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Produced by Huxiu Think Tank

Author: Yang Jun, Ji Yujie

Editor: Ji Yujie

Header Image丨Visual China

Since the end of last year, the leading mass-market snack brand Retail Henmang and Zhao Yiming Snacks merged strategically, and the two parties' businesses have been accelerating their integration over the past six months.

Before the merger, Snacks is already a star company in the mass-market snack industry with over 4,000 stores. Its SKUs cover more than 1,600 categories, including candy and chocolate, beverage preparations, roasted nuts, candied fruits, pastries and biscuits.

Currently, the Snacks Group has more than 10,000 stores, 8,000 employees, and more than 50,000 store personnel. Faced with such a large number of stores, SKUs and employees,How to manage effectively is the key.

Fortunately, the digital foundation of Snacks is very solid. Since the full implementation of digitalization in 2021, Snacks is very busy has built a complete business digitalization system, relying on the retail business middle platform to realize store-side front-end applications and full-process online management.

At the same time, Snacks is also trying to further reduce costs and increase efficiency through AI technology.At present, in the checkout process, snack stores have widely used smart scales that can intelligently identify and learn while selling, which has greatly improved the checkout efficiency. AI voice quality inspection in cooperation with Baidu and smart products for store photo signing scenes are also in trial operation.

The collaboration between IT and business teams is crucial to the success of digital construction.Regarding the "talent transformation" in digitalization, Snacks is Busy has also explored a unique path.Different from the Internet product manager responsibility system adopted by many leading physical enterprises, Snacks is very busy to delegate digital personnel to the business according to business areas, but the establishment and assessment are still retained in the digital center. At the same time, horizontal integration is carried out, and through monthly alignment meetings, IT and business teams are jointly assessed to achieve better integration between the two sides.

After the merger, the complex and cumbersome business and organizational integration brought new challenges to Snacks. Relying on the foundation of digitalization, Snacks is also constantly exploring new solutions.

Huxiu Think Tank had a chat with Snacks is Busy CIO Sun Hao about the digital construction of the Snacks is Busy Group and the new challenges encountered after the merger, hoping to bring some inspiration to peers.

1. Digital planning: autonomous and controllable agile services and low-cost and rapid deployment of stable services

Huxiu Think Tank: What is the top-level design of Busy Snacks, and what are the key nodes in the digital construction process?

Sun Hao: The original mission of Snacks is to establish a digital center with the goal of creating an efficient and agile digital operation system. We hope to become a leader in the field of retail digitalization and make retail more efficient and more extreme.

The digital center serves customers, franchisees, suppliers, and employees, and has established a complete set of digital standard processes from planning, selection, development, implementation, and operation and maintenance to support the digital construction system.

During the implementation process,Digital business is mainly carried out in three major directions: digitalization of organizational personnel, digitalization of business online, and digitalization of data.

Starting from 2021, Snacks is busy promoting digitalization in an all-round way. In July, a digitalization center was established, which consists of an operation and maintenance management department, an application management department, and a product research and development department. In April 2023, a big data management department was added.

During this period, we launched systems including TMS, store display, and remote store inspection, and fully switched to WeChat for Business. At the same time, we continued to iterate in aspects such as store clerk management and training, franchisee management, after-sales service, data, and business middle office. Currently, all businesses have basically been covered by the digital system.

In October 2023, Snacks is Busy merged with Zhao Yiming Snacks and was upgraded to the group's digital center. In March this year, after the group's store scale reached 8,000, a new round of group digital integration was officially launched.

Huxiu Think Tank: Snacks is very busy in digital construction and insists on "autonomous and controllable agile business and low-cost and rapid deployment of steady-state business". Why?

Sun Hao:The core of agile business lies in the sales and operation system related to the store.Because Snacks is a retail company, its business needs are diverse and complex. When the business changes and grows rapidly, if the system cannot respond and adjust in real time, business development will be restricted. For Snacks, it is critical that the system is stable and reliable, responds to business needs at any time, and achieves rapid iteration.

