Meituan's strategy was adjusted to "retail + technology", and Wang Xing led the retail task force
2021-10-28
On October 27, at the monthly business meeting, meituan (SEHK: 3690) announced a new round of adjustment, which is the largest personnel adjustment of meituan since the resignation of co-founder Wang Huiwen in December last year. The most important change is that meituan set up a special group to discuss and make resolutions on retail related businesses. There are five members in the group: Wang Xing, founder and CEO of meituan, Wang Puzhong, senior vice president and President of Jiajia business group, Chen Liang, senior vice president and general manager of optimization business division, Guo wanhuai, general manager of fast donkey business division, and Li Shubin, vice president and general manager of meituan platform. Meituan also integrates businesses such as optimization, quick donkey and vegetable shopping, which is under the unified responsibility of Chen Liang, and Guo wanhuai will assist Chen Liang in management. In terms of business, integrating the above businesses is conducive to more rational allocation of resources; In terms of personnel, Chen Liang's rights and responsibilities have been further expanded. Chen Liang has 3 years of team leading experience in fresh food and retail. He joined meituan in January 2011 and has been responsible for mobile, wine travel and vegetable shopping. In 2020, he began to be responsible for the business community group purchase focused by meituan. Chen Liang is Wang Xing's junior and senior high school classmate. Internally, he is called "brother Liang". Several meituan employees describe him as "gentle" and "elegant", and call him "gentle and persuasive" towards his subordinates. He once said at the internal sharing meeting that the retail business is essentially no different from the group purchase and takeout business. The core is to constantly add new capabilities and bring new experiences to users on the basis of the construction of new capabilities. For meituan, the core issue of retail is to establish supporting organizational capacity. The market is large enough. The gap between meituan at this stage is not the core issue, but who can find the right path faster. The retail task force of meituan follows Amazon's "D - team". In 2008, Amazon's retail business has been relatively mature. In order to find new opportunities in the digital field, Bezos personally established a "D - team", including ten core Amazon members, such as Andy Jassy, the current CEO of Amazon, and David limp, the head of equipment business. The meituan is also facing such a stage today. Old businesses such as group buying, takeout and wine travel have matured, and new businesses are still being explored. Latepost also learned exclusively that at the strategy meeting in September, Wang Xing announced that meituan's strategy would be upgraded from "food + platform" to "retail + technology", raising retail and technology to a strategic height for the first time. The establishment of a retail task force is the first step in meituan's new strategy. New strategy, new organizational structure In the past, meituan's retail business was scattered in different business departments - Flash purchase, Tuan Haohuo, and meituan medicine's home business group in Wang Puzhong; Meituan is preferred to be a separate business unit for community group purchase, which is in the charge of Chen Liang; Quick donkey and buying vegetables are separate business departments, and the person in charge is Guo wanhuai. Today, several core executives of meituan form a special group, which will uniformly allocate resources for retail business. Fast donkey, vegetable shopping and optimization are also integrated into a business segment and handed over to an executive to improve resource utilization efficiency. A fast donkey said that the fast donkey, vegetable shopping and optimization business can be coordinated and reused in warehousing and logistics. Chen Liang said internally that the vegetable buying business and the fast donkey business are different in terms of customers, commodity needs, performance and organization. But what they have in common is that some support capabilities are similar to the lowest level resources. Previously, there were internal rumors that meituan would integrate retail businesses such as fast donkey, vegetable shopping and optimization to establish a large retail business group. At present, meituan has not established an independent business group, but has chosen a more secure way, which is jointly managed by a special group composed of principals of retail related businesses. This can also be regarded as a transitional management scheme. For reference, in 2015, Zhang Yong officially became the CEO of Alibaba, who directly led the retail e-commerce business group of Alibaba. At the same time, a "class committee" responsibility system composed of many young people was formed in the three business departments of Taobao, mobile Taobao and tmall. The establishment of the class committee system is like that in a class, the class committee of each section reports directly to the headmaster, so as to improve business flexibility and innovation ability and form a rapid response mechanism. After double 11 in 2017, Ali cancelled the class committee system implemented for more than two years and appointed Jiang Fan as president of Taobao and Jing Jie as president of tmall. Peng Lei, a partner of Ali, once concluded that if a company lacks a super leader, the class committee system is the best choice. Wang Xing has shared it internally for many times. Meituan has been doing retail. In the past, it mainly engaged in group purchase, takeout and wine travel. It did service retail. Now meituan has to do more physical retail. With the rise of community group purchase mode, the boundary between e-commerce and local life is gradually blurred. A community group buying entrepreneur said that the community group buying platform can be extended to do local life business, such as asking the head to recommend amusement projects such as water parks and local hotels. When there is a certain flow, it will compete with the mainstream e-commerce platform for commodity price and quality in the future. In the future, companies providing services based on LBS (geographical location), such as meituan, will increasingly intersect with mainstream e-commerce platforms and compete for the same market. As early as 2019, Jingdong's core management team repositioned Jingdong. It believed that Jingdong was a retail based technology service company (after adjusting to supply chain). Retail was the core of Jingdong, and technology is the future of convergence. This is consistent with today's US strategy. E-commerce platforms are also moving closer to service retail. In July, Ali handed over the three sectors of Gaode, Feizhu and local life to Yu Yongfu, partner and chairman of Gaode, for unified