Introduction:Traditional industries are prone to problems such as limited by traditional concepts and path dependence, insufficient knowledge and understanding of the development trend of science and technology, and even resistance to the application of new technologies, and lack of transformation power.
Traditional industries are prone to problems such as limited by traditional concepts and path dependence, insufficient knowledge and understanding of the development trend of science and technology, and even resistance to the application of new technologies, and lack of transformation power. In the face of the personalized and digital capabilities of the meeting enterprises, the convention and exhibition industry, as a traditional industry, should also break through its own business constraints and keep up with the digital wave. Taking an exhibition enterprise as an example, this paper discusses how the exhibition industry should promote digital development.
1、 Why should the exhibition industry make digital transformation?
The exhibition industry is generally referred to as MICE, mainly including Meetings, Incentives, Conference/Conventions, Exhibitions/Expositions, Events, etc. The exhibition industry has the characteristics of long industrial chain and large industrial correlation. The middle reaches of the exhibition industry chain are the exhibition operators with exhibition companies and venues as the core; The upstream includes the venue renters, booth construction, exhibition equipment leasing, ticketing, hotels, translation and other supporting service industries; Downstream investment inviters include major cooperative agencies, docking exhibitors and visitors.
Before the epidemic, benefiting from the implementation of the national "the Belt and Road" construction, the upgrading of the industrial structure and the acceleration of the industry's own innovation driven pace, the number of domestic conference activities has been growing. Data shows that in 2019, the direct economic output value of national exhibitions reached 605.52 billion yuan, the annual growth rate of the number of meetings and activities from September 2018 to September 2019 was as high as 179%, and the number of monthly meetings and activities increased sharply from 454 to more than 1200[i]。 The exhibition activities are mostly held in the form of summit forums, brand activities, sports events, course training, annual corporate meetings, etc; The holding industries are mostly concentrated in e-commerce, education and training, computer software, sports and fitness, finance and other industries; Most of the venues are located in the first tier cities in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, as well as new first tier cities such as Chengdu, Hangzhou and Wuhan, among which Shanghai has the largest number of venues.
（1） Development status of exhibition industry in post epidemic era
During the epidemic, the number of domestic conference activities decreased sharply, the conference industry continued to decline, and the proportion of large-scale conference activities declined; After the epidemic, the urgency of the industry digitalization trend gradually emerged.After the epidemic, although most people are tolerant and open to online exhibitions, many people still believe that online exhibitions cannot make profits independently and cannot generate value independently from offline exhibitions. ThereforeDouble line integration will become the focus of the exhibition industry and the future development mode of the industry。
At the same time, according to the interview with many enterprises by iResearch, customers in different industries have different requirements and expectations for the future services of exhibition enterprises. asautomobile, luxury goods, etcconsumerFor industries with characteristics such as experience and difficulty in online transaction, enterprises holding the meeting prefer offline exhibition; However, industries such as medical industry, which hold periodic academic conferences and have no high requirements for offline communication, are more open to embrace online conference activities.
(II)marketDemand driven digital transformation of exhibition industry
Although enterprises in different industries have different views on online activities, from the interview, they all put forward some digital related expectations for exhibition enterprises. For example, the meeting enterprises hope that the exhibition enterprises can improve the conversion rate of the activities, expand the channels to obtain customers and make a name for themselves through digital means; Carry out user portrait analysis through digital means to promote follow-up precision marketing; Post conference analysis and feedback of exhibition activity data are conducted through digital solutions, so as to quantitatively evaluate the holding effect of this interaction.
2、 How does the exhibition industry promote digital transformation?
（1） How to formulate the digital transformation strategy of the exhibition industry?
