Corporate Internet becomes a new opportunity for SMEs

In the past 20 years, rapid development of software technology has not significantly improved the penetration of SMEs in information technology. Some SMEs seem to always think that informationization seems to be the exclusive matter of big companies and has nothing to do with them. Ten years ago, with the gradual emergence of the Internet, the pace of information technology development of SMEs has been actively promoted by the Internet.

SMEs directly into the Internet era

However, compared with the rapidly flattening world, SMEs, which account for the majority of China's economic aggregates, have not seen a corresponding increase in the speed of their informationization. In the business environment surrounded by the Internet, SMEs with low levels of information development and Internet application capabilities are constantly weakened in terms of productivity, competitiveness, and agility. Therefore, for small and medium-sized enterprises, informationization is no longer an exclusive matter for big companies, but it may well be related to the survival of enterprises.

In fact, the Internet has been actually applied outside the enterprise, including corporate websites, network marketing, supply and demand information, customer services, and e-commerce platforms. However, the internal application of the enterprise is still at the level of a simple network tool. In particular, the internal and external integration of the corporate Internet environment has not yet been established, and does not really exert the enormous potential of the Internet. It can be foreseen that the future enterprises will become business organizations that operate on the Internet from the inside out. The author refers to this model of enterprise application of the Internet as the corporate Internet.

Enterprise Internet can enable the majority of SMEs to cross the gulf of the information-based software era and enter the Internet era directly; SMEs can also use the Internet to stand taller, run faster, and see further.

Corporate Internet is more suitable for SMEs

The development of the corporate Internet has different evolution paths from traditional enterprise software. Therefore, the characteristics of the corporate Internet determine that it can better adapt to SMEs. The author analyzes from the following aspects.

1. Solve usage problems with enterprise applications. Traditional enterprise software divides the granularity of function packages by functional modules, and the modules contain a full range of functions. Modules are closely linked or coupled and are used in a fixed or process-oriented manner.

Different from the concept of modules, the basic functional unit of the corporate Internet is an "application", which I will call "enterprise applications." Each application is independent of a business problem, and there is no direct connection between applications. All applications are deployed and run on the cloud platform. We can implement the workflow as an "approval" application that implements attendance as a "network attendance" application. Each application is both "light" and essentially complete. It is achieved by vertically splitting complex functions. Business users can use any application directly, without systematic consideration of call relationships and data preparation between applications.

The corporate Internet is very suitable for the characteristics of the use of SMEs. With a random and gradual approach, it can greatly reduce the difficulty of comprehensive promotion of informatization.

2. Solve the problem of fragmentation and aggregation. This independence of enterprise applications will result in a large number of isolated information sources on the cloud platform. That is to say, information and data will be fragmented. Of course, it will be difficult to reflect the complete business conditions. This is obviously not the result that enterprises expect to see. .

Therefore, the cloud platform must have the capability of information aggregation and unified presentation. The fragmented information is aggregated and presented according to the actual service status to restore the complete service. Fragmentation is an unavoidable phenomenon in Internet applications. How to make the corporate Internet “dispersive and divine”? An effective convergence tool is essential.

For example, the “main line” of today’s goal is such a tool. It not only can aggregate internal information of the company, but also can be aggregated across enterprises, thus realizing business collaboration among enterprises.

3. Professional software on the Internet. Although traditional enterprises do vertical splitting of services to make applications more lightweight, there are still some services that cannot be lightweight, such as financial systems, CRM, and other system-level software. Although some applications can be lightweight, they require professional development, such as professional engineering calculations.

Compared to the closed system of traditional enterprise software, the corporate Internet is open, that is, certain functional applications can be provided by service providers that meet standards, such as the above-mentioned "professional-level" application services.

The so-called compliance criteria means that in addition to meeting the platform's access standards, the generated business information and data can still be integrated and displayed on the platform. The goal of enterprise informatization pursuit is system integration. Compared with enterprise software integration, open platform is more simple, flexible, more flexible and more choice, and more suitable for the non-customized use of SMEs.

