Author | China Software Network Chen Yang
Proofreading | China Software Network 暻
“Since 2017, Funshare has been very determined to implement a platform strategy. At that time, some people in the circle felt that PaaS was a pit, and that successful foreign products might not be applicable to China. But now, we are the ones who do PaaS. The right decision for rapid development in 2016. "For the choice made three years ago, Luo Xu, founder and CEO of FunShare, is very grateful.
A week ago, FenXianke, founded by Luo Xu, has just received a new round of financing of several hundred million yuan. The previous round of investor Kingdee International continued to lead the investment, and IDG Capital, Northern Light Venture Capital and the founding team followed up and increased their holdings. At the same time, the equity structure of minority shareholders was adjusted and optimized.
It is not difficult to find that from October 2012 to today, Xiangxian has completed 8 rounds of financing in 8 years, and the amount of financing in multiple rounds is more than 50 million US dollars. This makes it a small miracle for Chinese CRM service providers in terms of the number of financing rounds and the amount of money.
1
Platformization of the bottom layer and industryization of the surface layer
"Even if affected by the epidemic this year, Fanxiang Sales continued to grow against the trend, and it was highly recognized by large corporate customers such as Digital China, JD Cloud, Liugong Group, and Megvii Technology." Luo Xu said of Fanxiang Sales this year. The performance, "In fact, from this re-acquisition of financing, we can also see the confidence of investment institutions in the SaaS industry and Fanshare customers."
In Luo Xu's view, the reason why FunShare has been so recognized by capital and customers in the past three years is inseparable from the dual role of the external environment and its own strategy. First of all, the situation of the external Chinese SaaS industry is very good. "During the epidemic, all companies are aware of the importance of digitalization and cloud services. Enterprise cloud services have become the focus of capital, and Fianxianxian happens to provide cloud services for the digital operation and management reform of Chinese companies."
China Software Network & Haibi research forecast data also shows: from 2019 to 2022, the overall scale of China's SaaS market will surge from 37.85 billion yuan to 83.03 billion yuan.
Own strategy is the key to success in Luo Xu's eyes. "Our initial positioning is To B's CRM. And the CRM provided by Funshare is not a simple marketing tool, but a set of covering everything from customer acquisition, to business opportunities, order generation, and customer success. The whole life cycle value concept."
Based on this concept and the PaaS strategy, FunShare has platformed all its communication capabilities (IM), business collaboration capabilities, and CRM marketing components so that users can directly match them according to their own needs. "It's equivalent to modularizing all the components of the car. Users don't need to rebuild wheels, just use these components directly. In this way, the tension of Funshare's products will become stronger and stronger, and it will be more convenient to solve the customer's personality. Changing demand is a win-win thing.” Luo Xu said.
Chinasoft.com believes that another factor in the success of Funshare is the restraint and focus on the industry. In the past three years, Winshare has focused on serving customers from the waist and above in the three major industries of FMCG, manufacturing and the Internet. "Each industry has different application scenarios and different needs. Only a CRM based on business can companies be more willing to use it." Luo Xu revealed the secret of the success of Funshare: "The bottom-level platform, the surface-level industry ."
This is also the purpose of FunShare's new round of financing. Specifically, the first is to strengthen the capacity building of the PaaS platform to meet the ever-changing market needs of corporate customers; the second is to continuously improve the industry scenario and iterative upgrades; the third is to strengthen the delivery capabilities to improve customer satisfaction and renewal rates; the fourth is to strengthen Service system construction, including strengthening channel channels and partner ecology.
2
Be the coach of the partners
It is not difficult to see from the use after financing that ecological construction is the focus of Fenshare's future development. Luo Xu also kept repeating "Funshare customers must transition from original factory to ecological."
To understand this sentence simply, Fenshare has to transform from providing all the services for customers by itself to gathering the power of ecological partners to serve customers together. "With the help of the power of ecology, FunShare can not only focus on what they are good at, but also bring business opportunities to partners."
Therefore, Luo Xu hopes to develop different types of partners in consulting, sales and implementation, and provide an integrated and mature ecosystem around the full life cycle of customers.
But what I have to say is that the rise of cloud service providers in recent years has made the term ecology an uncommon vocabulary. The repeated "bombing" development of Internet companies on partners has made partners more mindful when choosing eco-hosts.
Luo Xu has his own views on development partners. Luo Xu said that only in this way can he dispel the doubts of his partners: “Being a partner is indispensable, but it is difficult to unite knowledge and action. Only by sincerely standing by the partners, let Only when partners become bigger and stronger can the company become stronger."
To this end, Luo Xu expressed the point of view of FunShare’s development of ecological partners: First, partners and FunShare customers are not a simple agency relationship, but a business community; second, FunShare customers will be the coaches of partners in the early stage . "Like a driver’s license test, only partners who pass the test can authorize. This is also responsible for customers." Finally, in addition to helping partners provide product-related empowerment, Luo Xu hopes that he can do more: "We will Help partners recruit people, do training, make economic models, and even arrange for partners’ employees to come to work. We will not let go until the partners are supported."
Luo Xu is very proud of the practice of providing option incentives to partners since 2015: "Very few people will do this. An old agent asked me if the options I used to say are still valid. I said that only the legal documents are still there. There must be no problem."
It is reported that there are currently more than 80 active partners of FunShare, most of which are sales-oriented. The early stage also focuses on the development of sales-oriented partners, and subsequent development and implementation, technology and service partners.
3
China's SaaS industry's "time, place, and people"
In 2020, affected by the epidemic, the introduction of internal circulation and credit creation policies will bring opportunities for the development of domestic enterprises. "This is an opportunity for Funshare and China's SaaS industry." Luo Xu also expressed the same view.
But the difference is that we all know that whether it is chips or software, the term localized substitution is not a new term. In Luo Xu's view, the reason for mentioning it again today is that in addition to the external factors such as Sino-US relations and the epidemic, the most important point is that domestically produced software has the ability to compete with and substitute for international products. "This is the foundation of Xinchuang."
The second is the price/performance ratio of domestic SaaS. Take Salesforce, the global “one brother” in the CRM field, as an example. Its single license price is USD 1,000+. "China's CRM products can provide the same functions as Salesforce, but our price is only one-third of Salesforce." Luo Xu said, "Today's enterprises are more pragmatic and will not blindly pursue international manufacturers. Whose cost-effectiveness is high? Who to choose."
Luo Xu cited a customer of FunShare as an example: “One of our customers prepared a budget of 5 million to replace the CRM products of an international manufacturer with FunShare, but in the end we provided the same service, but only received The company’s view of domestic software is also changing. This is an opportunity for Chinese SaaS companies to grow bigger."
The third is the natural advantages of implementing and serving localization. In the software field, offshore services are not a small obstacle. Even if a large international company has a local team, it still needs to be fed back to the headquarters due to various demand changes, and localization is not very good. "On the other hand, local manufacturers, from R&D, sales, to implementation, and service, the entire landing process revolves around whether they can create value for customers and truly be customer-centric."
This is also the reason why the main investor in the A round of Winshare, and IDG Capital, the follow-up investor in several rounds, insisted on investing in Winshare: "We have witnessed the process of a startup company becoming an industry leader, especially in the last three years. ShareShare CRM products and PaaS platform have begun to have international competitiveness.” said Niu Kuiguang, partner of IDG Capital.