, if you can connect online, and then run through the process, then you can change the traditional software.

In the past, traditional management software, whether ERP or CRM, can only do things within the firewall, and are process-oriented. If you pull up the outside dealers, end customers, enterprise front-end customers, and these people related to customers, it will become a large group. For example, the business model of Wei Xiaoli is completely different from that of traditional car companies.

Therefore, the idea that sales is easy to create is how to digitize and intelligentize the connection between enterprises and customers.

Leifeng net: this idea should be quite advanced at that time. When was it mentioned?

Shi Yanze: in 2011, sales easy to establish, at that time our name is Renke interaction, people and technology are interactive, customer relationship is no longer the original process, the customer is not just a record, but should be "alive", through AI, big data naturally connect customers together.

Many industries are gradually IoT equipment and products, such as Xiaomi, through an end-customer connection APP, equipment, product data and end-user integration together, resulting in a new customer relationship, the whole link is essentially the integration of Internet technologies-Social, Mobile, IoT.

Of course, if you want to understand the personal attributes, tags, preferences, and even the attributes of third-party customers behind customer data, you also need to use big data's technology to make user services more intelligent and intimate through the underlying data tagging. According to the actual specific needs, make differentiated and intelligent recommendations.

For so many years, sales Yi has been moving forward along this path.

CRM's first wave of dividends in the market is technology-driven

Leifeng net: what is the first wave of sales growth?

Shi Yanze: the first wave of dividends in the market should be said to be technology-driven.

The product roadmap for easy sales has not changed over the years. The first is internal marketing, sales and service, the second is the management and empowerment of external partner dealers, and the third is to connect end customers. The bottom layer of easy sales CRM is a large PaaS platform, which turns the processes between the roles to which these businesses are associated into components at the bottom of the platform.

As a start-up company, we understand that it is impossible to "get fat in one bite", so we do it one by one.

Our first wave of growth was mainly focused on sales, probably around 2013 and 2014. Just like Siebel and Salesforce, they all start at the point of B2B sales.

In the past, one of the biggest problems for salespeople in using CRM was that they needed to operate on the computer side. They had to go home every day to fill in the customer's information, but if they were on the mobile side, they could enter it anytime and anywhere, which was more convenient, and they could also cooperate with team members.

And for many bosses at that time, they had no idea what salespeople were doing when they went out. CRM was just a tool, not management software.

So, based on this, we realize that with the help of the latest Internet technology, CRM can be built into a mobile-based enterprise management software. This is the first wave of dividends we caught.

Leifeng net: were there any competitors in sales at that time?

Shi Yanze: as a matter of fact, there are, but what they do is PC, so they don't catch up with the tide of mobile Internet. And at that time, many people thought that it was OK to use OA, but later they found that OA is an itch rather than a pain point in China. Many people think that collaborative work means that there is an address book in it, and it is good to communicate with people without any grasp.

And sales management, which is easy to do, is an area that bosses are very concerned about. So our growth rate, from all aspects, although it is not crazy "money-burning" play, but it is still relatively healthy.

Sales are charged from the beginning. Although the conventional way of playing at that time was ToC thinking, free and volume, we thought that enterprise software could not be played this way, so we had never been free, but at that time we were a minority. Moreover, the successful cases at that time made people feel that a "layman" could subvert an industry, and it was a great challenge for the "old software people" to continue to do the combination of software. But then the market soon realized that customers didn't keep it after burning so much money, and then realized that this is not the case with ToB.

Leifeng net: so sales Yi at that time, including later has been doing AI-related, is to want to take a step forward, to keep at the forefront of the industry?

Shi Yanze: well, in order to realize our design blueprint, we have been moving forward step by step, and we have a plan to do everything at any time. The core issue in the field of CRM is platform.

As mentioned above, in the first stage, we are doing sales applications, and in the early stage, we are doing standard products. However, in the field of SaaS, some standard items can be made, and some can not be done. If it is only a relatively simple, lightweight tool and does not involve the process, it can be made into a standard product.

The core of CRM is the process of getting customers in sales and marketing and the process of serving insurers in an enterprise. After the process is designed, it is digitized to see whether each process node is efficient or not. So digitalization + process is the core thing.

Every industry and company has its own process, and they are different. If you make a bid and sell it to many companies, you will find that it doesn't work at all. On the one hand, the homogenization of these standard products is serious, on the other hand, customers find that there is no big difference after using them, or they do not solve practical problems at all.

Therefore, in the field of CRM, it is not impossible to be a small standard tool all the time, but the market space and customer value are always a little bit.

But if you want to seize the core value opportunity in CRM and do it down, how to use a set of cloud products to meet the customer acquisition and service processes of different industries and different companies? This is the hardest part of the industry.

Like Salesforce's solution is to do PaaS platform, in fact, whether to do PaaS depends entirely on the positioning of each company, whether you want to do small and medium-sized enterprises or medium and large enterprises.

Leifeng net: when did the salesman realize that he wanted to take another step forward and become a platform?

Shi Yanze: although sales easy began to do CRM in 2011, it was not until 2015 that people promoted CRM to a particularly high position, thinking that doing ToB has been proven in mature markets, and this is the biggest track.

In previous years, new retail, new manufacturing, and various "new +" models continue to emerge. in fact, the essence behind it is to connect customers, make all the front-end parts of the enterprise online, build the process, and then connect the front-end to the back-end. so the enterprise will be completely digital.

So people begin to realize that the purpose of management software before is to reduce cost and increase efficiency, but because of the intervention of Internet technology, the purpose of management software is to drive business model, and CRM is to help enterprises make money.

It can be said that most of the problems of Chinese companies are that they do not realize that the ability to replicate and grow in scale is an organizational ability. This is the misunderstanding of CRM, not realizing its core value, but using it as a tool to manage the behavior of salespeople. This is too different from thinking from a management point of view that it can bring real help and value to the company.

