Philips Consumer Electronics (hereinafter referred to as Philips) has gone through more than 10 years from being a direct carrier to fully introducing the "third party"-the third party logistics company. However, the "third party" and Philips only survived for two years, and Philips can't wait to introduce the "fourth party"-the fourth party logistics company.
Of course, these "third parties" and "fourth people" are not substitutes. They serve as communication platforms between Philips and "second parties" and "third parties". By introducing the "fourth person", Philips has streamlined its own process and team-carrying out the strategy of outsourcing non-core business to the end.
Philips puzzle
In 2000, Philips had more than 40 logistics suppliers all over the country, some of them were relatively professional third-party logistics providers, and some were just fleets. Zhang Jun, director of supply chain and IT at Philips, recalled that there were no more than 20 brand third-party logistics providers in the market at that time. At that time, there was no EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). More than 40 suppliers, everything depends on "crowd tactics"-fax, telephone. Zhang Jun's department team is also very large, close to more than 60 people. A *** 18 fax machine is overloaded, handling hundreds of varieties and millions of documents.
Since 200 1, electronic data interchange (EDI) has been carried out between Philips and logistics suppliers. And eliminate and streamline logistics suppliers. At that time, Philips had about 15 logistics suppliers operating logistics business between Philips and nearly 1000 dealers, but in 2002, this number became five. Logistics companies with weak IT capabilities quit the ranks of Philips suppliers.
Through EDI, Philips receives customers' orders from the order center, then processes them in the ERP system and transmits the data to the third-party logistics company. Third-party logistics companies use internal storage and transportation systems to schedule and plan social convoys. Then send the receipt back to Philips, and then feed it back to Philips' ERP system to reflect the changes in sales and inventory.
In 2000, a well-known domestic third-party logistics provider cooperated with Philips for a period of time, and Philips gave this supplier a large area and share. However, due to the unbearable cost, in the second year, the supplier asked Philips to raise the price, and the price increase exceeded the range that Philips could bear, so the two sides had to break up. And because the two sides jointly created EDI, the breakup brought great excitement to Philips. Zhang Jun found that IT costs, including time and money, had been invested before, and the withdrawal of the supplier caused a blow to Shui Piao. Moreover, the other party has invested a lot in IT and made no money at all. Both sides suffered heavy losses.
What haunts Zhang Jun is whether Philips can avoid such risks in the future.
At the beginning, Zhang Can thought that when choosing a third-party logistics provider in the future, he should be "cautious", not take cost as the only consideration, and ensure that the third-party logistics provider has reasonable profits and can make money.
However, this idea has many limitations for Philips. There are many factors for third-party logistics providers to make money, including whether management costs can be controlled well, whether they can get more competitive prices in the market and so on. These are beyond Philips' control.
All suppliers were doing EDI with Philips at that time. After Philips receives the customer's order, it must sort the goods to determine which warehouse to load and unload the goods from, which route to take and which supplier is responsible for the shipment. After the EDI data is returned, it is necessary to determine which supplier these documents come from. What Zhang Jun has been thinking about is whether a single order can solve the problem and avoid the tedious sorting work.
In the second half of 20001and the first half of 2002, Zhang Jun began to think of ways. What he needs is actually a platform. As long as Philips throws the data to it, the platform will work with various logistics suppliers to process the data and unify the feedback. There is no need to do it one by one.
Introduce the fourth party
The fate of Huaxia Media and Philips began with Huaxia helping Philips to make a planning system. During the implementation of the system, Zhang Jun communicated with Lin Liang, the boss of Huaxia, many times, which inspired Lin Liang to establish the platform. Lin Liang quickly established a new business framework, developed various systems, and established the NET-X platform. X stands for infinity and uncertainty. The basic idea is to serve as a platform for business flow and information flow between manufacturing enterprises and logistics enterprises.
Why doesn't Philips build its own platform?
Zhang Jun believes that Philips' main competitiveness lies in product technology, design and marketing, while IT and supply chain are not the embodiment of Philips' main competitiveness. Philips' consistent strategy is to outsource non-core business as much as possible. If Philips wants to build its own platform, it must recruit a large number of IT personnel, buy its own servers, share the platform, and have a group of implementation teams to deal with logistics suppliers-obviously this is not in line with Philips' strategy.
There are also third-party logistics companies coming to Philips, hoping to build this platform for Philips to run on. However, Zhang Jun believes that the role of the third-party logistics platform is very limited. Usually, customers want the platform to be fair or independent, serving all customers and logistics suppliers. For example, if this platform is Huayuntong, the package association will refuse to take its data from Huayuntong's platform, because the two sides are competitors, and the data will know the traffic and whereabouts. There is no guarantee of trade secrets.
