behind the $75 million, fenxiang sales achieved success naturally
2024-08-28
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those companies that have experienced the test of life and death in the ups and downs of the business world, those entrepreneurs who once hovered on the brink of collapse, after going through devastating blows again and again, have not only forged an indomitable spirit, but also acquired flexible and adaptable strategic thinking, and are no longer afraid of any uncertainty in the market.
by xu rui, chief information officer
since 2011, it has changed its name several times and received several rounds of financing. this is the most intuitive evaluation of funshine sales from the outside world. having been rooted in the chinese saas industry for a long time, no one can really understand what luo xu and his team have experienced.
just like after losing the free war in the enterprise service market in 2016, who would have thought that they would be able to stand up two years later after entering the "darkest moment". by adjusting business strategies, deepening product strategies, practicing long-termism, and shaping internal management, they were reborn from the ashes of adversity.
now, everything is moving in a positive direction.funshine sales announced that it has received a new round of strategic financing of us$75 million, which has attracted great attention from the industry. then, facing the domestic saas market, which is calm on the surface but surging undercurrents, we can't help but ask three questions:
behind the numbers, how will funshine sales present a feast of comprehensive strength competition?
how will luo xu lead the company to find new opportunities in the changes and deepen customer value in the challenges?
how will they build strong resilience and innovation to achieve self-transformation?
let’s take a look at this article to analyze them one by one.
01 do the right thing, and investment will come naturally
since july 2021, the saas industry has entered a "capital bleak period". when all participants were extremely anxious, the funshine sales team seemed to be sparse and normal. the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial experience made them know what they need to do better, so they put all their energy on products and customers.
"we want to make our products more substantial and stickier, and create value for customers. therefore, the team spent five years building a connected crm. at the same time, as the product matured, we began to build a paas platform and build industry-specific and integrated capabilities based on it."
in recent years, digital transformation has been unstoppable. in this environment, everyone at funshine sales has been working hard to,continue to focus on products。of course, this also paid off for them. in luo xu's words, from selling products worth tens of thousands of yuan to projects worth tens of millions of yuan, we can now replace international products.
<fenxiang crm product architecture diagram>
in fact, in the extremely competitive saas crm market, funshine sales has been in a "hungry" state all year round, which has taught them to live a tight life. therefore, in addition to focusing on products,a major offensive in the systematic construction of r&d, operation and management, the company's overall efficiency continues to improve, and roi and profit margins are also improving year by year.
we often say that only with the right direction and unremitting efforts can an enterprise reap tangible results. just like funshine sales, it still received huge financing despite being so cautious in capital investment. the reasons are nothing more than the following two aspects.
first, during the process of accompanying the start-up, the capital will basically assess the comprehensive data of the start-up.the compound annual growth rate of funshine sales is nearly40%, for three consecutive yearsNDRexceed100%, the losses are gradually narrowing, which is very rare in the domestic saas industry.
secondly, despite the turbulent external environment, funshine sales still overcame all difficulties.created a professional team with combat effectiveness, values and methodologythis is a huge intangible asset for the enterprise, ensuring its steady progress.
to be honest, this money is too important to luo xu. it instantly gives funshare sales enough confidence, making operations safer, resource investment better guaranteed, and the company's development will be more relaxed. most importantly, it will also promote funshare sales to shape its core competitiveness.
first, the company willenhancementPaaSplatform thickness, accelerate the innovation of ai products and the maturity of industry products; second,increasing overseas expansion, increase investment in international business; third,expanding ecosystem and channel construction, improve business efficiency; fourth, give full throttle,accelerate the company's operational reform efficiency, promote the growth of cadres and the cultivation of organizational capabilities.
it is worth noting that in the face of the current situation of weak customer base of saas companies, funshine sales has made clear the value proposition of its development ecosystem, that is, through sufficient open source, expanding channel construction and strengthening market penetration. at the same time, by establishing a win-win cooperation model, developing ecological partners on a large scale, and creating a customer traffic entrance.
02 doAI, slow is fast
all complex enterprise-level software will eventually be combined with intelligent technology to achieve ai, from tool-based to business-based. this is not something that will happen at a certain stage in the future, but is happening right now.
as early as a few years ago, the funshare team saw this trend and formulated an ai strategy accordingly. they hope to use three years to complete the transformation from business-oriented crm to intelligent crm. in this process, funshare's core work is not only to build an ai paas platform and an intelligent base characterized by gpt, but also to deeply integrate with the entire marketing service scene to achieve the improvement of the entire business value chain.
"we should neither overestimate ai in the short term nor underestimate it in the medium and long term. this is a gradual process. both model training and fine-tuning take time. it requires a full combination of computing power, algorithms, business scenarios, and data. only in this way can we eliminate ai illusions and ensure that the quality of its output meets business needs rather than 'artificial intelligence'."
after more than a year of preparation, in july this year, funshare released its ai 1.0 product, funshare ai.this product is based on ai+crm and builds a new intelligent crm paradigmby providing full-scenario ai capabilities for crm and low-code development, funshare ai will support a variety of intelligent application scenarios such as enterprise marketing, sales, service, and sales visits, while meeting the personalized tuning and ai application customization needs of customers in different industries.
