---
title: "“Marketing Digitalization 10 Lectures” No. 7: The Heart of Digitalization—Data Middle Platform"
description: "Marketing digitalization requires a three-dimensional connection, BC integration, and dual-line deep distribution. The front office completes the three-dimensional connection and offline deep distribution; the middle platform completes online deep distribution, online operations, and digital support; the combination of front and middle platforms achieves BC integration. The middle platform is the heart of digitalization, and for FMCG brand owners, it must support both online and offline operations, not just e-commerce logic."
author: "刘春雄"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2020-11-18"
language: "en"
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# “Marketing Digitalization 10 Lectures” No. 7: The Heart of Digitalization—Data Middle Platform

> Marketing digitalization requires a three-dimensional connection, BC integration, and dual-line deep distribution. The front office completes the three-dimensional connection and offline deep distribution; the middle platform completes online deep distribution, online operations, and digital support; the combination of front and middle platforms achieves BC integration. The middle platform is the heart of digitalization, and for FMCG brand owners, it must support both online and offline operations, not just e-commerce logic.

****Click "Read Original" for details****
**-01-**
Marketing digitalization must be a three-dimensional connection, BC integration, and dual-line deep distribution. Then, **the front office completes the three-dimensional connection and offline deep distribution; the middle platform completes online deep distribution, online operations, and digital support; the combination of front and middle platforms achieves BC integration.**
**-02-**
In digitalization, the middle platform, like user profiles, is an unavoidable topic.
**User profiles are the soul of digitalization, while the middle platform is the heart of digitalization.**
Your position determines your perspective. When someone mentions the middle platform, we need to understand their standpoint. Because there are three different systems of middle platforms that must not be confused.
**First, the middle platform of platform systems, such as Alibaba's and Pinduoduo's.**
**Second, the middle platform for e-commerce merchants, such as Three Squirrels', which directly serves 2C.**
**Third, the middle platform for brand owners, such as Uni-President's and Jiangxiaobai's, which is a BC-integrated middle platform.**
The middle platform for FMCG marketing digitalization refers to the third type.
**-03-**
From the brand owner's perspective, how to view the front, back, and middle platforms?
**First, traditional marketing has front (frontline) and back (rear) offices, but no middle platform.**
The front office consists of frontline salespeople, called the sales department; the back office consists of research, communication, and management departments, called R&D and marketing departments. In current internet language, the front office is 2B, and the back office is 2C.
Note that in traditional marketing, front and back refer to geographical front and rear. Only offline has front and rear.
**Second, from a traditional marketing perspective, platforms and e-commerce have no front, only back.**
Except for early ground promotion, all platform and e-commerce personnel are in back offices, not on the frontline, geographically speaking; they are all white-collar workers.
**Third, from an e-commerce perspective, the front office touches the C-end, the middle platform supports 2C, and the back office handles aftermath.**
For example, customer service in traditional enterprises is in the back office, but in e-commerce departments, it is front office because it directly interacts with the C-end.
Thus, traditional enterprises divide front and back by geographical location, while the internet divides front, middle, and back by process flow.
These are two completely different perspectives and standards: one is geographical front and back, the other is virtual process front and back.
**-04-**
For example, here is an e-commerce company's division of front, middle, and back.
The front office is the traffic entrance, providing transactions and services; the middle platform undertakes front-office business; the back office provides business support and management.
From a traditional enterprise perspective, all of the above are in the back, with no frontline.
**The middle platform for marketing digitalization is definitely not the e-commerce front-middle-back logic. E-commerce has no offline business, and traditional marketing has no online business.**
**Marketing digitalization has both online and offline, with three-dimensional connection, dual-line deep distribution, and inseparable online and offline.**
The middle platform for marketing digitalization must support dual-line deep distribution and provide digital operations. Therefore, it cannot use platform or e-commerce logic.
**-05-**
**In the context of marketing digitalization, the standpoint is not platform, e-commerce, or retailer, but traditional brand owners extending offline to the C-end and the digitalization resulting from online business. This is the major premise of the discussion.**
Marketing digitalization has both offline and online business. Should we divide front and back by traditional geographical location or by e-commerce process?
The division of front, middle, and back in marketing digitalization cannot copy traditional offline or online business; a new set of rules is needed. I attempt to propose a standard that integrates online and offline business.
**First, the front office. The front office must be based on geographical location. Those on the frontline must be front office; there is no choice. The transformed sales department must be front office.**
In the past, the front office's function was deep distribution; now, besides offline deep distribution, there is BC integration. BC integration is the result of three-dimensional connection, i.e., connecting terminals, communities, and networks (cloud stores).
The front office completes F2B2C. Only by completing 2C can the C-end be online. If the headquarters directly does 2C, it is similar to e-commerce and unrelated to offline, which is outside the scope of this article.
