April is often the busiest time for foreign traders.
Peter lives in Shanghai. As a buyer, he will fly to Guangzhou in April every year to participate in the Spring Canton Fair, select products for the American companies he serves, visit suppliers, and negotiate orders.
Meeting old friends, meeting new friends, and buying errands errands is the norm at Peter's Canton Fair. However, all this was interrupted by the sudden outbreak of new coronary pneumonia, and the Canton Fair confirmed the extension in March.
"In 2020, there may be no industry worse than foreign trade. After the first half of the domestic game, the second half of the foreign country continues, and the foreign traders watch the full game." Peter quoted the circle of friends to laugh at himself.
The Canton Fair, the China Import and Export Commodity Fair, is held in Guangzhou each spring and autumn. Known as the "barometer" of China's foreign trade, it is an important platform for China's import and export trade and opening up. Since the first session in 1957, the Canton Fair has been held for 126 sessions for 63 years (one session each in April and October each year).
According to statistics, as of the end of the 126th Canton Fair, the Canton Fair has accumulated a total export turnover of approximately US $ 14.126 billion, with a total of approximately 8.99 million overseas buyers.
At present, there are more than 25,000 exhibitors in the Canton Fair, more than 60,000 booths, and 200,000 merchants from more than 210 countries and regions.
However, the epidemic has put heavy pressure on the foreign trade industry. In the first quarter of 2020, the total value of China's foreign trade imports and exports fell by 6.4% year-on-year. Foreign trade is one of the three carriages driving economic growth. Under the environment of increased trade friction, increased uncertainty, and the impact of the epidemic, the sustainability of the Canton Fair is crucial, which not only helps stabilize foreign trade and foreign investment, but also The restoration of the confidence of the reader also has a lighthouse-like significance.
In a special period and in a special background, where should the Canton Fair go? The executive meeting of the State Council made an unprecedented decision: move all the Canton Fair online!
Fully touch the network, process reengineering
It can be said that organizing an online exhibition instead of a physical exhibition is both a pragmatic emergency response and a bold innovation. Five years ago, someone on Zhihu put forward a bold idea: Can the Canton Fair be moved online?
A pen foreign trader ’s answer received the highest praise: "There are many places in the traditional industry that cannot be described and communicated through the Internet, such as the" workmanship "of the pen. If you do n’t feel it yourself, you ca n’t get a detailed introduction on the Internet. Let me make a business decision ... The high threshold for participation effectively blocks non-professionals from the door and effectively reduces communication costs. "
Over time, with the advancement of Internet technology, there are new possibilities and new breakthroughs in the comprehensive Internet access of the Canton Fair.
"Bringing the world-famous global trade event to the cloud is a practical initiative." Li Xingqian, director of the Department of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Commerce, introduced that the migration of the Canton Fair from the physical exhibition hall to the Internet is not a simple copy, but a new structural design and Process reengineering.
"Online Canton Fair" will present three interactive segments, including online display and docking platform, cross-border e-commerce zone, and live marketing services, which will integrate display and docking, negotiation and transaction into one, creating efficient for domestic and foreign exhibitors and buyers Online experience.
How to build such a large-scale and complex project? Soon, this important task was won by Tencent. On April 15th, Tencent was determined as a technical service provider to provide overall technical support, platform R & D services and cloud resource support for the Canton Fair online hosting.
"Many online foreign trade platforms in the past only focused on the display, but this time we provide full-process services before, during and after the exhibition. We will provide more services for exhibitors and buyers, especially overseas buyers. Multi-services. The familiar Tencent conferences, corporate WeChat, WeChat, small program live broadcast, translator Jun, and enterprise points will be combined to make full use of Tencent's product and service capabilities, increase online matching efforts, and improve effectiveness. "Tencent Cloud Vice President Zeng Jiaxin introduced.
For "Online Canton Fair", Tencent will provide a comprehensive solution based on Tencent's product technology to provide services such as intelligent matching, interactive display, translation, intellectual property protection, negotiation, negotiation, matching and intention signing.
Tencent has always had a strong advantage in Internet traffic and online interactive scenarios, but online trade fairs are a form of transaction under certain scenarios. Unlike ordinary transactions, they have certain complexity and require a series of rigorous process designs.
For Tencent, supporting a global exhibition such as the Canton Fair is not only a heavy task, but also very time-intensive. It needs to complete the entire system within two months.
"Thanks to the rapid resource pull-up within Tencent and the mobilization of a large number of products and technical capabilities reserved by the company, we have completed the assembly of the company's high-quality resources and capabilities and exported the overall solution and implementation plan in just one week. Fully guarantee the project delivery. "Zeng Jiaxin said.
In order to move the Canton Fair's foreign trade exhibition scenes online, Tencent integrated key products and online exhibition scenes, from IaaS, PaaS to SaaS and other related matching products were mobilized together, and global IDC resources were called to Supporting the real-time docking of global buyers and exhibitors, applying a series of technical capabilities such as cloud, security, AI, big data, live broadcast, etc., and striving to combine with new scene requirements to achieve an innovative online exhibition experience.
Industrial Internet practice drill
Among the three interactive sections of "Online Canton Fair", live marketing services can be said to be a highlight.
In line with the trend, the "Online Canton Fair" will establish an online live broadcast platform and set up a 24-hour online live broadcast room for each exhibitor. This live broadcast room is not limited by time and space. The company can not only conduct face-to-face negotiations with customers online, but also publicize and promote a large number of merchants at the same time through online broadcast. In addition, the platform will also provide functions such as lookback on demand, video upload, interactive communication, and sharing to enrich the performance of the exhibition.
Before the exhibition, the platform will conduct special training for enterprises to improve their live broadcast sales capabilities. In the past, live broadcasts mainly focused on the to C end, but the Canton Fair was dominated by to B. Buyers were more rational, with strict budget constraints, and both buyers and sellers were professionals. Canton Fair live broadcasts may focus more on product innovation And cost-effective.
"Exhibitor live broadcast brings a more intuitive experience to buyers, and Tencent's technical services will allow the exchanges between the two parties to be" remote as if face to face ".
In the field of digital economy, Tencent has entered a new development stage of industrial Internet from consumer Internet, has accumulated 20 years of technical and ecological advantages, has rich practical experience, and promotes the digitization of more industries through the role of "digital assistant" process.
At present, the Tencent team has carried out several rounds of research and discussion with the Canton Fair. In addition to fully guaranteeing the smooth holding of the "Online Canton Fair", it will also actively solve the difficulties and blocking points in the resumption of production and production, help the transformation and upgrading of the foreign trade industry, and promote the global trade line. The above linkage will accelerate the construction of a strong economic and trade country and the development of an open economy.
The new Coronary Pneumonia epidemic has deeply affected the international trade and exhibition industry. More than 130 exhibitions have been postponed or cancelled worldwide. From the postponement of the Canton Fair in the spring of 2020 to the determination to hold it online, it is not only an economic proposition, but also a political proposition. It is also a life proposition-economic development and corporate profits must not be at the expense of people's lives and health. But people's livelihoods cannot be stagnated by this.
It can be seen that under the environment of global economic integration and diversification, Internet technology is gradually penetrating into every link of global economic development. "Online Canton Fair" can be deeply integrated with the Internet technology, quickly go online and promote, can not do without the development of the digital economy in China.
Especially after the baptism of the epidemic, the digital economy is changing people's lives and production more and more profoundly. "Online Canton Fair" is not only an innovative move in a special economic situation, but also the first large-scale and high-intensity practical exercise after the Industrial Internet has been officially tuned.
