At a time when Internet technology is profoundly reshaping our society, enterprises and public institutions — from wanwan Group companies to photocopy shops — are scrambling to transform themselves from so-called “traditional industries” to complete digital transformation.
In the process, “the enterprise IT”, “science and technology business slogans such as” be repeatedly mentioned, companies began to re-examine the existing CRM system, supply chain system, and many other IT assets, found that fragmented information doesn’t bring much value, so the cios come to realize that what they need is a IT ecosystem. To put IT simply, the IT ecosystem here can be understood as a digital platform, which is not only a technology platform, but also a business platform.
Wechat platform strategy
In China, we seem to have a natural advantage because we have wechat! Yes, it is the wechat that even our two uncles and three aunts can use to share some health knowledge in the moments of friends, as well as those roadside barbeques who are chased by urban management officers all day long can use it to complete cashless collection.
Wechat itself is a digital platform. This platform provides a new display space for individuals or organizations — marketing, we media, mobile payment, business management, and so on. In fact, the word “platform” has two meanings: one is the wechat platform itself mentioned above, and the other is for an organization to use wechat (including wechat public account and enterprise wechat) as its own business platform. This paper discusses the latter.
Generally speaking, enterprises can adopt three wechat platform strategies in the process of building the wechat ecosystem. The first two strategies are fairly basic and will only be briefly described here. This paper will focus on the third kind: the combination of wechat public account and enterprise wechat “industry solution platform”.
Wechat official account
The first one is also the simplest one, that is, we can contact the wechat public number in our daily life. Wechat public account has quietly replaced the official website to become a new portal for enterprises, such as sending express, booking airline tickets, these previously only in the Web site to complete the business, now only need to pay attention to a company’s wechat public account can be completed.
Please note that the wechat public account is divided into subscription account and service account. The subscription account is mainly used for publicity and marketing, and cannot be effectively used for those scenarios that need to carry out business in wechat. The service number is mainly used to carry out business, so when talking about the public number, this paper mainly refers to the service number of wechat.
In fact, it’s not a “platform” yet, but it’s a proven and widely adopted way to reach end users. Generally, WeChat public is not independent, IT still need to integrate with other business system to form the complete business closed loop, the “other systems” likely to coincide with the public, and a new development, IT is possible that the enterprises have some IT system, number and WeChat public ACTS as just another business interface.
Technically, the development of public accounts can be in many forms, including the “message response mechanism” provided by wechat itself, HTML5 web applications and small programs.
Wechat public account platform
Public account + enterprise wechat joint platform
Wechat public accounts are mainly for end users, while Tencent also provides enterprise wechat for employees. For most enterprises (especially small and medium-sized enterprises), a wechat public number is enough, and even Tencent’s official solution library is mainly for the public number and the lack of enterprise wechat mention. Of course, there have been more and more enterprises began to use the enterprise wechat, but most of them use the purpose of enterprise wechat mainly focused on such as address book, attendance and other personnel management, rather than the core business of the enterprise. This paper mainly discusses the enterprise wechat credit to complete the business links of enterprises, such as Courier companies through the enterprise wechat to complete the entry and registration of parcels, after-sales staff through the enterprise wechat to complete the tracking of service work orders.
The joint platform of wechat public account and enterprise wechat can fulfill the dream of mobile office of various enterprises. In the enterprise wechat, we can develop multiple business applications. For example, the enterprise wechat of an automobile manufacturer can contain ERP, CRM, supply chain, 4S shop management and other applications. In addition, when developing business processes in enterprise wechat, we can directly enjoy the existing supporting functions of enterprise wechat, including address book, enterprise mailbox, enterprise payment and public phone. It can be seen that the enterprise wechat itself is a platform chemical tool, coupled with the wechat public number for end users, the joint platform helps to form a complete customer service and business operation system.
Wechat public account + enterprise wechat joint platform
With this joint platform, you will find that wechat is no longer a propaganda text or shopping collection so simple, but transformed into a core business tool to meet the user service; The enterprise wechat is no longer just for managing the address book or asking employees to take a leave to type in a card, but a companion for employees to complete business operations and improve the office experience.