Large customers like Snacks Are Busy will definitely generate a lot of customized demands, but when service providers face many customer demands at the same time, their energy is limited and the service results are bound to be discounted. In addition, Snacks Are Busy is growing very fast, and it is easy to exceed the maximum customer volume that the service provider system has ever supported.

For example, previously Snacks is Very Busy used a set of SaaS products. Although they were independently deployed, as the business volume grew, there would be problems such as store payment system crashes and the inability to link orders and payments, which had a certain impact on store operations.

We continue to make the system more reliable, so we emphasize that the agile business system should be autonomous and controllable, quickly iterate, and be closely integrated with the business. In addition, SaaS products are easy to imitate, which is another reason why I insist that agile businesses should be autonomous and controllable.

However, backend steady-state systems such as ERP and other internal process systems are not easily seen by competitors and must meet the needs of their own business systems. Therefore, they are not easily imitated and the expected results can be achieved through low-cost and rapid deployment.

In addition, this plan also takes into account the future business planning of Snacks is Busy. Recently, Snacks is about to break through 10,000 stores or even 20,000 stores. The initial digital construction of Snacks is designed to at least support this volume.

Huxiu Think Tank: Specifically in the implementation stage, which module did Snacks Are Busy start with and develop its digital construction?

Sun Hao: We first separated the ERP and supply chain management WMS systems to form the core foundation of the background, and then launched the human resources system to standardize personnel and job responsibilities, form a stable organizational structure, and use this as the unified management basis for the user center and authority system.

Secondly, all employee service applications are integrated into WeChat, which is used as the only mobile capability carrier to serve stores and store staff. All daily work of terminal personnel and the automated management of entry, transfer and departure can be completed with WeChat.

The overall digital construction follows the principle of full cloud infrastructure. Agile systems such as the front-end and store-related sales and operation systems are guaranteed to be autonomous and controllable, while stable systems such as the back-end use third-party products, kits and services.

At present, we are focusing on building front-end applications, business and data platforms.A complete set of retail business platforms。

Front-end applications include store web and mobile cash register systems, enterprise micro-ecosystems, and member points mall mini-programs; the middle part of the business platform uniformly manages goods, store operations, ordering, inventory, payment, settlement, member marketing, users, organizations, etc.; the underlying basic services are some SaaS applications deployed based on the PaaS and IaaS capabilities of cloud vendors. For example, business suites such as ERP and WMS are included.

At present, the self-developed retail business middle platform system covering the core transaction business of the front end is about to be launched, together with the data middle platform that has been launched before.By 2025, technology, business and data will form a complete three-platform system.Just keep iterating.

2. Business digitalization: Online unified management and AI-driven efficiency improvement

Huxiu Think Tank: Snack Shop is about to break 20,000 stores. In such a large-scale terminal store, how to use technology to assist people in management and operation?

Sun Hao: Offline stores of Snacks Are Busy are already using AI on a large scale, such as the "smart scales" in cashier settlement scenarios. Previously, when settling accounts, the clerks were required to enter the product information in the background in advance. Now the smart scales can intelligently identify. When the clerk puts the product in, the system automatically pops up the corresponding picture, and the settlement can be completed by clicking on the picture.

At the same time, the smart scale can also "learn while selling". When a new product is identified, it will automatically record the product barcode for association. After that, the system will remember this barcode and synchronize it to all stores in the group in real time. When the store clerk enters the wrong product barcode, AI can also automatically correct it and fix the error.

In addition, we are currently connecting to Baidu’s voice quality inspection capabilities, conducting AI store patrol pilots in three stores, and combining them with store patrol law enforcement devices to explore how to further improve store patrol efficiency through video detection.

Also in trial operation is an AI product for photo-taking and signing for goods in stores.Different flavors of snacks in the same category have the same box shape and still need to be manually confirmed for the second time. In addition, the photo quality and store environment will affect the accuracy of photo recognition during the signing process. Therefore, in addition to AI signing, QR code signing is also used to facilitate store operations.

Huxiu Think Tank: How does SnacksMan manage store employees through digital means?

