This time, Ali chose to believe in DNA. On December 6, Zhang Yong, chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Alibaba group, sent an internal letter announcing that Dai Shan (Su Quan) is in charge of big Taobao (including Taobao, tmall and Ali's mother) on behalf of the group. Meanwhile, Dai Shan will continue to manage the "B system" (B2C retail business group, taocai, taote and 1688). After the new adjustment, Dai Shan's plates will be merged into "China's digital commerce plate", which is the first time in Alibaba's history to fully connect Amoy system and B system. The third quarter financial report shows that "big Taobao" is still Alibaba's most profitable sector, while community e-commerce (taocai) and taote are Alibaba's more expensive "front-line" new businesses in 2021. In a sense, Ali's fate is in the hands of the petite Dai Shan. After the appointment takes effect in January 2022, she will hold the "Ali money printer" in one hand and the "expansion Checkbook" in the other hand (Dai shansu is known as the "little queen" in ALI). It is worth noting that Dai Shan's Ali DNA: she is the only eighteen Arhats (job No. 11) in Ali's front-line management post. She even comes from the "Ma Yun students" who have the strongest sense of DNA among the eighteen Arhats. Among the eighteen Arhats, Dai Shan, Han min, Jin Yuanying, Jiang Fang and Zhou Yuehong are students of Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Technology (now Hangzhou University of Electronic Science and Technology), and Ma Yun was a lecturer in English and international trade at that school. In fact, Dai Shan is the last group of students in Ma Yun's teaching career: after tutoring Dai Shan to complete the final English exam, Ma Yun resolutely put down his whip and started his own Internet entrepreneurship. Ali executives who adjusted with Dai Shan at the same time, as well as Jiang Fan. According to Zhang Yong's internal letter, Jiang Fan will not only be transferred from the "big Amoy system" that has been fighting for seven years, but also to the "overseas digital commerce sector": a sector composed of overseas subsidiaries such as express, international trade (icbu) and lazada. According to the third quarter financial report, although Alibaba's overseas annual active consumers have reached 285 million, there is still a long way to go from "a truly global company" (Zhang Yongyu). Unlike Dai Shan, who followed Ma Yun to establish Ali from "Hangzhou Lakeside Garden Apartment" (lakeside garden apartment is the first "office" of Ali in Hangzhou). Jiang Fan entered Alibaba in 2013 because his "friendship alliance" was acquired by Alibaba. Many people familiar with the matter once told Hu olfactory that Jiang fan is a capable cadre of Zhang Yong: he is the Minister of Taobao mobile, the pioneer of the double 11 transformation, and the planner of Taobao live broadcast. When his popularity was very high, he was known as the "traffic king" in Alibaba. A person familiar with Ali's core management said that Jiang Fanben was highly expected by the group. However, the "event" in the spring of 2020 and the new challenges faced by Taobao and tmall at the business level since the epidemic have led the senior management to re-examine the structure. However, some people are still optimistic about Jiang Fan's future. An insider who did not want to be named told Hu sniff, "although Jiang Fan was transferred from Datao department, he was entrusted with the important task of going to sea - the going to sea plate is by no means a leftover material for Ali, but a strategic plate. This is more like a very difficult examination paper. If Jiang Fan really makes Ali go to sea with his strength, everything may be unknown." At present, for more than 250000 Ali employees (according to Ali's financial report data), they are ushering in a watershed: after this adjustment, Dai Shan, who has "ancient early" Ali DNA, will be directly responsible for the "giant" business model never seen in Ali's history, and the "unified River and mountain" is by no means in front of her and 250000 "old and new Ali people" E-commerce Jianghu - they need to explore the incremental world of sinking market and generation Z; Also beware of a series of new players who have or are emerging to enter the "hinterland". And, they may need to re comb Ali's values and find a new DNA suitable for 250000 Ali people. Ali variant In the Chinese market, Ali's traditional "hinterland" is facing the challenge of "slowdown". On November 18, Alibaba released the second quarter financial report. Excluding Gaoxin retail consolidation, the e-commerce business revenue was 106.575 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12%, which was the lowest quarterly growth rate of e-commerce business in the past five years. It is also worth noting that this year's double 11, the financial report shows that this year's double 11 Gmv is 540.3 billion yuan, an increase of 8.5% over the same period last year, which is the lowest growth rate since the emergence of double 11. It's not all bad news. Ali's new business shows another look. Take Alibaba cloud as an example. In the past four quarters, Alibaba cloud's revenue grew by more than 29% year-on-year, and accounted for 10% of the group's revenue. Taote, whose core goal is to sink the market, has increased 240 million active consumers in 15 months, which has become the fastest growing project of Alibaba's user volume. This comparison is a portrayal of Ali at present: in the traditional e-commerce sector, Ali is gradually close to the stock market, and the incremental space brought by the existing playing methods is limited; At the same time, Ali is eager to find increment in sectors and scenarios such as community e-commerce, cloud computing, cross-border sea going and sinking market. Efficiency has become the focus of Ali at this moment. At the end of November, it was reported that Ali's senior management was studying "decentralization" and adjusting the organizational structure. People familiar with the matter told Hu olfactory that this change actually did not come from November. As early as the end of 2020, Zhang Yong and other Alibaba executives had begun to think about "change", and some changes had appeared in the first half of 2021. A key detail is that Zhang Yong and other senior executives began to reduce the "decision-making intervention" on