Deep 丨 Sa SaaS's quagmire and black hole, the new dawn of retail SaaS

[Introduction] Incoming retail SaaS is a better choice for catering SaaS. The new retail store calls for a new form of SaaS service. This market has a very high flexibility and a vast hinterland. SaaS service providers can completely different retail stores. Style and SKU design for a more personalized service that delivers full value.

Among the service models in the cloud computing field, the SaaS model is the most recognized by enterprises, and is almost the focus of all IT giants. Its market share is the first among the three cloud service models. Chinese business is undergoing rapid transformation, and the involvement of the Internet and mobile Internet is driving the structural upgrade of the overall business. Similar to consumer spending upgrades, enterprise-level services are also entering a new round of upgrades.

It must be noted that the development status and speed of various industries determine the maturity and integrity of their respective service industries. Compared with the saturated and relatively chaotic catering SaaS industry, the retail SaaS industry has become the first choice for the transformation of many software vendors and service providers with its more open, free and spare advantages. In the current wave of new retail sales last year, the first influx of the grasshopper era has been nourished.

Looking back at the catering SaaS industry, as the start-up has become a test field for SaaS services, many so-called SaaS products have not brought real value to merchants, but have become the root of many problems.

Regardless of the industry's SaaS service, making money is a core value. For most merchants, regardless of traditional software or so-called SaaS services, more often it is a tool for billing, and the true value of digital tools is not seen.

Only relying on the catering platform to generate new chemical reactions, allowing food and beverage store owners to truly understand the meaning of “tools→services”, catering SaaS has the opportunity to achieve the most real value.

The resulting discussion is why the catering SaaS is not doing well? Why is it that only the platform can activate catering SaaS, and why is retail SaaS a better choice than catering SaaS?

Catering SaaS = cash black hole?

Today, nearly a thousand software companies that do catering services are fighting in the market, and the competition is fierce and fierce.

This is a comparison chart of the profitability of the retail and catering SaaS service companies listed on the main board and the new three board. The company is doing retail services, and Tiancai Shanglong and Keruyun are doing catering. You can see that in 2017, In the first half of the year, the retail service company SiXun Software's operating income in the first half of 2017 reached 537.88 million yuan, net profit was 2374.95 million yuan, Kemai technology revenue was 2,465.65 million yuan, net profit was -318.99 million yuan, and catering service company Tiancai Shanglong The revenue of 33.702 million yuan, but the loss reached -232.03 million yuan, the same as the company of catering services such as the cloud, the first half of 2017 revenue of 68.772 million yuan, net profit -554.47 million yuan.

In other words, the company that makes catering SaaS is still losing money, and it is a huge loss, and the retail service has already made money.

Why do SaaS do the same, food and retail will be so different? Because the former is in a multi-format and complex industry, the competition is also in the Red Sea, while the latter is relatively easy to standardize and the market is still in the blue ocean.

After many startups entered the catering SaaS industry, they discovered that the catering industry's multi-business and complexity far exceeded their imagination. The chain and links of the restaurant front and rear, including the front hall, kitchen, supply chain, etc., include large, medium and small restaurants, medium-sized restaurants, different styles of restaurants have different software requirements, resulting in the product can not be standardized Products that cannot be standardized will generate a lot of research and development costs.

More than 70% of sales in the traditional software industry come from different distribution channels. More than 85% of the Chinese food and beverage SaaS market comes from direct sales. This means that the service provider is also self-built to push the team while researching and developing. The initial investment of SaaS service providers is not a small number. Long-term hardware will help and maintain a huge push for the team will be a heavy burden. Many companies in the start-up period survive in the cracks, and the cost of sales is much higher than the company's revenue. SaaS services are delayed by the monthly and annual paid rent method, thus breaking into the cash black hole.

More importantly, catering belongs to the service industry. The catering SaaS service has not really solved the connection problem between the store and the guests, the store and the platform. Although it is “networked”, it seems that it is only one that can make the business both on the computer and the mobile phone. Look at the "single machine" program. The information system is closed, and there is a lack of connectivity to the outside world. The financial, cargo, and passenger sectors are still relatively independent systems. Thousands of SaaS service providers use their own data models, and various business data are easy to enter and return, making it a lofty territory in the vast Internet space.

Platform: "Bone marrow" for Catering SaaS

To sum up the pain points of the above-mentioned industries, the final direction of catering SaaS should be used as the infrastructure attached to the platform.

Give two examples of typical SaaS-attached platforms.