Sun Hao: It is relatively simple to manage employees in busy snack stores. Snacks are a weak marketing-oriented business, and the requirements for employee job skills are relatively low.

Because there are only two positions in the store, cashier and merchandiser, and there are standardized requirements for actions and behaviors. For example, the company has regulations on what to say and what to do when cashiering; for merchandisers, there are fixed methods and standardized training on how to arrange the goods.

At the same time, company supervisors will conduct inspections and corrections based on standardized requirements during remote and on-site store inspections to further regulate employee behavior.

In this way, the management difficulty is greatly reduced for the store manager. He only needs to manage daily matters such as employee attendance and does not need to be burdened with various marketing activities.

Huxiu Think Tank: What are the strategies and methods of Snacks Mang in the digital management of franchisees?

Sun Hao: Snacks is Busy has developed its own franchisee management system for the entire life cycle, which covers the entire franchisee management process from application, interview, site selection, store booking, training, decoration, to store opening.

Snacks is Busy’s requirement for franchisees is to start by running one store well.

New franchisees must undergo 5 days of training, new stores must undergo "12+3" training, and each store needs 8 people to participate in the training, at least 6 of whom must be qualified and pass all assessments before the store can open.

After the store opens, the headquarters will adopt a strong control mechanism based on the store standardization manual and a deduction system, and gather online and offline supervision teams to conduct an average of 8 online inspections per month and 2 offline store inspections per month to implement standardized store management.

At present, with the rapid growth of stores, the number of remote store patrol personnel has exceeded 150. In order to improve the efficiency and quality of store patrol,Snacks is busy and is also trying to automate inspections with the help of AI.

Huxiu Think Tank: The rapid expansion of the store scale of Snacks is very busy is also inseparable from the strong support of the supply chain. How is the digitalization of Snacks is very busy's supply chain progressing?

Sun Hao: Snacks is very busy and the supply chain is very efficient. This year we added 4 warehouses, mainly flat warehouses, with a total of 20 large warehouses across the country. The warehouse inventory turnover is only 6 days, and the store inventory turnover is only 7-10 days.

At the same time, all actions between us and suppliers can be completed online. The order data of downstream stores will be synchronized to upstream suppliers in real time. The latter will confirm the delivery online, ship the goods, print the delivery note and send it to the store's warehouse with the goods. The warehouse can scan the code based on the document to quickly receive the goods.

At the same time, our transportation management system has also greatly improved delivery efficiency and labor efficiency. The system centrally manages orders, calculates the final transportation plan for vehicles, and synchronizes the transportation status and location of store vehicles in real time, making supply chain management more transparent while also reducing costs and improving efficiency in the distribution process.

3. Organizational digitalization: Let the business care more about digital results than IT

Huxiu Think Tank: What changes have taken place in the digital team after the merger with Zhao Yiming?

Sun Hao: Before the merger, the digital center of Snacks was divided into four teams. The product research and development department was responsible for self-developed products, the big data research and development department was responsible for the data middle platform, the application management department was responsible for system selection, procurement, implementation, operation and maintenance, and the operation and maintenance service department was responsible for the digital management of store applications.

After the merger, due to the increased complexity of the business, the digital team expanded by about 80 people to 200 people, but the functions remained largely unchanged.

Previously, because the digital team was only busy serving snacks, business demand was relatively stable. Now that another system has been added, there will be some repetitions and losses as the product lines run in parallel and gradually merge.

After the merger, the first thing that came was product integration, which also involved the integration of the procurement, purchasing, and sales supply chain systems, as well as the financial system. The overall situation was quite complicated. Also, because the operating models of the two parties were somewhat different before, the consistency of the products of the two parties has not been fully achieved so far.In this case, it is difficult for the IT department to put the business together directly, and there will be some systems that need to meet different needs of the same business at the same time.

Huxiu Think Tank: In addition to this, what other challenges have you encountered in the process of promoting digital construction?

Sun Hao: After the merger, there are indeed many challenges in the integration of digitalization and business.The issue of data quality is the first one to be addressed.Although the two businesses have been merged, the data quality is not uniform.

