Six questions left to enterprise managers by the COVID-19!
The COVID-19, which lasted for more than two months, was like a thrilling tsunami. In the first three weeks of a month, most people were still unaware, but the epidemic had quietly and rapidly spread, spreading to various parts of the country along with millions of people returning home for the Spring Festival; After the lockdown of Wuhan, the public was extremely panicked, and the epidemic began to surge. It raged wildly in Wuhan, Hubei, and across the country; Through the nationwide assistance to Hubei, we have continuously expanded designated hospitals, built shelter hospitals, and organized effective isolation. After paying a painful price, China has finally found the right response, and the prevention and control work has worked. The tsunami of the COVID-19 has gradually receded in China's vast land.
Buffett said that he only found out who was swimming naked after the tide receded. As an unprecedented public health emergency in China, the COVID-19 will leave many problems for every enterprise manager to reflect on.
1、 Business model: Several happy and several sad
The first direct impact of the COVID-19 is on the business, catering, film, tourism and other life service industries. Originally, the Spring Festival was the season for these industries to sell well, but as a result, they closed their doors, resulting in almost no harvest for these industries. The common characteristic of these industries is that they require consumers to experience on-site. Most manufacturing companies suffer heavy losses due to delayed resumption of work and production, shortages of personnel, materials, and orders. Due to the spread of the epidemic, it has also had a significant impact on enterprises engaged in exhibition, offline training, international exchanges, and other businesses, including e-works.
On the other hand, during this epidemic, industries such as e-commerce platforms for lifestyle services and online games have experienced explosive growth. Enterprises engaged in the production of various protective equipment and drugs urgently needed to fight against the epidemic have won huge business opportunities. For example, China's mask production capacity has increased from 20 million per day to over 100 million in just over a month. Manufacturing enterprises with keen foresight on the COVID-19 epidemic, such as Robust Medical, have won a critical opportunity in the COVID-19 epidemic.
Therefore, the sudden outbreak of this epidemic will prompt every business manager to rethink and adjust their business model. For example, in the field of intelligent manufacturing with e-works services, professional manufacturers of intelligent manufacturing, related media, and industry associations have all organized online training courses. This itself indicates that everyone is exploring new business models, marketing models, and service models. This epidemic has also prompted e-works to accelerate the establishment of an intelligent manufacturing training academy that focuses on online training and provides personalized knowledge services for manufacturing enterprises.
2、 Enterprise organizational form: decentralized
A few days ago, I had a conversation with a junior brother who is the CEO of a listed company on the ChiNext board headquartered in Wuhan, and his career is thriving. However, due to the fact that the production bases of the enterprises are all in Wuhan and the equipment cannot be transported to their branches in other places, Wuhan has been unable to resume work for a long time, which has a great impact on the enterprises. Therefore, I am thinking that after the COVID-19, enterprise managers need to re-establish the organizational form and geographical distribution of enterprises, adjust the layout of R&D, production, marketing and service bases, instead of putting all eggs in one basket, they should achieve decentralization.
Currently, e-works has four subsidiaries in Nanjing, Wenzhou, Guangzhou, and Nanning. Except for the Wenzhou company, which is about to resume work, the other three subsidiaries have already started working normally, and some headquarters employees who are out of town have been temporarily arranged to resume work at the subsidiaries. At the same time, in combination with the business characteristics of e-works, other employees work from home, maintain the normal update of e-works digital enterprise network, series of WeChat official account and today's headlines, and conduct online collaboration through online meetings, to some extent, make up for the lack of returning to work. In the future, e-works will also accelerate its deployment nationwide and internationally.
3、 Risk Management: Normalization
I often see people discussing "black swan" events in their social circles and WeChat groups, as if they are all discussing Middle Eastern wars, international finance, trade disputes, stock market fluctuations, and so on. It feels quite distant from us. But unexpectedly, the largest public health "black swan" event since the 21st century, the eye of the storm, was in Wuhan. The flapping of a bat's wings has already caused a huge wave around the world in just two months, even more powerful than the 'butterfly effect'.
From this perspective, any enterprise needs to strengthen its risk management. It cannot only consider making business plans based on the company's annual steam days in a favorable environment, but also first consider how to survive in various adversity situations! During this epidemic, the well-known Fangzheng Group announced bankruptcy, leaving behind huge debts; HNA Group had to choose to be entrusted by the government after a massive global merger and acquisition in recent years, rapidly expanding into a Fortune 500 company. These giant enterprises all face such huge risks, let alone numerous small and medium-sized enterprises?
In the current situation where companies cannot operate, employees still have to pay their salaries, and many expenses still have to be paid, I believe more business managers will understand the true meaning of "Cash is King". When the economy is on the rise, if enterprises are good at borrowing to operate, especially obtaining financing at low cost, it can certainly help them grow faster; In times of economic downturn, companies still need to pay more attention to actual profits and payments, and carefully evaluate their debt paying ability.
Many enterprises in our country attach great importance to expanding their business, and their managers focus more on revenue rather than profit margins; In fact, in the current dynamic and ever-changing economic environment, enterprises should pay more attention to strengthening themselves, enhancing their innovation and profitability capabilities, establishing differentiated competitive advantages, and striving to become hidden champion enterprises in various segmented fields. Only in this way can one become a brave "Haiyan" when a storm comes and quickly recover after the storm has passed.