As a fourth-party logistics platform, Huaxia Media charges Philips.
The charging mode of Huaxia Media is: large enterprises, monthly rent+document fee; For small and medium-sized enterprises, there is a monthly fee.
Compared with this extra cost, Zhang Jun thinks that the fourth party logistics saves several costs:
Reduce the risk and cost of suppliers; As mentioned above, logistics suppliers can no longer do it because of Philips' strict cooperation requirements. If it stops its cooperation with Philips, the investment in IT development made in the early stage will be useless, and this investment is still very large.
With the platform, as long as Philips maintains a standard and throws the data on the platform, there is no need to invest again.
The same is true for suppliers, which will not change because of Philips system upgrade and other reasons, and can maintain the original system. The platform is used to complete data coupling and matching.
This can improve the efficiency of third-party logistics, and then improve the efficiency of Philips.
For example, if there are 50 major customers, their 50 customers should sign EDI with Bao Gong, and they should sign 5 scars. Looking for a trace? ┍ Love Jia? Hey? The number of people in department T also needs to expand with the growth of business. In this case, people may ask, does Bao Gong do logistics or IT?
Simply put, IT is to save costs and form scale effect through a unified platform, so that manufacturers and third-party logistics companies do not need to increase IT investment because of the increase of suppliers or customers.
In addition, it turns out that Philips IT staff and supply chain managers maintain data according to the division of suppliers. Because of this platform, data transmission only needs to be maintained by the platform now, and the labor cost is greatly saved.
Zhang Jun said that Philips originally needed to maintain four sets of EDI. Although you don't have to pay the supplier, you also need the input of personnel to maintain four sets of EDI and understand each other's processes and systems. Philips' current platforms are basically developed by Huaxia. Balance by project, and the first investment is very small.
On June 65438+1 October1this year, Philips' SAP system was officially put into operation. Fortunately, as the director of information technology, Zhang Jun and his colleagues only need to connect with the platform, not with various logistics providers, which does not affect the implementation of the project.
There are only two 18 fax machines in the supply chain management department that are brave enough to handle emergency affairs. At present, Philips has not seen any bills of lading with logistics suppliers.
In the past, at the end of each month, two or three employees of Philips would spend three days checking accounts and settling accounts with logistics suppliers. Now they can get the business documents directly through the platform and solve them in half an hour.
In the interview, Zhang Jun always emphasized that the competition in TV industry is cruel and the concept of cost is very important. In a series of changes, the annual logistics cost of Philips has been declining. In previous years, the decline reached 10%, and in recent two years, due to industry reasons, it still decreased by 5% every year.
Manage third parties and fourth parties
However, Huaxia is a young company after all. Can the system withstand the huge business flow of international giant Philips? Philips talked to Huaxia during the system research, hoping that the other party would use international standards. Huaxia uses ROSETTANET, one of the two international standards, and Philips itself is one of the member organizations of this standard, which is technically less risky. In addition, although Philips operates through this platform, it still retains a set of processes. In the event of an accident on the platform, it can survive the difficulties for a while on its own (although its efficiency has decreased).
As for the security of data operation, Zhang Jun thinks that the security level of the system itself is the third-party logistics provider, because the third party itself is not an IT company, but only one of their services. In terms of security, it is different from an IT company like Huaxia Media. When Philips launched the platform, it made a lot of evaluations, including the design details of servers and firewalls. The ability to keep information confidential and provide technical support are some necessary conditions for the survival of this platform, which is related to the sustainable development and growth of the company. On the contrary, the fourth party logistics is more concerned about these indicators than customers.
As a company that chooses third-party and fourth-party logistics services, Philips is most concerned about the cost and the service it gets-cost performance; Secondly, Philips attaches great importance to the IT capabilities of third-party logistics; The other is the network coverage ability of third-party logistics.
The cooperation between Philips and Baogong has such a slogan: wherever our products are sold, Baogong's network will extend.
Philips also pays special attention to the business center of third-party logistics. Usually only heavyweight customers can get more attention. Philips hopes to account for more than 10% of its suppliers' revenue. Philips' supply chain tends to use only two or three third-party logistics providers. Because there are two or three companies, the business volume of Philips third-party logistics is still quite large. In this case, Philips has the right to ask suppliers to take Philips as the center and is willing to invest and develop together with Philips.