When the product systems and supplier systems on both sides need to be connected, cleaning and matching the product master data is a huge workload. On the one hand, in the original business process, some product rules of both parties are very different. For example, when the same brand comes to order goods, the delivery to the purchasing unit is not unified;

On the other hand, supplier registration is also a necessary step to using the SRM system. However, some suppliers are not very cooperative during the initial data entry. In addition, the business team is responsible for external docking, and the IT team is responsible for internal data maintenance. The IT team is sometimes unable to push the business team to obtain new data.

So once the system is online, we will immediately find that a lot of supplier information is missing, which will lead to the inability to place purchase orders and supply goods. These are all data problems we have encountered.

In fact,The core of the data problem still lies in project management。Only by finding the core key people of the project can we truly solve the data problem.We later discovered that if we could track down the individual responsible for this part of the orders, he would often take the initiative to supplement the supplier data.

Overall,From the perspective of IT systems, when the business is not fully integrated, many problems will inevitably arise when trying to integrate the system.

Huxiu Think Tank: The cooperation between IT and business teams is crucial to the success of digital construction. How is the integration and assessment indicators of digital teams determined?

Sun Hao: I think from the perspective of the digital construction of the entire group, digitalization must be viewed as a chess game. IT and business are integrated. Snacks are very busy and IT personnel will be divided into small teams according to business areas and put into the business to work together with the business for a common goal, and resources will form a closed loop.

at the same time,The establishment and assessment of IT personnel are still retained in the digital center, but the assessment results are pulled together horizontally.This is done because if the IT team is purely subordinate to the business department, it will most likely ignore the overall balance of the company.

In addition, the assessment indicators of the digital team should also be determined according to the actual situation. Taking the digital construction of the marketing department as an example, if the assessment ratio of marketing digitalization for the head of the digital team is 10%, the assessment ratio for the head of the marketing team should be higher, such as 20%-30%.

In principle, the business team should care more about the digital effectiveness of the business team than the IT team.Only in this way can business and IT teams be integrated more effectively.

Back to Snacks is very busy. We are currently evaluating teams internally, and comprehensively judging the performance of the teams based on four aspects: business value, delivery quality, difficulty coefficient, and input-output. At the same time, we coordinate the evaluation between IT and business teams through monthly alignment meetings. We hope that in this way, what the IT team does can be better integrated with the business.

Huxiu Think Tank: How to measure the input-output ratio of digitalization has always been a problem that has troubled CIOs. Does this aspect bother you?

Sun Hao: Different companies spend different amounts of energy on this aspect. At Snack Busy, I basically don’t need to spend any energy on this aspect. Because the boss strongly supports digital investment, the digitalization of Snack Busy is moving forward with the business.

The company provides a lot of resources and authority to the digital team.The digitalization team has the power to approve the direction of digitalization and how much it will cost.Even projects worth 10 million yuan can be approved directly. Maybe from the boss's perspective, if he chooses the right person, he will let him do it.

In my opinion, IT and business teams should work together to achieve digital transformation. In this process, the business team should understand data and digital value better, and the digital team should understand the underlying logic of the business better and discover some business pain points.

I think the digital team actually plays the role of "doctor", we must be able to find problems in the business and help the business team solve these problems. In general, digitalization and business teams can only do better if they work together in both directions.

Huxiu Think Tank: Based on Snacks Mang’s own digitalization practices, what suggestions do you have for other brands’ digital construction?

Sun Hao: First of all, we should carry out digital construction in accordance with the actual situation of the enterprise. The most important thing is that the whole company should have a unified understanding of digitalization. Only after the unified understanding, the business and IT teams can be on the same channel and understand each other.

Secondly,Digital construction also requires sufficient transparencyWhether it is work direction, content, or resource allocation, transparency should be maintained for the entire digital and business team to minimize information asymmetry, as information asymmetry will increase communication costs.

In general,Digitalization is not just a self-satisfaction of the IT team. It requires not only deep integration of the IT team and the business team, but also the coordination of the entire company's strength to build it in order to ultimately achieve results.

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