management. Ali's integration of three businesses - maps, wine tours and local life is actually benchmarking a larger beauty group. Wang Xing said internally that the ultimate form of retail is robot cat. If you want something, it can be taken out immediately. This requires the company to have enough commodity categories and a wide coverage and efficient logistics system. The advantage of meituan is to build a real-time distribution system for the last three kilometers by relying on the experience of takeout. Meituan's exploration of flash purchase, group good goods, optimization and other businesses has also preliminarily accumulated experience in supply chain, warehousing and other links involved in retail for meituan. However, the cognition and ability of retail need to be accumulated for a long time. Meituan needs to directly compete with rich and powerful large companies in an unfamiliar field in the past. This puts forward higher requirements for the organizational ability of the US delegation. Every strategic upgrade of meituan is accompanied by an organizational structure adjustment. From 2012 to 2015, the group buying business was mature. Meituan put forward the "T-type strategy" of platform + new business, constantly explored new boundaries, and initially formed four business groups: takeout, hotel, cat's eye and store. In 2018, meituan focused its strategy on "food + platform". Wang Xing said that it should take "eating" as the core and practice basic skills hard. Organizationally, meituan has defined the two business groups of going to the store and coming home, and established two platforms: user platform and LBS Platform. With the rise of strategic significance of fresh retail business, "Xiaoxiang fresh" has been divided into independent business divisions. In January of the following year, meituan went online to buy vegetables and belonged to Xiaoxiang business department. Over the past five years, meituan has been moving towards the mission of "helping everyone eat better and live better". In the last year, it also launched the slogan of "little helper for a better life". In terms of product form, meituan gathers almost all businesses such as catering takeout, wine travel, going to stores and travel on a big entrance to meituan app. However, the policy and market environment are changing. For Internet platform companies, it is becoming more and more difficult and uncertain to do large-scale, and increasing industrial depth and technology investment has become the most favorable trend at present. The veteran leaves and the middle-level strength is weak Latepost also learned exclusively that Guo Qing, a member of the S-Team, the highest decision-making body of meituan, and general manager of the cycling division, will leave. After Guo Qing resigned, Zhang Chuan was responsible for the senior vice president of meituan and the president of daodian business group of cycling business department. It is understood that after leaving meituan, Guo Qing may start a business. Guo Qing is internally called "old K" (the abbreviation of his English name Kevin). He joined meituan in March 2014 and was in charge of the wine travel business until the first half of 2021. In less than six years, in January 2020, Guo Qing joined the S-Team, the highest decision-making body of the beauty pageant. A meituan personage said that he had "leapfrog growth" in meituan. After entering the core decision-making level of meituan for more than a year, Guo Qing chose to leave. The two businesses Guo Qing has been responsible for are relatively mature within meituan. The liquor and tourism business has passed the stage of development and attack, and has steadily occupied the second place in the industry. In 2020, meituan's store arrival and liquor and tourism business revenue was 21.3 billion yuan, with a profit of 8.1 billion yuan, which is an important source of profit for meituan; The two wheeled vehicle market has also formed a three-part market pattern of Hello, didi and meituan. A meituan personage commented that Guo Qing is a very pure person with "meituan taste". He often said, "don't do what you don't think clearly. Do what you think clearly.". Guo Qing is keen on sharing. The wine and tourism business department will regularly hold "old K face-to-face" to teach "old K methodology". He will share how he keeps making mistakes and moving forward at the exchange meeting. Guo Qing's subordinates said that Guo Qing has strict management. If the team's score is 60 points, the next goal is 70 points, 80 points and 90 points. To 100 points is not finished, he will ask for 100 points again. Wang Xing once put forward a set of "difficult theory", that is, people's growth path is to fight, win, fight and win. Guo Qing added a fifth article after that, that is, turning defeat into victory. Guo Qing is not the only senior member of the meituan who left office in the past two years. At the beginning of 2020, Liu Lin, a member of S-Team and senior vice president, was transferred to senior consultant of the company. In December 2020, Wang Huiwen, co-founder, S-Team member and senior vice president of the company, retired. The meituan has always attached importance to the training of internal cadres. Among the core executive teams of meituan today, except Zhang Chuan joined in 2017 and Li Shubin joined in 2019, others are "old meituan people" who have been in meituan for more than six or seven years. Meituan is a company that does not make money but has a high share price. In the past two years, the growth rate of meituan has slowed down - in 2019, the revenue of meituan was 97.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 49.5%, while in 2020, the revenue was 114.79 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.7%. Some people can't find room to rise; The stock price soared, and after some people realized financial freedom, they had no heart for war. However, the talent training can not be completed quickly, and the talent system of meituan also begins to have faults. No one at the middle and senior levels leaves in time, which leads to the need for several positions at the senior level. Today, Zhang Chuan is responsible for the three businesses of going to stores, wine tours and cycling. The business scope under Wang Xing's direct jurisdiction has also become larger, which is also a challenge to the CEO. In the past, Wang Xing did not intervene in the company's specific affairs, but spent more time exploring the world and the company's new direction. After 11 years of establishment, meituan has grown from a start-up company to a mature company. As of the closing on October 27, meituan's share price was HK $268.6, with a total market value of HK $1.65 trillion (about US $211.8 billion). Earlier, latepost wrote in the "meituan management exam: recruiting 60000 people is just the beginning" that this generation of Internet is small, regardless of age, number of employees, or complexity of business and organization