The FDIC 2018 China FMCG Digital Innovation Conference, hosted by New Distribution and co-organized by the FMCG Branch of China Electronic Commerce Association, was grandly held from August 22 to 24 at the Shanghai Baohua Marriott Hotel Conference Center. The event attracted thousands of industry professionals including distributors, manufacturers, and internet companies from across the country, with a full house and unprecedented scale. At 9:00 AM on August 24, the second day's main forum officially began. Zheng Hongyan, Vice President of JD Group and President of JD New Channel Business Unit, delivered a keynote speech titled "Mining Data Productivity," sharing his latest thoughts on the development of the FMCG B2B industry. Below are selected viewpoints. At the conference, Zheng Hongyan stated that in the upgrade of traditional retail formats, digitalization is the process and necessary condition for datafication. Mining the big data accumulated during digitalization and building the ability to turn data into productivity can bring sustained development momentum to the entire industry. ▲Zheng Hongyan, Vice President of JD Group and President of JD New Channel Business Unit From Digitalization to Datafication: A Sharp Tool for Industry Productivity Over the past two years, JD New Channel has deployed a series of digital systems serving brand owners and retail terminals, including the Huiyan Big Data System, Xingzhe Sales Promotion Platform, Field Management System, Store Labeling System, Smart Store Management System, and JD Convenience GO Mini Program. As a leading B2B platform in the industry, JD New Channel uses a series of digital systems and tools to accumulate data from the entire chain, including upstream brand owners, intermediate channel distributors, retail terminals, and even C-end consumers. At the same time, it continues to work on data architecture, data sources, algorithm models, application scenarios, and the integration of application scenarios, fully preparing for the transition from digitalization to datafication, thereby making data a sharp tool for industry productivity. "Data productivity does not come from the accumulation of numbers. Many people talk about big data but still don't know how to use it or how to mine its productivity. When you are still talking about 'digitalization' today, you are still in the early stage of laying the foundation, not yet thinking about what value it can generate. Some players say they do things based on the data they have, but is that data sufficient? Or is that data what our brand manufacturers and the consumers served by small stores need? The thinking here lies in where productivity actually is and how to drive big data to generate productivity." Zheng Hongyan believes that the productivity of the FMCG B2B industry lies in connecting the half-hour "people, goods, and places." "People, Goods, and Places" Upgraded from Space to Time: Where Industry Productivity Lies Connecting people, goods, and places is a key action for retail development. Zheng Hongyan believes that the internet's empowerment of society and the industry has transformed the satisfaction of consumer demand from a spatial concept to a temporal concept. If consumers' demand for goods and services is met within half an hour, consumption occurs, transcending distance limitations. Therefore, time is the new definition of consumption scope. The productivity of the B2B industry lies in connecting the half-hour "people, goods, and places," and JD New Channel is committed to this. "In the early days, the small stores we operated could serve a 3-kilometer radius. Later, we gradually found it became 1 kilometer, 500 meters, 300 meters. The density of small stores is getting higher and higher, and now the number of small stores in China is relatively excessive. At this point, consumers' choices depend on the distance to the store. For example, sometimes I might cross the entire city to watch a movie, but if traffic is too heavy today, I will find a nearby cinema." Zheng Hongyan said that the concept of consumption has begun to shift from space to time, so JD New Channel strives to meet all consumers' product and service consumption needs within half an hour on the JD New Channel platform. New Channel Data Productivity Map: Setting an Industry Benchmark The "half-hour people-goods-place connection" places higher demands on New Channel's big data layout. JD has long applied big data technology in various links, possessing the most precise and longest value chain data in China's e-commerce industry, with extremely high quality and value. Zheng Hongyan introduced that JD New Channel not only has broad data sources under the JD ecosystem but also has unique advantages as a B2B platform: first, it has the ability to connect the data chain from brand owners to channel distributors at all levels to retailers and then to shoppers; second, as the offline entity of JD Group, New Channel also holds dual data resources from online and offline, going beyond simply adding online and offline sales of goods and beyond understanding through interviews why consumers buy online or offline. New Channel can restore the overall consumption behavior of the same consumer across online and offline, and restore the patterns of the same product being consumed in different online and offline scenarios. With a refined data source system, JD New Channel has upgraded the "people, goods, and places" profiles in an all-round three-dimensional manner, adding important attribute dimensions that contribute most to productivity improvement on top of their natural attributes: for "people," it adds consumption attributes, shopping attributes, and social attributes; for "goods," it adds profit attributes and strategic attributes; for "places," it adds surrounding attributes and geographical attributes. On the basis of completing the three-dimensional profiling of "people, goods, and places," JD New Channel will achieve cognitive upgrades and multi-dimensional transformations in application, creating a complete industry productivity map. JD New Channel will complete the connection of people, goods, and places from various angles, and based on the different needs of brand owners, channel distributors, retailers, and consumers, provide solutions from different demand sides through the free conversion of people, goods, and places. Building a Four-Dimensional Data Productivity System Empowering the Retail Ecosystem JD New Channel is building a data productivity system covering four dimensions: brand owners, channel distributors, retailers, and consumers, which will comprehensively empower the entire retail ecosystem. At the upstream of the retail ecosystem, New Channel's data productivity system will help brand owner partners achieve more efficient distribution and precise sales promotion, fully connect the B2B2C complete circulation chain, and achieve positive interaction and balance between online and offline products and resources. Channel distributors in the middle of the retail ecosystem will leverage the advanced data productivity system to achieve faster product circulation, expand business scale, realize intelligent management, and reduce operational losses. For downstream retailers, in addition to intelligent store management, precise data can help them select products accurately, attract traffic efficiently, save procurement costs, and even provide intelligent reference solutions for store location based on big data analysis. End consumers will also benefit from data productivity, breaking free from the "passive consumption" state previously dominated by brand owners and retailers. Demand-side data from consumers will be fed back to brand owners and retailers with maximum fidelity and refined insights, and the latter will customize products and services on demand, greatly enhancing consumer experience and reducing time and safety costs. Flexible production systems will promote the formation of a C2B feedback chain in retail, thereby guiding the healthy development of the retail ecosystem. "JD has always adhered to the philosophy of 'not fighting price wars, but must fight value wars.' New Channel must help brand manufacturers increase incremental volume and refine existing volume, without bringing them new pain points. We connect people, goods, and places. Goods are brand manufacturers, people are consumers, and places are retailers. We must make this link more friendly and harmonious to provide possibilities for future data productivity mining." Zheng Hongyan emphasized. Click Read Original to see more highlights of the 2018 FDIC China FMCG Digital Innovation Conference... -END-