1. Develop a digital transformation strategy based on the gap between their own business foundation and digital capabilities
Digital transformation is not only driven by external factors of the industry, but also an important strategic direction for the future development of the exhibition industry from the perspective of optimizing the operation efficiency within the enterprise. For exhibition enterprises themselves, digitalization is a long process. To formulate the direction and promotion plan of digitalization strategy development requires comprehensive business thinking and decision-making. The matching degree between digital strategic planning and its own business will be a key factor affecting future digital empowerment and value creation. We believe that,The foundation and key of digital transformation is to formulate a digital strategic plan tailored to local conditions based on our own capabilities。
Digital strategy should be combined with the core competitiveness accumulated by exhibition enterprises.In sorting out the business capabilities of exhibition enterprises, objectively assessing the brand influence created by itself, the maintenance of industry customer relations, the accumulation of past project experience, and the coordination of personnel organization and other factors will play a basic supporting role in exploring the new model of digital development.
In addition to the inventory of business capabilities, the existing digital capabilities of exhibition enterprises are the technical basis for digital development.In the wave of electronization that began in 2000, enterprises realized the electronization of some work processes, to a certain extent, reducing the input of human costs, while realizing small-scale business information accumulation. However, with the advent of the information age, the barriers between various business systems in the enterprise have become prominent. The dispersion of information has led to many difficulties in controlling the business as a whole, reducing costs and increasing efficiency. Digital construction has emerged as the times require.Conference and exhibition enterprises should objectively evaluate the status quo and foundation of system construction and data information collation, measure the gap with the future digital capabilities, and grasp the potential space for the development of digital capabilities.
Based on the above business foundation and digital capabilities, the digital strategic planning should formulate key direction initiatives in business, data, system and talent capabilities, and achieve a breakthrough in "data enabling business" by means of digitalization and combining conference activities.
2. Explore the iteration of strategic development path and business growth model
In order to finally realize the enterprise's own digital strategic goal, start with the end and start fromservice object AndStrategic scopeTwo dimensions establish the development path and milestone of digital strategy. When formulating strategic objectives, digital transformation should adhere to the development idea of "from endogenesis to extension", take the internal operation management of exhibition enterprises and existing customers as the basis for transformation, improve the service quality of existing businesses, and optimize the service ability of customized solutions for industry customers; It gradually extends to the upstream and downstream of the industry chain with a strong digital business service capability, providing the participants in the exhibition industry with an interactive platform and value empowerment in all aspects.
The essence of the development path of the digital strategy of the exhibition industry is the iteration from the traditional industry business to the new digital business model. In the first growth curve, digital construction focuses on traditional existing businesses, and improves the brand competitiveness of enterprises by consolidating core competitiveness; At present, meeting and exhibition enterprises should actively explore and find the second growth curve to realize the second leap of enterprise business and value before the saturation of existing business, and carry out resource investment and strategic layout in advance toExpand cutting-edge digital business to achieve sustainable growth of the enterprise.
（2） How to realize the digital transformation of the exhibition industry?
We believe that the key to implementing the digital transformation strategy in the exhibition industry is to build the digital capacity around the industry development trend and project implementationBuild digital transformation blueprint, digital capacity building, data governance, process mechanism remodeling, and system platform constructionAnd other modules to create the enterprise's own digital ecology.
1. Digital transformation blueprint: build a business scenario and provide a feasible digital development path
According to the enterprise digital transformation strategy, exhibition enterprises should start from building their own digital transformation blueprint. The digital blueprint starts from the business scenario of conference activity management, combs the whole process of digital transformation solutions, builds a vertical digital ecosystem that can be vertically extended, and helps enterprises achieve business change and revenue growth.
2. Digital capabilities: build three digital capabilities based on conference activity management business
In the context of the digital development trend of the industry, combined with the business needs in different links before, during and after the conference, we believe thatThe construction of digitalization capability of exhibition enterprises should be based on project implementation, focusing on data analysis, data feedback andIndustrial chainEnable the development of three digital capabilities.
- Data analysis capability：The main focus is on the screening stage before the meeting and the middle stage of the meeting. Through the collection, analysis and real-time visual presentation of data such as the conference heat, the number of people in the exhibition area, the activity experience, the conversion rate of new customers, and the degree of brand image implantation in the conference activities, better evaluate the activity participation and participation experience; Through data monitoring, help the host enterprises to accurately select and match suppliers and guests, achieve targeted invitations to participants, and improve activitiescontentThe theme value and drainage ability.
