Gobi Tech Open Day Highlight — Part 4, Further Opportunities in Enterprise Solutions
As discussed in previous posts, in the face of the B2C market slowing down, both entrepreneurs and investors have redirected their attention to the B2B / enterprise solutions sector which is now primed for exponential growth. Gobi’s long-term vision and investment strategy have given us the foresight to start investing in the enterprise domain close to a decade ago and we have already seen successful exits for portfolio companies such as Dianwoda and Teambition.
Michael Zhu, Managing Partner at Gobi Partners China spoke with Junyuan Qi — CEO of Teambition, Andy Yin — CEO of CloudWise, and Baochen Wang — CEO of Chuangkit on a panel at the Gobi Tech Open Day about where the enterprise solutions market is headed and where the opportunities lie.
Qi suggests that SaaS (software as a service) is a catalyst that enables enterprises to undergo digital transformation. Having said that, while 80% of enterprises around the globe are undergoing digital transformation projects, only 10% consider themselves successful in doing so. With this in mind, Qi shares that for organizations to truly digitize, it is crucial to ensure that the data gathered is relevant to the business, the digital solutions to be practical and impactful, and even more importantly, that employees are motivated to adopt the digitized practices.
Yin adds that developers need to strategically consider the specific but varied needs of end users within an organization and their respective customers. A platform can only scale successfully as a business if true value is provided. If processes are digitized within an organization without being able to also increase value for their customers, the end result is merely an expensive bill the enterprise needs to foot for. As China’s first business operations and maintenance platform, Cloudwise has been able to significantly increase clients’ revenues by helping them successfully implement an internal platform that gives them wider control across their business processes and subsequently increase the value-add for their clients.
Wang on the other hand shared his observation that the SaaS sector is in vastly different stages in the international and domestic markets, pointing to very different growth trajectories. In the international market, SaaS platforms are more mature and larger players dominate the field, hence the sector’s growth is slower and more gradual. However, in China, SaaS platforms are expected to grow at a much higher speed and even cross the B2B / B2C barrier to serve different end users due to the market’s infancy stage. Chuangkit is an excellent example of this, where the platform has been fueled to grow exponentially as the design service provided can be utilized by users in various business functions across industries.
Though China’s enterprise solutions sector has already reached a high velocity in growth, Qi predicts yet another accelerated boom as the market is ripe for further digital transformation, met by a readily available talent pool. In agreement, Yin adds that great opportunities lie ahead considering even organizations in relatively traditional industries such as real estate, logistics, and infrastructure will be looking into digital transformation too. Looking further into the horizon, Wang shares that one day, much like the B2C market, the enterprise market will also mature, hence it is crucial for businesses to be offering catered solutions to diverse user groups to remain competitive.
Read previous Gobi Tech Open Day highlights:
- Part 1 — Introduction
- Part 2 — AI and Sector Applications
- Part 3 — Industry 4.0
Read the original article in Chinese
