The 6th China FMCG Channel Innovation Conference, hosted by New Distribution, a professional new media platform for FMCG, was grandly held from April 1 to April 3 at the Chengdu Agora Hotel. The event attracted 3,000 industry professionals, including distributors, community e-commerce platforms, brand owners, and internet companies from across the country, filling the venue to capacity.
On the afternoon of April 1, at the China FMCG Digital Growth Summit, Mr. Bo Chuanchuan, R&D Director for the FMCG industry at Fenxiang Xiaoke, delivered a keynote speech titled "Four-in-One: Rapid Implementation of Channel Digitalization."
Fenxiang Xiaoke, as a pioneer in connected CRM, has provided professional connected CRM services to over 600,000 enterprises. Beyond FMCG, it offers full-scenario CRM solutions for manufacturing, healthcare, and other industries, with deep technical expertise.
New Distribution has carefully compiled and excerpted the highlights of Mr. Bo's speech for our readers.
Today, I will share the topic "Four-in-One: Rapid Implementation of Channel Digitalization." As a leading connected CRM brand, Fenxiang Xiaoke provides complete solutions across the entire FMCG digital chain, covering manufacturers, distributors, terminals, and consumers in full-channel digitalization.
But today, I won't discuss the value of digitalization. I believe its value is well understood—any company that digitalizes well can achieve rapid growth, and there's no doubt about that. So, I want to share real cases of digitalization implementation and explore what the key to successful implementation truly is.
So, what are the key factors affecting digitalization implementation?
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Align with Human Nature, Stay Close to Business
First, I believe the most important factor is people. The success of a digital system depends on the people who use it, and on the effectiveness and efficiency of actual users.
Let me ask a question: When you implement a digital system, do frontline staff like using it? Some may like it, but some definitely don't—the answer is uncertain.
Another question: Do these people like playing cards? Do they like playing games or scrolling through Douyin? The answer is obvious.
Why don't people love working hard, studying, or reading? Is it because these things have no value? Of course not. Everyone knows their value, but the return period is too long.
If I read a book today, I can't be sure when I'll see benefits. But things like playing cards or games provide immediate rewards and instant fun. Enjoying instant gratification and immediate rewards is human nature.
So, this brings us to the first topic: one key to digitalization implementation is staying close to business. Staying close to business means your system should align with human nature.
Can we incorporate the concept of instant rewards and immediate enjoyment into digital solutions? Let's look at some real cases.
Case 1: A well-known instant noodle manufacturer integrated instant rewards and real-time points into their visit-sales scenario, achieving business implementation.
Their salespeople start visiting stores in the morning, earning points in real-time for each store visited, and also for specific business actions taken in the store. After placing an order, the system calculates the commission based on the order and converts it into points.
At the end of each day, salespeople can see the rewards and points they've earned. Through this approach, the company successfully implemented the digital system.
Case 2: A high-end spirits management brand used our system to create a lightweight membership management solution. Each bottle of high-end spirits has a unique code. By scanning the code, terminal store owners earn points in real-time, encouraging them to proactively scan, while the manufacturer gains access to terminal store data.
Each scan earns points that can be quickly redeemed on an online mall for practical rewards like JD shopping cards or fuel cards. Soon, this solution was smoothly implemented.
Case 3: A very famous herbal tea brand used our digital system for a Spring Festival promotion. The biggest challenge was the need for a large number of temporary promoters in a short time, with varying skill levels—from part-time high school and college students to elderly people in their 50s and 60s—and they would be frequent.
Facing such a huge challenge, we returned to human nature: they don't like complex things that require too much time to learn.
What platform are these people familiar with? Only WeChat. So, we built a complete management solution for temporary promoters on WeChat using mini-programs, and it was successfully implemented.
During the 2021 Spring Festival period, 40,000 people used this system within just one week, thanks to building it on WeChat. It was simple: open WeChat, find the mini-program, register with one click, and start working.
This full-scenario FMCG system centered on instant rewards is already used by many companies on our platform. Terminals, salespeople placing orders, store inventory reporting, personnel training management, and learning all use this instant-reward system because it aligns with human nature.
This is our first proposition: the key to successful digital system implementation is to grasp human nature and align with it, so that the system is used and loved by people.