- Data feedback capability：Mainly focus on the post meeting stage, and evaluate the effect of the activity through data. The enterprises holding the meeting hope to collect process data, analyze and feed back the effect of the activity after each meeting activity, so as to better conduct customer attraction, broaden the channels for obtaining customers, expand the reach of the meeting, and enhance the influence of the meeting.
- Industrial chainEnabling ability：It is divided into the empowerment of standardized and customized modules.Standardized module enablingIt means that the organizer hopes to hold standardized periodic meetings with small scale, high frequency and fixed process by purchasing standardized modules. andCustomized module enablingIt can provide customized services according to the personalized needs of the host enterprises and improve the compatibility of module functions.
3. Process mechanism: reshape the process mechanism and realize process digitalization
Through internal interview and business process sorting of exhibition enterprises, grasp the process mechanism of internal business operation and highlight the pain points, properly use digital means to support and improve business, and comprehensively improve the efficiency of work processes. At present, convention and exhibition enterprises generally have problems such as manual data entry, lack of decentralized and integrated capabilities, and lack of automatic data processing. After digital technology support and process optimization, set up automatic data processing actions, establish a shared database, conduct classification, integration and precipitation of information, improve information interaction and information support for business work, and achieve the full process of data.
4. Data governance: realize the standardized management of enterprise data and the precipitation of data assets
At present, the main problems of data governance in the exhibition industry areInadequate awareness of data management, insufficient coverage of business informatization and data barriers between systemsThree aspects. Based on this, we believe that the data governance mechanism should be based on the existing precipitation data of exhibition enterprises to formulate and promote the implementation of enterprisesOne data management method and one set of data management mechanismTo form a data management paradigmA copy of data assets。
- Data assets.First, start with the key elements of data management, formulate master data, data standards, data quality, data governance and other standards, and build a blueprint for data capability management of the whole system; Second, based on the status quo of data and business needs, build a data management warehouse and data model with verifiable and systematic data management standards, so as to continuously meet the demands of data applications.
- Data management measures.A set of data management methods has been solidified by means of sorting out and recognizing data assets, refining system specifications and responsibilities, conveying and implementing systems, and standardizing post authority and output caliber. The data management method standardizes the whole process of data assets, and clarifies and supports the corresponding responsibilities, so as to ensure that the tasks of the whole process of data management are clear, responsibilities are assigned to people, and standards are unified.
- Data management mechanism.Establish a company level data management mechanism system from both the data filling mechanism and the data assessment mechanism. Through standard constraints, integrate the entry of internal and external data, and form the only exit of data output through unified collection and indicator caliber. At the same time, based on the requirements of the system specification, the project's business system entry and the entry of various types of data collection will be randomly checked from time to time to form the data system assessment results, and the assessment will be included in the individual performance assessment indicators to provide guarantee for the implementation of data governance.
5. System platform construction: break the data island and realize business value empowerment
The system platform is designed to solve the "three difficulties" in business: business capability growth, data value development and business management. Therefore, in terms of system platform construction, core function modules are built for different business scenarios, enterprise data management is realized based on enterprise core business demands, and business development level is improved. First of all, the system platform is used to connect enterprise data, connect business opportunity clues, human resources, project management, funds and other elements of the enterprise in the system, and support the management's business decisions and resource allocation arrangements in a data visualization way. Secondly, break the "data island" phenomenon through the system platform, realize online and automatic business, and gradually build an ecological tree of enterprise data with data as the stem and business as the branch, so as to realize the capitalization of data.
3、 Build a digital business scenario for the exhibition industry
（1） Mining the requirements of digital business scenarios
The digital transformation and development of the exhibition industry is finally implemented in the business development and support. By building a digital business scenario, digital business empowerment and value creation are realized. From the perspective of strengthening core business capabilities, the internal interview of exhibition enterprises is used to deeply explore the pain points of business development and the breakpoints of work process, and to find the key links of digital empowerment. Digitalization is rooted in the development of basic business, and it realizes the connectivity and automation of business processes. Therefore, the construction of digital business scenarios must be based on the work pain points and real demands of business personnel, realize digital value empowerment from the actual business scenarios, and obtain the support of business personnel for digital development at the basic business level.