<fenxiang ai product architecture diagram>
taking the marketing scenario as an example, fenxiang ai can help marketers easily generate copywriting, creative posters, or write attractive marketing emails, intelligently optimize seo, etc., making employees' work more efficient and high-quality.
taking the sales scenario as an example, fenxiang ai, based on its intelligent data processing and content generation capabilities, can provide sales staff with clearer strategies and support, and help enterprises win more business opportunities and conversions. for example, it can help telemarketers intelligently screen leads and accurately locate potential customers; or for ka sales, it can fully understand customer needs, output personalized sales strategies, and make up for the ability gap between sales; it can also become an excellent intelligent assistant to help sales staff accelerate business opportunities.
according to the observation of chief information officer, unlike other manufacturers,shareAIfour major advantages。
first, it emphasizes ai empowerment throughout the customer life cycle, covering the entire closed-loop ai scenario of integrated marketing services; second, combined with fenxiang sales' accumulation of industry paas, fenxiang ai pays more attention to the shaping of industry big models to make industry applications more professional; third, the essence of fenxiang ai is to fully integrate ai into crm products, and deeply integrate it with corporate data and knowledge bases, and ultimately complete human-computer dialogue through intelligent assistants to provide users with a better experience; fourth, fenxiang ai has more powerful customization capabilities, and customers can make personalized matches based on their own business scenarios to fully unleash the advanced productivity of ai.
to be honest, in this fast-paced era, people often pursue quick results and ignore the value of careful preparation. just like fenxiang ai, it was launched relatively late in the saas industry, but it just proves that fenxiang sales attaches great importance to and is cautious about ai.
"only by thinking this matter through thoroughly, determining the course of action, and having the determination and investment to continue building, can we create better products. sometimes, fast is slow, and slow is fast," said luo xu.
03 both are going to sea, but different“route”
the trend of going overseas has always been stirring the hearts of saas vendors. in order to break the internal competition, going overseas is the only way forward.
as chinese companies expand overseas, funshine sales has built a service team and data center with hong kong as its international business center to meet customers' business needs and operational compliance in the southeast asian market. in terms of products, they have built basic capabilities such as multi-language, multi-currency, cross-time zone, and connectivity, and actively integrated into the overseas software ecosystem.
it is reported that in more than a year, the overall development of the business has met expectations and achieved a 20% growth.
however, the real challenge for saas companies to go global is not to accompany others, but to independently carry out localized business. for funshare, it is to enter the international market. going global with others is just the beginning. the future lies in fully understanding the laws and regulations of the destination market and user habits, re-calibrating the product direction, and using the engineer bonus to separate the marketing team and the r&d team to create a real saas product for international customers.
while doing a good job in its current overseas business, funshine sales is also actively researching a truly international business strategy.
04 chinaSaaSindustry has returned“three rationalities”
after years of evolution, china's saas industry has begun to move from barren to green. this is a positive signal, at least it makes entrepreneurs like luo xu more determined. as a leading figure in the industry, he interpreted the current market environment with "three rationalities".
first,founders and investors begin to return to rationality, people’s understanding of the development of saas companies has been raised to a higher dimension, from focusing only on growth indicators to examining the comprehensive capabilities of enterprises.
secondly,the survival rules of saas companies are also more rational, and pay more attention to the correction of pmf. they tend to provide project-based services for medium and large enterprises to obtain higher retention rates, and provide online products for small enterprises to make costs and benefits more matched.
at the same time, more and more saas companies are starting to take the industry route, focusing on precise customer groups and deepening the market and products. in terms of scenario innovation, they are also more inclined to the transaction and marketing business domains, transforming from only providing tools and business platforms to providing management platforms and business platforms, thereby helping customers to develop better.
third,saas companies’ marketing is also gradually becoming more rational, focusing on value marketing. on the one hand, the brutal ground promotion method was abandoned, and participants paid more attention to precise project-based marketing. through the collaboration of multiple arms of the team, sales, pre-sales, light consulting, poc, and solutions were connected in series to achieve the upgrade from selling products to providing solutions.
on the other hand, saas companies have become more open. under the premise of compliance, saas vendors in different fields actively cooperate to share market resources and activities, reduce each other's input costs, increase marginal costs, and thus better serve customers. luo xu, a pragmatic person, once said frankly that he would do his best and then give half of his life to his partners.
however, beyond rationality, there is still a grim reality that we all need to face together, that is, the irrational internal circulation of chinese saas companies, which leads to a very unequal value return and investment on the customer side.
luo xu said that with the development of saas to this day, the leading companies in various segments have the strength and level to compete with international products. if the previous products lacked brand value and made customers unwilling to pay, then when today's products and services have made up for the shortcomings in capabilities and can completely achieve domestic substitution, saas companies must overcome the prisoner's dilemma of narrow competition and return product value, customer value and service value to rationality on the basis of providing value to customers. only when saas companies are healthy can the digital transformation and development of chinese companies be truly healthy.
<founder and ceo of funshine sales luo xu>
we need to find the problem from the root, rather than blindly solve it from the means. only when pricing returns to rationality, customers recognize the value, and manufacturers provide good services, can we achieve the equality of value and service. moreover, only when the gross profit margin is increased to a reasonable range can manufacturers invest limited resources in products and services, thereby feeding back to customers and ultimately achieving a win-win situation.
05 success comes naturally
in 2025, funshine sales will officially enter the listing window period. in the past experience, they have regarded every challenge as an opportunity for growth, and have formed unique advantages in management, technology, products, solutions, talents and other aspects. they have proved with their own experience that if you serve the right customers at the right time, many things will "come naturally". even in the most difficult times, there will be enough confidence to turn danger into safety, and move towards the brilliant new future of saas with a more mature attitude and steady pace!