Commonly used indicators such as punctuality rate of receiving goods, error rate of receiving goods and damage rate of goods are commonly used indicators for Philips to assess third-party logistics. Philips has 15 criteria for evaluating suppliers. Every weight is different, and the on-time arrival rate is usually the most concerned-because customers give money to Philips and really want the goods to arrive on time. In addition, only when the goods are delivered to customers quickly can the inventory be maintained at a fairly low level and the turnover be normal. Philips' current arrival rate is over 98.5%. In addition to these key indicators (KPIs), Philips also has a supplier management system, which grades its suppliers according to the indicators and lists the rankings every month. According to these rankings, talk to suppliers about what they have done well and what they are not satisfied with every year or quarter.
For the fourth-party logistics provider, Philips values strength and technology, which can ensure that the solution can improve work efficiency, help complete the solution designed by Philips and realize the docking with suppliers. In the past, it took two to three months for Philips to establish contact with new third-party logistics providers through EDI. Now with the support of Huaxia platform, all the docking can be completed within one week without paying any money. In the future, when new suppliers come in, Philips won't have to invest in EDI.
For Philips, the thing to do this week is to increase the number of users. Companies like Huaxia have played a catalytic role in disguise. Accelerate the docking speed, which is zero for Philips. On this platform, Philips pays according to the transaction. IT turns out that Philips' IT personnel are depressed and have to change suppliers again. The previous one is gone. Now once the third-party logistics provider quits, there is no need to pay this money.
In daily work, Philips pays attention to the frequency at which the system can't work. The number of times the system fails to work and transmit data must be less than 0.02%, unless it is due to force majeure such as national optical cable and optical fiber construction.
In terms of data security, Philips also requires Huaxia to configure a backup server to provide double security.
In addition, if there is a problem with the platform data, the response time of the fourth party logistics is also very important, such as two hours to solve the first-level problem (such as data transmission); Two-level problems are solved 24 hours a day. In addition, there is a strict rule that as long as Philips is doing business, Huaxia will serve Philips 24 hours a day, for example, there must be someone on duty seven days a week, during the Spring Festival and at night.
third part logistics
Third-party logistics refers to the business model of logistics services provided by logistics enterprises other than the supply and demand sides, and the professional logistics enterprises engaged in third-party logistics business are third-party logistics enterprises.
The third-party service provider was mentioned for the first time in a customer service survey of American Logistics Management Committee 65438-0988, and this new thinking was integrated into the customer service function. It is also used to describe "strategic alliance with service providers", especially "logistics service providers". Contract logistics also refers to the outsourcing of logistics functions. From a broader perspective, it includes not only warehousing, transportation and EDI information exchange, but also order fulfillment, automatic replenishment, transportation mode selection, packaging and labeling, product assembly, import and export agents and so on. For the above services and many other services, enterprises are increasingly turning to contract suppliers.
Compared with the self-built transportation of the first party logistics, the second party logistics requires motorcade transportation, and the concept of logistics outsourcing brought by the third party logistics will be a major development trend of the logistics industry in the future. Cooperation between production enterprises and third-party logistics enterprises can reduce costs, obtain good service, spread risks and enhance competitiveness.
Taking the American market as an example, the outsourcing rate of warehousing, inbound transportation and freight document review and payment of manufacturing enterprises is 63.3%, 60.7% and 59.8%, respectively.
Due to the promotion of outsourcing and e-commerce, third-party logistics will develop rapidly. Morgan Stanley believes that the growth of global third-party logistics is between 15%-20%.
The existing domestic third-party logistics include: China Post, UPS, Baogong, Xinke Anda, Ande, Huayuntong, Sinotrans, Xike and Haier Logistics.
Fourth party logistics
"Fourth Party Logistics" refers to a supply chain integrator, which integrates and manages different resources, capabilities and technologies owned by companies and complementary service providers to provide a complete set of supply chain solutions, also known as "general contractor" or "leading logistics service provider".
According to Morgan Stanley's analysis, the fourth-party logistics is more profitable than the third-party logistics because they have professional consulting services. Although the scale of this service is still small, it will be a fast-growing part of the highly competitive logistics market in China.
The first company to introduce the concept of the fourth party logistics into China is Fast Step Yi Jie Company.
The competition in this community can be roughly divided into the following categories: traditional IT software vendors, such as Orcale, CA, Microsoft, Neusoft and Kingdee; Traditional IT hardware vendors, such as HP, IBM and Lenovo; Third-party logistics service providers, such as UPS and postal services; Emerging fourth-party logistics service providers, such as Kuaibu Yi Jie, Asia Logistics, China Merchants Chen Di and Huaxia Media.