IT Manager world: followers 800 guests

As a copycat of the American Salesforce model, how do 800 Chinese companies embark on their own path?　　Author: Zhong 2004 business, 2010 company sales of tens of millions of yuan; customers from small companies to achieve the Chinese elite, Suntech institutions, port development and other medium-sized companies, moved more than 3 times home, is now an establishment of Beijing Zhongguancun hinterland in the days of the building of science and technology. This is a few sensitive facts of Li since starting a business. Li is the founder and general manager of 800 Guest (Beijing) Software Technology Development Co., Ltd., as the largest online CRM vendor in the country, in the last two years, 800 customers have gradually survived the most difficult survival period, the business began to be recognized by users.　　The growing popularity of cloud computing, which is gradually being recognized and accepted by enterprise IT managers, is the main reason for this change.　　However, Li that the market is far from the best. It took him a while to imitate the entrepreneurial thinking that Li in 2004. In the year, the industry-recognized "Big Brother" was founded in 1999 by the American company Salesforce, the provision of online CRM services, in North America and Europe to do a good job, its 2004-year income has reached 175 million U.S. dollars. But online CRM is a bit unpopular for Chinese companies in 2004 years, and more companies are investing money in financial software or ERP. There are several companies selling packaged CRM software in the market, but they are expensive, complex, and focused on large companies.　　For most of China's small and medium-sized enterprises, which are under extensive management and barbaric growth, investment in sales management is not enough to arouse their interest. However, seeing the SaaS model in the United States day by day, Li in the United States decided to return to business.　　800 customer's profit model is also very simple: once to millions of yuan package software, by 800 customers in a way of service decomposition, as long as each person 60 yuan per day, the company's source of income mainly rely on this type of monthly rental service fees and in the online system to collect the implementation fee. After the company was founded, it took 5 months and 800 guests to talk about the first customer. The start of the difficult period has lasted 3 years, 800 of customers have been struggling. Until 2007, as the concept of SaaS was gradually accepted by the domestic CIO, the market situation was slowly being opened. 2008, the business volume of 800 customers began to tens, from the survival of many troubled.　　Since then, the online CRM business attracted China Telecom, Ali Software, Kingdee, Ufida and other domestic software giants have entered this field, but for various reasons and quietly evacuated. 800 of guests ' insistence is slowly being rewarded. Now, Li feel that the biggest harvest of 800 customers is to win the market opportunity, "to enter the market early, have enough time to continuously improve the product." Since at the outset, 800 of customers are taking the route of fully imitating the Salesforce model, not only the business model, but also the underlying technology, but "the core technology will lag for several months." To make up for this, 800 of guests decided to set up a relevant technology in the United StatesThe laboratory, do some technical research and capture the latest technical framework dynamic information. Salesforce had already noticed the copycat who had been following him. In late December 2010, Li accidentally received a letter from the Salesforce from the United States, intended to prevent 800 of guests from opening up the U.S. market. However, from the current situation, 800 of customers for a long time in the domestic market, the cultivation period for Salesforce, Li Laugh, after all, the Chinese market is still in the development stage, the United States market is far from taking into account.　　In the software industry, learning and imitation are essential, and most companies are doing it in imitation of a pioneer's product, and the boundaries of the law have always been blurred.　　In the domestic market, although Salesforce set up relevant institutions and sell their services, but the scale has been small, the reason, in addition to the product is difficult to localize the problem, another important reason is the price. After the toughest start-up, Li's SaaS path enlightened a US multinational's Chinese company's IT manager told reporters that although from the product level, Salesforce is clearly better than 800, but the high price still prompted them to choose the final 800 customer products. Compared with Salesforce, the price of 800 customers is only 1/10 of its similar products, there are more than 10 to dozens of yuan of various versions of the system.　　The financial crisis, which began in 2008, has made price factors particularly sensitive, and it is during this period that many Salesforce Chinese customers are turning to 800. Li said that in Salesforce no further big moves before the precious calm period, 800 guests will desperately improve their products, expand market influence. In the first few years of the 800 guests, 800 customers almost every 3 months will introduce a new product, later, due to the increase in technical capacity, the product cycle has been more and more long. Generally speaking, the preparation period is about one year, and development time takes six months. "Now, 800 customer products have been developed to the Nineth edition, with high product maturity, which mainly in two aspects:" One is the user experience, such as access faster; First, customization, CRM users need tailored user experience will be better.　　"For cloud computing service providers, these two are important indicators, Li and his development team need to continuously optimize the underlying architecture, at the same time need to quickly respond to the needs of different customers, the same industry to summarize the needs to achieve rapid response to customers, to carry out the relevant customized development.　　Obstacles but from the current business volume, 800 of customers encountered two difficult obstacles: in addition to the entire industry on the cloud computing model is still in the initial stage, the other is the domestic software industry survival environment problem. 6 years have passed, Chinese companies are maturing gradually. However, in the management of customer relationship, still show significant differences in the industry, the more market-oriented industryThe more you need CRM services. Now, 800 customers mainly from the software industry, culture and education industry and other industries. And by the size of the data, this model mainly carries the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises. For this part of the enterprise, the cloud computing is often the model is still in the cognitive stage.　　Many customers rely on Word-of-mouth spread their own to find the door. From the current point of view, 800 customers have passed the survival period, cash flow is good, but suffer from the market is still in the warm-up stage. In 2009, 800 guests financed $17 million trillion, but Li claimed that all the money was spent on the education market, and he expected "more competitors at the market level".　　Working abroad told him that in the software market, the online CRM market was first fired by the IT giants such as IBM and Microsoft, and then by a small company like Salesforce, which is the perfect way. But the situation at home is completely different. Large companies generally do not do CRM, the core business of domestic large software companies is still to sell ERP and other packaged software products, if the introduction of cloud computing services, the original service model will face revolutionary subversion, this is the domestic cloud computing market is mostly foreign companies in the flag, the domestic IT company group silent reasons.　　Ufida, Kingdee Although push over this market, but its actual strength is not big. "Big companies don't push, our strength is limited."　　Li said he would occasionally even feel like a lone loser. On the future of 800 guests, Li said that several of their top executives had discussed the issue at the board of Directors, and that they would focus on providing better service to their customers when the market did not show up for strong competitors. "It's a process that, when everyone understands it, is too late for potential competitors who don't understand it," he said. Cloud computing is a very real concept, many people do not understand. "Li said.