In view of the built scenario, through industry expert interviews and benchmarking case studies, we fully learned from the advanced experience and methods of benchmarking cases, introduced external perspectives, views and methods, stimulated business digital innovation thinking, and built a business scenario for exhibition enterprises to solve their own pain points from business processes, digital empowerment, personnel capabilities and other aspects.
At present, the difficulties for exhibition enterprises to maintain market share and core business advantages focus on business development. Due to the offline and decentralized nature of clue collection, it is difficult for enterprises to achieve unified control and tracking. Due to the lag of internal system construction, the collection of clues mainly depends on customer referrals and offline tracking, and cannot effectively improve the follow-up efficiency by using digital means and call precipitation solutions to quickly support customer demand matching. The system and front-line project business personnel have a large number of industrial customer needs and customized solution data in their hands, but due to the lack of standardized management, they cannot achieve the support and rapid cooperation of information resources. Based on this pain point, we envisage two digital business scenarios. Through data standardization management and with the automatic collection of external information, we can achieve system information integration and automatic matching of keywords, providing strong enterprise experience support for business expansion.
（2） Build digital business scenarios
1. Customer lead mining
When developing business expansion, exhibition enterprises often encounter problems such as the lag of clues and information, and the lack of clear grasp of customer needs. Some enterprises have developed relevant clue management systems internally, but the information in the system can not play a substantial role in supporting the actual business expansion work, and increase the pressure on clue classification and tracking and personnel cooperation.
Based on this problem, we designed an automatic mining process for customer leads. Through the process of crawler tools, data analysis, content analysis, etc., the existing customer related, bidding related, competitor related information is automatically captured from the network public information, as well as the in-depth mining of the existing cable pool, to ensure the timeliness and integration of clue information updates, and provide more information sources and support for the clue conversion and tracking process. Classify, integrate, process and analyze the collected external data, connect the internal integrated database of the enterprise, and automatically match the internal database information according to the relevance of the clues. On the one hand, it can correspond to the previous project plans according to the relevant clues, to assist the development of the project business expansion; On the other hand, it can match the needs of the same type of customers according to the relevant customer portraits, provide highly customized solutions, and finally realize the automation of the overall clue tracking information management and improve the clue conversion rate.
2. Content resource management
The exhibition industry has accumulated a large amount of structured and unstructured data in the course of many years of activities. Due to data dispersion, it is unable to generate collaborative value. These unimportant data are not worthless. On the contrary, they contain a lot of value information for the event enterprises and exhibition enterprises, such as customer portraits and program needs of the event enterprises, industry experience and participation experience and evaluation of the guests, and cutting-edge information about the exhibition enterprises' deep cultivation in the industry. Content resource management classifies and collects the data accumulated by enterprises for many years according to different contents, and outputs value information support for providing integrated solutions for exhibition enterprises.
[Summary]
As a traditional enterprise service industry, the internal management and external service mode of the exhibition industry is generally offline, and a large amount of data is scattered during the conference activities, which cannot be fully controlled. As a powerful means to promote the development of enterprises, digitalization can create and realize the digital strategic development of exhibition enterprises and the healthy, healthy and sustainable growth of enterprise value, and explore the blue sea of new digital businesses through the iteration of new business growth models and digital capacity building. From endogenesis to extension, the enterprise's digital capability will serve internal operations to external industry customers, and provide integrated solutions for value empowerment. In the future, we will take the exhibition industry's own business as the cornerstone, explore more roles and models of digital internal transformation and external empowerment, and build an ecological closed-loop in the vertical field of the exhibition industry with the goal of building an industry enabler.
[i] Data source: Market Research and Analysis Report on China's Conference Activities in 2020, which was jointly released by the Organizing Committee of China Conference Industry Conference; The sample range is 5038 orders of instant video from January 1, 2020 to October 31, 2020