4、 Digitization and cloudification: There is no turning back arrow when opening a bow
In recent years, the government has vigorously advocated for enterprises to go cloud computing, but many companies seem to be less proactive and a bit "shaving their heads to pick a pick". After this epidemic, many business managers will realize the value of going to the cloud. The catastrophic flood in Wuhan during the 2016 rainy season caused urban waterlogging, and the office building of e-works was not spared. Due to the flooding of the switch, it was unable to access the internet for many days after the flood, and the internal network of the enterprise was also affected. Later, e-works moved most of its application services to the cloud, including websites, internal information systems, and enterprise email. The cloud transformation a few years ago enabled e-works to maintain a basically normal operation in this COVID-19 epidemic.
Cloud migration for enterprises is one of the measures taken by enterprises towards digital transformation. In the past, many managers of enterprises were hesitant about whether to go to the cloud? On what cloud? After this major epidemic, more business managers will think about how to go to the cloud? Is it device to cloud or business to cloud? Actually, both of these are necessary for going to the cloud.
There is a simple and clear indicator of whether digital transformation has achieved practical results, which is whether managers at all levels of the enterprise can not go to the enterprise site to "immerse themselves", but can timely obtain the information they care about, gain insight into the operation status of various aspects of the enterprise, and support effective decision-making of managers. For a manufacturing enterprise, after the epidemic, it should vigorously promote equipment data collection, workshop networking, and enterprise business system information integration, connect IT/OT, promote mobile applications, and achieve data-driven decision-making. These tasks are very urgent.
The digital transformation of enterprises is a long journey, but this journey only has a one-way ticket. For enterprise managers, comprehensively and deeply promoting digital transformation is not only a necessary option for enterprises to win the future, but also a key factor determining the survival of the enterprise.
五、供应链：如何经得起考验？
某知名的汽车整车厂的一款热卖车型有12个关键零件的供应商在湖北，其中3个关键零部件由武汉供应商生产。由于这些汽车零部件企业不能及时复工，直接导致这款车型停产。如果换成进口件，一个月直接增加成本3500万元至5000万元。由于当今制造企业普遍转向横向一体化，广泛进行供应链协作，这种由于供应链出问题造成损失的案例不胜枚举。因此，此疫之后企业管理者需要重新考虑自己的供应链管理策略和采购策略。
事实上，制造企业面临着市场环境的不确定性、客户需求的不确定性和全球经济环境的不确定性，供应链风险不仅在于类似新冠肺炎这样的公共卫生疫情，地震、火灾，以及供应商出现质量问题，都可能导致企业出现零部件的供应问题，甚至造成更严重的召回事件。
尤其对于汽车行业和高科技电子等离散制造行业，更需要审慎地重新思考自身的供应链管理策略，加强供应商关系管理，对于关键零部件，选择更多可选供应商；强化供应链质量管理，确保把供应链的质量问题解决在早期阶段。
六、社会责任：重新思考做企业的目的
此次新冠疫情发生之后，许多知名企业不仅款款捐物，而且积极投身到武汉抗击疫情的战斗之中，例如在火神山、雷神山医院的建设过程中，可以见到联想、菲尼克斯电气、华为、施耐德电气、徐工、三一、徐工、新华三、西门子、美的、海尔、TCL和GE等众多优秀企业的鼎力支持。
李培根院士近期多次强调，企业需要革新股东权益最大化的理念。正如李院士介绍，2019年8月19日，美国企业组织“商业圆桌会议(Business Roundtable)”在华盛顿发表了一份由181个美国顶级公司CEO共同签署的《公司宗旨宣言书》，指出“股东利益不再是一个公司最重要的目标，公司的首要任务是创造一个更美好的社会”。
我相信，此次大疫之后，会有更多中国企业的管理者重新反思做企业的目的究竟是什么？企业是否需要建立一个更远大的愿景，而不仅仅是考虑短期的盈利，以及实现自身的财务自由？企业是否需要更多地关注员工的安全与健康，真正帮助员工与企业共同成长？企业是否应当更多地尽应尽的社会责任，服务好企业所在的社区、城市和行业？
从2014年4月起，在近六年时间里，e-works已经先后组织了31届国际智能制造考察，带领400多名中国企业高管走出去，访问了十多个发达国家150多家知名企业。每一次我都亲自前往，每次也收获良多。我感到，我们每次学习到的不仅是推进智能制造的“术”，这些企业的发展之“道”，还有这些企业多年来沉淀下来的企业文化，以及能够长期专注，并致力于创建一个更美好社会的“德”。正如我们在研究德国为什么会有如此多的隐形冠军时，得出的结论包括德国社会在评价一个人、一个企业是否成功时，很少用财富来作为衡量指标。
因此，我也希望我国更多的企业在不断致力于做一家技术领先、快速成长的企业同时，应当致力于做一个有良知的企业，有爱心的企业，有社会责任的企业。这样的企业，才可能有机会真正实现基业长青！
此次新冠疫情在我国已经得到了全面控制，湖北和武汉也即将结束“封城岁月”。但此次新冠疫情留给我们值得反思的东西还有很多很多，衷心期待这次疫情能够成为我国企业和社会发展进化的一个分水岭。我一直记得一位西方企业家说过的话：“天最黑的时候，才能看见最亮的星星”。虽然在此次新冠疫情当中湖北省，尤其是武汉市损失惨重，但我相信，通过此次疫情，不仅让武汉市成为一座悲壮的英雄城市，也会在不远的将来，促使武汉成长为一个世界级的伟大都市。
作者：黄培博士
Editor He Yang of this website/Organizing