After digitalization, the front office's 2C business deepens, and 2B business evolves.
**Second, the middle platform. The middle platform is geographically in the back, but it contacts B-end and C-end users online and provides support to the front office.**
The middle platform for marketing digitalization should meet three criteria:
**1. Geographically in the back, not on the frontline;**
**2. Directly facing B-end and C-end online;**
**3. Promoting offline through online, i.e., closely integrating with the front office.**
The middle platform for marketing digitalization can be described as: although people are in the back, they fight alongside the front office with digital power online.
According to this division, the BC-integrated middle platform includes the e-commerce front and middle platforms.
**Third, the back office. The back offices of traditional enterprises, e-commerce enterprises, and some middle-platform functions of e-commerce enterprises become the back office in marketing digitalization.**
**-06-**
Some have said that FMCG enterprises do not need a middle platform. I believe the middle platform is a standard feature of digitalization.
Marketing digitalization is BC integration, connecting online and offline. Therefore, it imposes completely different requirements from traditional channel distribution.
**First, traditional deep distribution is a human chain, facing the B-end, and can respond with delay.** In fact, salespeople make periodic visits, communicate by phone for issues, and handle major problems on-site, which is inherently delayed response.
**Second, whether B-end or C-end, as long as they are online, they must respond in real-time, always online, and respond instantly.** The front office cannot solve instant response; the middle platform must.
**Third, although the middle platform is in the back, it must fight alongside the front office.** The front office is on the geographical frontline, while the middle platform is on the virtual frontline. One is offline frontline, the other is online frontline.
Some might say, can we combine the middle and back into just back? Only front and back, no middle. I believe that online operations are mainly handled by the middle platform, and BC integration requires close cooperation between front and middle, even integration; otherwise, BC integration is empty talk.
**Fourth, the front office's behavior is guided by the middle platform through digital optimization.** For example, precision marketing's "point demolition," including daily itinerary optimization.
**Fifth, the most important data in marketing digitalization is BC-related data, which can only be implemented with the combination of front and middle.**
From the above, the front office is on the geographical frontline, and the middle platform is on the virtual frontline. Because online and offline are connected, both are indispensable.
Without the front office, the B-end cannot extend to the C-end, and the middle platform is water without a source. Without the middle platform's real-time online presence, the value of the C-end being online is not fully realized.
**-07-**
In traditional enterprises, the marketing department and sales department are logically related, but in operations, apart from sales policies, they are not closely connected. So, with the middle platform, will it become two separate skins with the front office? How should the middle platform be positioned? What are its functions?
**In marketing digitalization, the sales department (front office) expands from B-end to BC integration, which is functional expansion.** At the same time, due to digital management and C-end pressure, B-end work will simplify. Originally, one offline salesperson served 150-200 terminals; in the future, efficiency will be higher, and they will handle more terminals. Of course, originally salespeople operated alone offline; in the future, they will combine with the middle platform for online and offline dual-line deep distribution.
Teacher Fang Gang said that after digitalization, machines will think like humans, and humans will act like machines. This phenomenon will occur to varying degrees.
Machines' data-based thinking may be more accurate and timely than humans, but machines will not replace humans because of the characteristics of Chinese business, where the value of relationships still exists. The C-end in BC integration is not the e-commerce C-end, but the C-end based on "relationship transfer" from the B-end.
In an exchange with a traditional enterprise operating a middle platform (internally called a platform), with the middle platform, the front office's decision-making power and freedom will greatly decrease.
For example, the middle platform will use data calculations to tell salespeople where problems are and how to optimize tomorrow's itinerary. Although the middle platform only makes suggestions, when passed down by decision-makers, they become work orders. In this process, the middle platform acts like the front office's staff headquarters.
**-08-**
What are the functions of the middle platform? This involves how to set up positions and how to operate.
**How the middle platform operates depends on how the front and middle are positioned after marketing digitalization.**
Marketing digitalization completely changes the traditional separation of cognition (communication) and transaction (channel), truly achieving the trinity of cognition, transaction, and relationship.
Given that the front office only completes 2B relationship building and BC integration connection functions, the 2C cognition and transaction are almost all handed to the middle platform. The front office's data analysis is also handed to the middle platform. Therefore, the middle platform is no longer just a support and transactional department, but the neural center of the entire digitalization. Thus, the middle platform for marketing digitalization has the following functions:
**1. Online operation of 2B and 2C, similar to online customer service.**
**2. User profiling for 2B and 2C.**
**3. Instant response to 2C users. Based on user profiles and user policy modeling, respond instantly online and distribute automatically.**
**4. Data analysis for 2B, identifying 2B issues, and providing behavioral guidance for front-office personnel.**
**5. Based on marketing strategies and sales policies, jointly with front-office personnel**
**6. Operation of content platforms.**


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