1 Business, from the perspective of interpersonal relationships, can be roughly divided into two types: business with acquaintances and business with strangers. WeChat is social first, business second. The two parties are first acquaintances, using personal reputation as a guarantee to ensure the product is good. Thus, the WeChat ecosystem has spawned transaction forms such as KOLs, micro-businesses, and content e-commerce. Taobao is about doing business between strangers, and there is only transaction, no social interaction. Therefore, it spawned a credit rating system, which solves the issues of trust and security that were originally addressed by brand power, through Taobao's evaluation mechanism. Both have spawned trillion-yuan businesses. But there is an interesting phenomenon: all one-on-one businesses, when done for a long time, turn customers into acquaintances. The B2B market is a business born from a relationship between strangers and acquaintances. It could be that transaction comes first, and after a long time, they become acquaintances, and social interaction emerges. Or it could be that social interaction comes first, and after becoming acquaintances, transactions occur. In short, the B2B market is a business that requires relationship building. 2 Currently, all B2B platforms in China are focused on the flow of goods, whether it's matchmaking or self-operated, they are all dealing with the commodity transaction level. What is a transaction? A transaction is the result of a game between two parties. Price is also a form of the game. It also includes multiple factors such as customer relations, relationships, links, services, and brands, but these are all dynamic and uncertain. The extensive work before the transaction is the core. From another perspective, the "extensive" work before the transaction is actually business socializing. But traditional business socializing and gaming are done through phones, emails, and face-to-face negotiations. Everyone has done the final step of the game: the transaction, but no one has built the connections beforehand. One reason is that technology and infrastructure are insufficient; another is that it indeed doesn't bring commercial value as quickly as scale effects. Currently, all B2B platforms are trying to gain bargaining power and competitive barriers through scale effects. As a result, the big players in this field will only be JD.com and Alibaba. But can JD.com and Alibaba really each capture 1 million stores? How many years will it take to eliminate the 5.6 million small stores? If they cannot be eliminated, how should those small stores that are not acquired undergo digital upgrading? Most B2B platforms that focus on scale are building a closed-loop transaction, not a business ecosystem. From the perspective of market saturation and competition, scale does have value, but under intense market competition, without doing stores, without services, and without the ability to deliver low-value, heavy goods regionally, scale cannot bring much stickiness or economic benefit. Moreover, they lack the self-regulating ability of an ecosystem. Therefore, I think we should think critically: Who are the real players in this round of B2B? Is it the centralized B2B that focuses on scale and closed loops? Or the decentralized B2B that focuses on social relationships? 3 Recently, WeChat Work (Enterprise WeChat) released an important update: mini-programs can also be linked to WeChat Work. This is a blockbuster news, but most people haven't noticed it. WeChat has finally opened up the commercial connection capability between mini-programs and WeChat Work. WeChat is doing the underlying connection, but it's only at the information level, without transactions, and without cross-enterprise ERP. This can all be achieved through mini-programs. Especially cross-enterprise ERP, which in the past was done by internal enterprise software, not online, especially for large-scale small-value transactions. Last time I chatted with a friend from Tencent, who said that Tencent has been waiting for someone to package the various capabilities in the WeChat ecosystem into a systematic application. I was shocked to hear that because it's a unicorn-level business. The key is to see who has the foresight to act quickly. If large brand companies are smart, they should quickly bet their existing business on mini-programs, rather than JD.com and Alibaba. Official accounts and Guangdiantong (Tencent's advertising platform) for communication, mini-programs for mall and transactions, and the integrated WeChat Work for expense verification and CRM management, such as the placement, verification, and redemption of various marketing expenses, and finally, ground personnel to handle terminal execution. This means that the entire transaction, from the initial marketing communication, to sales, to the placement, redemption, and verification of marketing expenses, can all be realized within the WeChat ecosystem. Transparent, visible, data-driven, and customers don't need any migration costs. In this way, large enterprises can directly communicate and transact with high-granularity small customers on a one-to-one basis, in real-time online. And they don't need to pay tolls to large platforms. Imagine the scenario: At this time, brand employees can freely communicate with customers through WeChat, one-to-one (friends), one-to-many (groups), and even one-to-N (customer service), all can be achieved, and customers use ordinary WeChat, with no migration costs. When there are enough users, the network effect will become prominent. The characteristic of the network effect is that it's not about whether you want to come on board, but that the relationships are all here. And when this relationship has changed from the past offline intermittent to continuous online, how can it not be valuable? 4 In the past, the reason why the factory-to-end was called a supply chain is that the information flow in this chain was one-way and closed, like a chain. The empowerment that the internet brings to the supply chain should be a network, not just improving the efficiency of a single chain. Connecting all supply chains from individual chains will form a super supply network. Any member in this network can freely interact through this network, which requires a super router in this network. △ Tencent WE+ Three Major Capabilities Various capabilities of the WeChat ecosystem are gradually being built. I think you can imagine the WeChat ecosystem (WeChat + Mini Programs + WeChat Work + various capabilities) as a super router, which can both connect infinitely and integrate infinitely. This router can connect all supply chain members. Once this network is built, it will form an ecosystem. In the past, Tencent only networked the relationships between people. If WeChat Work can truly and thoroughly connect with WeChat, then the relationships between enterprises, businesses, and people will be connected online at once, completely breaking down the barriers between them. This is the real reconstruction of the business ecosystem. Don't understand? Simply put, Tencent will open up all connections between WeChat Work and ordinary WeChat. Mini-programs are currently just one way or capability. In the future, WeChat will build various new capabilities around business social scenarios, which will directly connect all small B customers to the internal ERP of large B enterprises without any migration costs. If this super router is built, it will truly have boundless power. Of course, this depends on Zhang Xiaolong's will. 5 WeChat Work has been lukewarm for three years since its launch. The core reason is that it still only provides internal efficiency tools, without connecting the upstream and downstream of the supply chain, and without connecting with C-end and WeChat. Imagine, what other industry has 5.6 million small B customers? How many industries have a market size of nearly 10 trillion yuan? In such a market, unless Tencent hasn't figured out how to apply it, once it does, how could it not reach in? So you don't need to doubt whether Tencent will come in, but when and in what way. 6 What is the core that brand companies should grasp in this round of digital upgrading? The essence of B2B is connection, service, and the reconstruction of infrastructure. Is the need of brand companies to directly connect with small stores? What are brand companies afraid of? Is it centralized traffic? Besides cheap goods, what do small store owners hope digital service providers can bring them? These are all issues that every member in the supply chain needs to deeply consider, to find the first principles. -END-