4. Use the Internet to establish a business circle for the company. If only the corporate Internet is used as an OA, it will not only be overkill, it will not be able to attract a large number of enterprises to participate in it, because OA is not just a business need. The essence of inter-enterprise interconnection is based on the linkage of common services, not simply the transmission of supply and demand information, nor is it a personal circle of friends among enterprises.

The corporate Internet has solved key issues of interoperability, records, trustworthiness, security, and business lines at the technical level, forming an operational business platform. Based on this, companies can engage in “faster” businesses that are more connected than before, and rely on this mode of interconnection between internal and external businesses to form a stable business circle among enterprises.

If the enterprise ecosystem is a good vision, then the business circle of the corporate Internet is a concept. The author gives an example: an advertiser can use this platform of business circle to complete the whole process from project to delivery together with sales, creativity, design, external production, delivery, and even customers. Advertisers and partners and customers may not be in the same area or even in the same country, but the business is more efficient in operation, and even changes the way they used to do business.

What the corporate Internet subverts

The emergence of the corporate Internet has completely overturned the enterprise's "informatization is to buy software" this certain formula, it is very possible that the application itself is completely free, and the value of the application may be charged, the so-called "wool out of the pig." This is not only a reflection of the nature of the Internet business, but also the only way for the rapid adoption of the Internet in the enterprise; allowing companies to pay more attention to the effectiveness of informatization rather than to tangling up with what software to buy. Therefore, the landing of corporate Internet will bring more positive impact to the company.

1. All companies are internet-based companies. In the past, the evaluation of a company's informatization level was measured by the number of software systems, and the corporate Internet was evaluated by the coverage rate, that is, no matter how many people or how many businesses were running on the Internet.

2. . The role of the IT department changes. As more companies use the cloud services of the corporate Internet, the role of the IT department will change dramatically. Their responsibility is no longer to select, install, and maintain the company's internal systems, but instead to manage the company's cloud platform service evaluation, ordering, accounts, data and security.

3. Mobile applications will become an empowering force. There are more and more industries and people that are characterized by mobile work. They can also use mobile terminal support and have the same ability to collaborate with fixed-site workers. However, in the short term, enterprise mobile applications will not break out like the consumption of the mobile Internet, but they will also be applied to specific groups and scenes.

4. Enterprise software vendors' Internet transformation. Due to the constraints of architecture, operating model, and revenue model, the transformation of traditional software vendors may be quite difficult. The advantages of traditional enterprise software are in-depth and comprehensive business processing capabilities. If you try to make a "reduced version" of a large module that is already complex, this strategy will not work.

However, if it is transformed into a third-party processing system that is invoked through the cloud platform, its value can be preserved, and only the operating mode is changed. In a certain period of time, the traditional enterprise software market will not completely collapse. It will only become a type of industry irrelevant to the corporate Internet. Therefore, in the long run, transformation is the way out for these manufacturers.

5. The socialization of enterprise software. With the deepening of the Internet, corporate social networking has become a habit for people to use, and it has become a new collaborative model for enterprises. Pure corporate social networking, where sharing and communication are the main applications, is still an application that belongs to the working communication level in the corporate Internet. There is still a long way to go from the business-driven or driven business. The corporate Internet has converged corporate social and business applications and extended the concept of socialization to cross-enterprise business collaboration.

The main users of the early days of the corporate Internet are small and medium-sized enterprises. Because they do not have the historical burden of informationization, it is easy to cross over the process of information-based enterprise construction through traditional software and enter the Internet era directly.

So, is the corporate Internet only suitable for SMEs? Through many years of research on the practical experience of the corporate Internet, the author believes that this new work style of the corporate Internet is also applicable to working people in large enterprises. At present, informationization of large companies has been busy fighting with information islands, unifying data, and solving integration problems. The corporate Internet may help large companies achieve the same results.

Therefore, the author believes that the operation of the corporate Internet is driven by business events rather than data. Although it cannot solve the integration problem directly, using “business events” as the connection can more flexibly coordinate and drive business organization at the business level. , providing all workers with a unified internet-based working platform.