some business groups, the president of the business group began to have more decision-making power, and increased the influence weight in personnel, finance and other links. A relevant person told Hu olfactory that the senior management of the group reduced the participation frequency of some business meetings in 2021, which is regarded as one of the important signals of "decentralization". Internal and external reasons are the core factors of this change. From the internal cause, as Ali expands its tentacles to more fields, Zhang Yong and other group executives face more challenges in energy and business familiarity. The traditional Ali decision-making mechanism makes these business groups unable to respond quickly to market changes and dynamics. In terms of external factors, the market is becoming faster and more fragmented. The existing Alibaba "demand feedback" model is facing challenges. In October this year, the person in charge of e-commerce of a clothing brand described a case to huolf: they had responded to the Taobao live broadcast team and hoped to obtain some more personalized data analysis functions in the background. When they fed back this demand to Taobao in the second half of 2020, the relevant functions will not be launched until the second half of 2021. According to the source, some data functions have been launched in "friends" for half a year or even a year. In his opinion, with Ali's technical and data advantages, he should have been ahead, but he doesn't know why he "won't score". A frank person from Ali's business line said earlier this year that Ali has more than 20 years of history and more than 200000 employees, but it will also be a challenge at some times. "For small teams and companies, it may only take three or five people to do one thing. But for today's Ali, it may involve more than a dozen teams and hundreds of people." The huge Ali is becoming "slow" in its sensitivity to the market. "Sometimes the waiter has fed back the customer's needs for the first time, but it has been unable to translate them into products or functions." as early as 2019, Alibaba's relevant departments have found through the "waiter" that in some vertical fields, brands have different needs for anchor, delivery means and transformation methods. However, this "discovery" has not been really transformed into key products or functions. A relevant person once said frankly to huolf, "we have technology, data and hard working employees, but we finally missed the opportunity." There are even invisible "walls" in the group, which further "slow down" the rhythm. Previously, the business of Amoy department and B department was not completely opened up, which resulted in the disadvantage in the face of "friend business" competition. For example, meituan and pinduoduo regard the market and community e-commerce as the key lifeblood in the future. Through the flow end strategy, we can see their attitude of "completing their work in one battle": both meituan and pinduoduo directly put the community e-commerce business entrance on the home page of the main app and drain a large number of them through the main business. However, for Ali, who has been "backward and slow", this linkage sometimes becomes a "luxury". Taking live broadcasting as an example, Taobao live broadcasting and taote live broadcasting are almost in a "parallel time and space" for a certain period of time. Although they are both live broadcasting of Ali department, their linkage is limited because they belong to different business groups. Even the anchor team told Hu olfactory earlier this year that when relevant people from Taobao live came to visit, the anchor team asked about taote live, but was told that they "didn't know much about it". Tiktok Kwai, even a leader of another anchor team, sniffed the tiger. "Someone said that the fast hand and the chattering sound make complaints about the homologous live products, but they are very few." It is worth pondering that the supply chain advantages and sinking market of Series B are actually the key to the future transformation of Amoy. At an e-commerce forum at the beginning of this year, a senior person foresaw that the competition of e-commerce has evolved from "traffic end competition" to "industrial chain competition" since 2021. In fact, Kwai Chung, Jingdong or tiktok, many factories in 2021 have integrated the flow and supply chain. Take agricultural products as an example. In Jingdong and pinduoduo, the supply chain and flow of agricultural products have been closely linked. It is under such circumstances that several platforms can mature means such as "order agriculture" and "reverse customization" in 2021. In the Ali system, although agriculture has been laid out as early as 2010, for a long time, the digital agriculture base and agricultural supply chain belong to system B, while the massive users and active traffic belong to Amoy. In a sense, the structural adjustment on December 6 will completely "break" the "invisible wall" in Ali Ecology - when Taobao system and B system are completely connected and successfully integrated, it will be the integration of a complete supply chain and flow ecology. But a key challenge facing Ali is: paper integration, just give an order; True integration often takes years. Ali at this moment, can you afford to wait? Dai Shan Among Ali's famous female executives, Dai Shan is famous for her low-key and gentle personality. She is a cancer, a native of Hainan and a mother with a daughter. Inside Ali, she is habitually called "mm" (pronunciation: Meimei). She is quite grounded. In Ali's early history, a story about Dai Shan is quite famous. At the beginning of her career, Dai Shan followed Ma Yun to work hard in the apartment "office" of Hangzhou lakeside garden, with a monthly salary of 500 yuan and a daily lunch box of 3 yuan (1999). One day, Dai Shan, who buried herself in a box lunch, suddenly showed her ambition to her colleagues around: "when I have money, I'll buy a room of plum dried vegetables!" Today, Dai Shan's "freedom of plum dried vegetables" may have been realized. According to data from Forbes, Daishan's wealth had exceeded $1.1 billion as of April this year. In the 22 years of Ali, Dai Shan has worked as customer service, sales and management of the "China supply iron army". She has been the chief talent officer and the chief customer service officer in 2017