Industry solution platform
Industry solution platform is mainly used to solve a general business problem in an industry, can be a separate for the public number, can also be a separate for the enterprise wechat, also can contain both the public number and the enterprise wechat “ultimate” platform form.
Tencent official in the public account and enterprise wechat both provide platform support. For the public, you can open the platform through wechatThird Party PlatformComplete the business authorization and agency of the public account; For enterprise wechat, you can passService provider platformComplete enterprise wechat business authorization and agency. At present, there are a large number of independent third-party platform applications or service provider platform applications in the market, but the combination of the two to form a complete business closed loop is rare.
For readers to understand, here are two typical application scenarios:
Customer complaints:
Every enterprise committed to long-term development needs a sound and practical customer complaint mechanism. The process for dealing with customer complaints is pretty much the same across industries — it’s all based on something like a work order. Therefore, a company specializing in wechat development made a set of complaints about the industry wechat program. In this scheme, the customer completes the complaint through the wechat public account of an enterprise, and the employee completes the complaint processing through the wechat of the enterprise. The whole process is completely mobile. Enterprises do not need to develop their own complaint management system. They only need to authorize their official accounts and their wechat accounts to the complaint platform based on wechat. It can be seen that the complaint platform here is actually a cloud platform with multi-tenant characteristics, and many industrial solution systems based on wechat are indeed deployed on the cloud platform.
Automobile sales:
Automobile manufacturers are usually not in charge of automobile retail, but agent to a number of 4S shops, which are not affiliated to the automobile manufacturer. They also have their own enterprises, their own brands, and their own enterprise wechat and official accounts. However, 4S shops need to follow some specifications or service standards of automobile manufacturers. From this point of view, there is a relationship between management and being managed between the latter and the former. In order to standardize the service to customers, automobile manufacturers have developed a set of industry-level wechat platform for car sales of this brand, and all dealers complete the business related to car sales on this platform. The platform includes both the official account and the wechat account of the enterprise. The terminal buyer can use the official account of the dealer to complete the business such as model viewing and test drive reservation, while the employee of the dealer can complete the service for customers in the wechat account of the enterprise of the dealer, such as arranging test drive and customer relationship management. It should be noted that all sales processes take place in the dealer’s own official account and enterprise wechat, rather than those of the automobile manufacturer, which is conducive to the building of the dealer’s own brand image. Dealers themselves do not need to do any development, but the public number and enterprise wechat authorized agent to automobile manufacturers to develop the wechat industry platform. It can be seen that in the enterprise wechat end, this is a B2B system, in the public account end, this is a B2C system.
Taking automobile sales as an example, the wechat official accounts of dealers and the wechat of enterprises are two relatively independent subjects. To make them serve the same business process, we need to associate the two. At this point, we create a “dealer management platform” system. After the dealer registers on the management platform, the system will associate its wechat public account with the enterprise wechat. Thus, the request initiated by the end user in the public account end can be directly directed to the employees in the enterprise wechat.
Wechat industry-level solution platform (taking automobile sales as an example)
After the platform is implemented, it is similar to: in order to promote sales and standardize customer service, automobile manufacturers develop a set of B2B and B2C wechat platform, and different dealers enter the platform with their respective wechat service numbers and enterprise wechat. All dealers serve end customers through the same set of business processes and standards provided by the car manufacturer.
If we take the example of “car sales” in the abstract, we can see that this hierarchical business relationship exists in every industry: Commodity producers do not directly provide commodities or services to end customers, but entrust these businesses to intermediate dealers or agents through the way of agency. Different dealers or agents will build their own brands in addition to promoting the commodities or services of the producers.
conclusion
Enterprises in the Internet era need a digital platform of their own, and wechat with “Chinese characteristics” can provide enterprises with a ready-made platform foundation. In the whole digital platform ecosystem, enterprises can choose wechat platform to reach end users and complete core business. In this platform, wechat public account and enterprise wechat are closely combined, forming a complete set of industry-level business operation and customer service system.