The first is a variety of ticketing platforms, especially movie booking apps that can be selected online in real time. Before the emergence of such platforms, the theater system was full of efforts to build their own islands, and then how to use force can only solve the problems inside their own theater. The birth of the ticketing platform has activated the service provider that provides SaaS for the cinema. It is a reality to book tickets and choose seats on mobile phones and various APPs anytime and anywhere. It has subverted the ideas of ERP in the past single system, bringing real operators to the operators. the benefits of.

Another case is to buy a train ticket. Now catching up with the Spring Festival, it is not easy to buy tickets. Fortunately, there are various OTA apps that can help consumers grab tickets. It should be realized that before the 12306 is launched, consumers are not allowed to access the online ticket-collection tool, because even the most basic online ticket-purchasing platform is not available. Tickets must go to the train station or the point of sale. With this platform, each OTA system can break out of its potential and provide a more valuable service to consumers.

Through these two cases, we can clearly see the innovation of business logic after the combination of SaaS and platform:

For merchants, the combination of SaaS and the platform creates a new charging model. Consumers are willing to pay a few more dollars for more convenient seating, seat selection, and reduced queuing time, and these additional core functions are based on platform-built infrastructure with low long-term costs. At the same time, the SaaS that connects to the platform will greatly reduce the persuasive cost of entering new businesses.

For consumers, the platform is not only convenient for consumers with big data of consumers, but also uses the big data of merchants to facilitate consumers, so that consumers have greater choice in psychology.

The SaaS service is driven by the troika of marketing, products and capital. The service provider collaborates with the big platform on marketing and product links. It can undoubtedly tilt more resources to the direction they are good at, and use the power of the platform to strengthen their own strength. It can be said that the platform is the "bone marrow" of the catering SaaS. With the "bone marrow", the catering SaaS can infinitely "hematopoietic".

Retail SaaS: New Opportunities Beyond Bubbles

The catering SaaS market is in a bubble and chaos, and the chaos gradually forms a situation in which the two camps are divided, and it is not cost-effective to go to this water.

In contrast, the retail SaaS market, which has not yet left the grassroots era, has unlimited opportunities. Several giants are still tempted to enter the market and compete for small retail stores to become their target.

A small retailer manages more SKUs than a big hotel. Helping them manage these SKUs is a major upgrade. Which category sells best, how to price it, which is the temporary commodity, which manufacturer delivers the fastest speed... Retail SaaS needs to do more to structure and transform the cold data into a popular conclusion, more In the auxiliary management, it is correspondingly more objective. On the other hand, the SaaS is doing a good job in the catering industry, and it may not be enough for the chef to be in poor health today.

In the catering industry, SaaS service providers have been doing diversion and improvement, but small retail stores do not have the problem of diversion. They are complementary, the flow of people is relatively fixed, and the core of the operation is to reduce internal losses. Can you make more money? In fact, it comes from the sale of goods, we call it supply chain empowerment.

From a digital perspective, the supply chain in the new retail context emphasizes “multiple integration”. The supply chain is no longer just waiting for the transmission of front-end information, but actively participates in the work of more front-end service consumers, completing various functions such as product selection, sales forecasting, dynamic pricing, automatic replenishment, and planned procurement. .

The Jingdong store and the Tmall store, which have vowed to be a million-dollars, have opened up the supply chain and offline warehousing capabilities to traditional convenience store operators. The potential of the show is ample evidence of the new retail demand for supply chain management capabilities.

I have pointed out that the three key words of the new retail are the density scene and the supply chain. These new concepts seem to have unlimited gameplay, but they are not changing from their own. Digital omni-channel operations and new scenarios communicate online and offline, equally cost-effective, equally high quality, and the same understanding of consumers. The speed of the war to seize the scene, the means of winning the Eight Immortals and the power-saving management of the supply chain are all infrastructure, ensuring that different marketing methods, product strengths and even taste orientations will become A unique highlight of new retailers.

As a result, the incoming retail SaaS is a better choice for catering SaaS. The new retail store calls for a new form of SaaS service. This market has a very high flexibility and a vast hinterland. SaaS service providers can completely different retail stores. Style and SKU design for a more personalized service that delivers full value.

Nowadays, even the catering industry is undergoing retail transformation: in addition to traditional in-store dining, duck neck, yogurt, milk tea and other food and beverage categories have been retailed and become popular goods. More and more software companies and service providers have turned to the retail industry SaaS has become the trend of the times, and now it is not yet a red sea, early entry will be a better choice.