BC integration has become a hot topic in the industry since the pandemic began last year. In summary, it is a distribution model that leverages the LBS advantages of mom-and-pop retail stores and digital tools to solve B-end store marketing and digital management while also connecting and marketing to C-end consumers in the store's surrounding community. It uses digital tools and methods to solve distribution and sell-through issues. The tools used in BC integration can be roughly divided into three categories:

  • SFA: Managing business and terminals
  • Mini-programs: Online transactions and consumer marketing via cloud store malls
  • One-code-per-item: Product and consumer marketing

The BC integration model includes at least two layers of business:

  • B2B and terminal management
  • B2C and consumer marketing

B2B and Terminal Management

This solves several problems of traditional offline distribution models:

1. SFA: Business applications are already widely used, but the backend needs to be integrated with mini-program data.

Benefits: Route management, visual management, quantifiable, and evaluable. It maximizes the ability of sales personnel to manage terminals.

2. Terminal Transactions: Mini-program mall online orders convert traditional offline transactions and SFA orders into real-time online transactions.

Benefits: Real-time, online, who, when, where, what was ordered, whether it's more or less, product structure issues, 24-hour ordering, and anytime transactions.

3. Terminal Promotions: Targeted and selective placement of fees and promotional coupons in mini-programs for different stores based on their actual sales.

Benefits: Precise fee placement, controllable and transparent fee placement, reduced fee placement loss. Promotional information is delivered quickly and accurately, and it solves the complexity of C-end consumer promotion verification.

4. Terminal Management: Using task packages to let store owners assist with shelf stocking.

Benefits: Significantly improves personnel efficiency (to be evaluated). Let's do a calculation: a salesperson in peak season costs about 7,000 yuan in salary, plus social insurance, housing fund subsidies, and commissions, totaling around 10,000 yuan. Visiting 30 stores a day, the maintenance cost per store is about 13 yuan, which is still an ideal figure. For a store, with a normal salesperson visiting four times a month and placing two orders, if we halve the visits to two times a month, during the interval between visits, we can send a task package to the owner via our mini-program, asking them to help arrange the shelves, stock the shelves, and take photos to upload. If the backend AI detects that the shelf placement and fullness match our salesperson's standards, we give the owner a 5-yuan red packet or coupon.

Some owners are willing to do this, which allows our salespeople to have more energy to visit and maintain more stores. The number of stores visited by our salespeople can double, the corresponding staff can be halved, and the number of orders will also double compared to before.

B2C and Consumer Marketing

This solves the problems of consumer disconnection and large-scale consumer promotions.

1. Consumer Transactions: Group buying, O2O, B2C.

Benefits: Direct transactions with consumers bypassing platforms, obtaining consumer transaction data.

2. Consumer Promotions: Mini-program mall + store owner community + live streaming, one-code-per-item, points-based redemption.

Benefits: Customer acquisition, repurchase, new product promotion, and personalized marketing.

3. Member Management: User relationship management.

Benefits: Retention, conversion, and activation.

4. Community Management: Salesperson community + Moments + mall + live streaming.

Benefits: Consumer relationship maintenance.

In fact, we have seen that a large number of companies have already done extensive practice and application in this area, and New Distribution has also reported many cases in the past few months.

However, we must recognize that although the BC integration model is a tool that allows companies to directly connect with B-end and C-end on a large scale, it is only the connection; the underlying business model and operations are the core. Over the past 20 years, the deep distribution model has successfully allowed many consumer goods brands to take root and grow locally. But in today's market environment, labor costs are rising, personnel efficiency is declining, and digital technology is continuously improving.

When companies have the ability to directly connect with consumers on a large scale, BC integration can be said to be the general trend and the best means for all FMCG companies to evolve and upgrade their offline business distribution models.

From March 18 to 20, 2022, the 7th China FMCG Channel Conference will open. At this conference, New Distribution will specially hold a "BC Integration Forum," inviting well-known brand owners in the field to share actual successful cases and teach successful experiences. Friends from all walks of life are welcome to register and participate.

| Founder of New Distribution, expert in FMCG industry channels, with over 400,000 words of original research articles on the FMCG industry. For communication, you can add WeChat by long-pressing. When adding, please indicate your company, position, and name.

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