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Rapid Implementation, Rapid Validation, Rapid Adjustment
Let's delve deeper into the second spirits case. At the project's inception, the company simply wanted to obtain terminal store purchase data through digitalization. Like most companies, they first had their sales reps communicate with terminals to push this, but terminal owners were not very cooperative, and data coverage was less than 10%.
So, they adjusted. Since sales reps weren't effective, they let terminal owners do it themselves. By scanning codes, for every 200 codes scanned, they would receive an extra case of wine on the next order. However, this solution wasn't very successful either, due to the long return period mentioned earlier. Scanning one by one, accumulating for a long time to get a case of wine, the effect was minimal, and coverage only grew to 20%-30%.
Eventually, they evolved to the current solution: earning points for each scan, redeemable in real-time for prizes, which fully implemented the plan.
This is another common issue in digitalization implementation: everything seems clear and simple in hindsight, but at the time, no one knew it would turn out this way. It requires step-by-step rapid implementation, adjustment, validation, and feedback to gradually find the right approach. This leads to the second core topic: you need speed.
Why is speed crucial in digitalization implementation? Because digitalization itself is a transformation of productive forces, which requires corresponding changes in production relations. In FMCG channels, changes in production relations may involve supply chain changes, internal organizational restructuring, and corporate culture challenges—all of which are enormous.
With huge challenges and high uncertainty, the only way is to rapidly validate, implement, and adjust.
Therefore, we believe the ideal state of digitalization implementation is when your direction is roughly correct, your system is dynamic and supports continuous adjustment. Rapid feedback and adjustment are the core essentials.
Let's see how fast we can go with this platform. I'm proud to say we have many cases, including large enterprises that have used digitalization across full scenarios for years, and many customized projects from years ago.
From these cases, for large enterprises, full-scenario coverage takes about half a year. For mid-sized enterprises with annual revenue of around 4-6 billion yuan, digitalization implementation takes about a month. The image below shows a recent POC pilot at a well-known southern food company, which was up and running in just one week. Only through rapid validation can you boldly move forward.
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Fenxiang Xiaoke: Using a Four-in-One Platform to Support Rapid Implementation
As a leading connected CRM brand, how does Fenxiang Xiaoke achieve such speed in years of service?
The core is the four-in-one platform support behind it. SaaS, PaaS, BaaS, and BI are the four platforms that support rapid business implementation.
The SaaS platform allows all business to be deployed in the cloud. If you want to use it, you can directly register accounts in batches, and these applications are immediately available.
Every company's business, products, and operations have uniqueness; differentiation is the essence of commercialization. How to solve differentiation? Fenxiang Xiaoke has a powerful PaaS platform, a customizable platform that helps solve personalized issues, including processes, promotion rules, activity management plans, and breakdown plans.
With the strong customization capabilities of this platform, targeted customization can be done for various situations. For example, visit processes, actions, store customization, instant rewards for each manufacturer, and configuration of points and rules can all be achieved.
There's also the powerful BaaS platform, a commercial service platform. Money is the best lubricant and accelerator for everything. We provide reasonable, legal, and compliant instant withdrawal and temporary employment commercial services. When your business personnel earn points and rewards through our system, if they can withdraw the money to their bank card that very night, wouldn't that be more impactful and make them more willing to use the system?
We offer flexible employment commercial solutions to help companies solve tax issues, compliance issues, and temporary settlement of payroll. We also provide corresponding financial services. When distributors order from manufacturers, they can get credit directly on the platform based on past records, ensuring your business doesn't get stuck at the last mile with distributors.
Finally, the BI platform. Digitalization means all business implementation must use digital insights, with data supporting your conclusions. This platform integrates various digital insight capabilities and reports around business, providing customized data insight dashboards and data cockpits.
The four-in-one of these platforms is the core of our rapid implementation capability. With SaaS's out-of-the-box platform capability, PaaS's targeted rapid customization, BaaS services to accelerate implementation, and BI data insights to support rapid business decisions.
For various terminal business formats, the required actions, real-time point incentives, and business-related configurations and customizations are all immediately effective. These can all be achieved, defining what you want based on your enterprise.
This is the four-in-one platform capability, the secret and platform value that supports rapid business implementation.
In summary, Fenxiang Xiaoke has products and solutions that stay close to business and align with human nature. This is our core underlying logic for product and business development, and we have a powerful four-in-one platform to support rapid implementation. I hope to cooperate with you in the future, combining these key points, grasping the core, and helping channel digitalization achieve rapid implementation.
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