So, when you understand this and regard CRM as the largest and hottest track, we realize that we need to be a platform, and without it, all the above processes can't run.

So in 2015 we started to build a platform.

Leifeng net: did you have a smooth process of making the platform? Have you encountered any problems?

Shi Yanze: we started doing it in 2015 and have been doing it for five years, far underestimating its technical difficulty.

As we all know, foreign software companies basically do not have R & D centers in China, and at most they only subcontract them. We couldn't find any relevant R & D personnel at that time. So I set up an R & D center in Silicon Valley and recruited more than a dozen experts.

To be honest, it was a very difficult time.

Leifeng net: so how did you break through that bottleneck and "run" out later?

Shi Yanze: the only thing to do is to clench your teeth. at that time, everyone in the market and the industry were not optimistic about you and were bad-mouthing you, but you know that if you want to break through in this industry, this is the path you must take.

It is much more difficult to start a business in China than in the United States, because everyone is in such a hurry that you have to produce as soon as you do, and you don't have much time to grow.

In 2019, we met a landmark customer, Lenovo.

Lenovo is one of the top 500 companies in the world, the process is very complex, and it has used Salesforce for many years. At that time, we persuaded Lenovo to use the products of a domestic start-up company. In fact, it was even more challenging for them. If they screwed up, it might be very difficult for them.

Fortunately, the result was good, and in the end, we really helped them to do it, and it was the core major customer business department at that time that used this platform.

In addition, in 2020, Haikang Weiwei chose to sell easily, and this ability of internationalization was strengthened through Haikang sales.

Then in 2021, we will work with Schneider and other top 500 companies to verify that we do have the ability to support and serve major customers, so that we have a new understanding of the brand strength of easy sales.

The AI model will revolutionize the user experience in the CRM industry.

Leifeng.com: when there is a new technology, such as the previous AI, entrepreneurs often get confused about the scenario and how to apply it. What do you think?

Shi Yanze: after doing enterprise software for so many years, we know very well that ToB can be deterministic, because we use technology to empower other people's business. when other people's business processes and ways of doing business remain unchanged for so many years, these customer acquisition processes and service processes have best practices.

What we see is how technology is applied to the same business to drive the business and bring about change. Unlike the completely revolutionary innovation of ToC, it is a gradual innovation.

Finally, it is found that it has brought about a change in the business model, which is to connect customers based on technology, and then push back to the supply chain and industrial chain to change the operation mode. This is a more intelligent business model driven by technology and data.

So my consistent view is that when we do ToB, we have to plan the product and plan "what is the same thing". In the process, we have been thinking about how new technologies should be used, such as AI.

Sales are easy to innovate in two ways, one is to "keep straight". It turns out that Salesforce, SAP and other companies have the ability, we must do a good job in this line.

The other is "surprising", thinking about what can be done on the user's side with the technology of the Internet. For example, the sale of easy system inside the integration of some big data, integrated with the process, you can empower users, users are also willing to want.

In addition to the data, we also have the AI algorithm, that is, recommendation, around the process of customer acquisition, and then make recommendations to you. Even this round of ChatGPT will revolutionize the user experience that has been criticized before.

Leifeng.com: what do you think are the scenarios of CRM using ChatGPT?

Shi Yanze: the scenario of CRM applying ChatGPT is particularly typical and direct.

The first is the customer service scenario. Every company's customer service has to face so many customers and various technical problems every day. If the corresponding support staff is arranged according to the quota, the cost is very high. But if ChatGPT intervenes and learns according to the company's data scenarios, including PDF, product manuals, and various basic knowledge documents, it will be able to communicate with customers in the form of a robot, and it will be difficult for customers to "stop it." Even if it can't solve it on its own, it can create a work order immediately, and then the workflow of the work order will be pushed forward automatically.

At present, we are already testing this scenario. It doesn't even need programming. After we give it to the system interface, we automatically read our customer service system interface, then process the natural language into a structured language, program directly, and automatically build a work order processing flow at the back end. Explain the current situation of the customer's work order, and tell the front-end customer who will help you solve the problem.

In fact, this is applied under the service scenario in a simple ChatBot way. At present, we are already in the test, I have seen the team's demonstration, the effect is very "scary".

Leifeng.com: which possibility of ChatGPT do you like, so you decide to do it?

Shi Yanze: in fact, since the establishment of our company, genetics has been thinking about how to apply Internet technology to CRM scenarios. So we will try to use a lot of new technologies, including ChatGPT.

It can be said that in the future service scenarios, the interface will no longer be important, it will be a robot interface, which simulates customer service and other roles.

In my opinion, ChatGPT is essentially a virtual human, a role to serve multiple customers, the cost will be greatly reduced. It can also be sales robot, marketing robot. For example, if you want to see a customer, it turns out that it is a recommendation system to help you understand the customer information. Just ask directly now. What is the market forecast for the target customer this year? What are the challenges in marketing? Wait.

In the past, to check this information, you had to check the company's annual report and PPT, but in the future, you don't have to read the financial report at all. ChatGPT has learned all these things a long time ago, and as a salesperson wants to know what any company, their contacts, and bosses care about these days, it knows.

Leifeng net: now many domestic companies are doing GPT, big models, what do you think of the effect in the acquisition of knowledge?

Shi Yanze: I think there is no problem with some basic abilities, but if you want to do more, such as reading corporate financial reports, almost by the time they achieve version 2.0, all of the scenarios mentioned above can be realized.

Leifeng net: have you ever thought about making a big model?

Shi Yanze: no, our idea is that when the big model comes out, we will apply it on it. We have plenty of scenes on this point.

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