Why has China's express industry grown by nearly 25 times in ten years and become the "dark horse" of China's economy overnight, among which information economy is one of the most important factors. Under traditional economic conditions, the transaction is limited by the scope of geographical space, and the transspatial large-scale fragmented transaction volume is limited. The development of Internet and new retail rapidly breaks the original pattern, and the business model is de-spatialized. It provides the final demand for the development of the express industry. However, the singularity effect makes the exponential development of e-commerce transaction scale, which also poses great challenges for the logistics and express delivery system. In other words, the information economy is forcing the upgrade of the express service ability, which is a process of informatization driving industrialization, and logistics and express industry thoroughly integrating into the data and intelligence.
1.New retail forces the expansion of China's express service infrastructure
The logistics express industry has the characteristics of network and homogeneity, and the ideal state is stable development, balanced flow rate, and the law of resource connection of all links.
Chinese express enterprises will increase the input of equipment, network, manpower and transport capacity on the eve of Double 11, which has been the default rule in the industry. On the one hand, this is to deal with the pressure of Double 11, on the other hand, it is also for the development of the next year in advance. The decision makers of the express industry believe that, from the past experience, the increment (infrastructure and transport capacity) of that year's Double 11 is generally a constant for the next year, so the resources invested by the enterprise are not wasted, which is in line with the law of economy, which is why the industry moves so. From this point of view, e-commerce is indeed forcing enterprises to upgrade their capabilities.
In 2005, there were only 860 million express parcels in China and more than 100,000 employees. Today, the daily handling capacity of express parcels has exceeded 80 million. However, in 2012, it took express companies five days to digest the 80 million express parcels generated in a single day on Singles' Day, and in 2015, nearly 470 million parcels were generated on Alibaba platform alone. Nearly six times as many as three years ago, all in one week.
Under the pressure of the Internet and e-commerce, express delivery enterprises continue to increase the scale of investment and improve the operation capacity. In 2005, there were no more than 100,000 express workers in China, but in 2015, the number reached 2.03 million, among which more than 1.1 million were front-line couriers. Not only human resources investment, infrastructure investment grew faster. Express delivery outlets and collection points grew rapidly, which increased by more than 10 times compared to 2012 at the end of 2015, especially in central and western regions (low base). Transit infrastructure increased by more than 230% compared to 2013.
2.Development of information economy and technology upgrade of China Express Industry
Logistics is a multi-link coordinated operation system. Once the efficiency of one link is low, the overall efficiency will be reduced. In terms of informatization, there used to be a huge gap between Chinese express delivery and multinational giants.
Back in the 1980s, fedex developed its own bar-scanning system, FEDEXSUPERTRACKER, and PC-based automated shipping systems. In 1994, fedex began offering customers access to package information through FEDEX.COM, an interactive Web site.
China's express delivery industry generally did not start to establish its own information system until around 2005 to 2008, such as the King Kong system jointly developed by YTO and IBM in 2009. However, the speed of catch-up was amazing, and even there was a tendency of surpassing the blue. Domestic express delivery companies completed the IT process in a very short time, and soon entered the phase of integration of data and cloud computing.
In 2015, Yunda cooperated with Cainiao Logistics Cloud and became the first express enterprise to go to the cloud. The cost of hardware and software of the express enterprise system mainly includes the cost of purchasing and building software and hardware equipment, network equipment, the cost of testing and operating corresponding supporting facilities and the cost of later upgrade and maintenance. Compared with the enterprise self-built infrastructure, the cost of flexible use through logistics cloud is lower. Secondly, the SaaS model of cloud computing can make the system's business functions change with the changes of business processes and market demands, making it more flexible and efficient.
In terms of smart handheld terminals, China Express started late and began to introduce HHT in 2004. However, the enterprise soon entered the stage of independent research and development, and the product upgrading continued. The 5-6 generation handheld terminals not only have the function of logistics information collection, but also include POS machine, invoice printing and other functions. In recent years, it has been connected with mobile Internet social software and realized various derivative functions such as information prompt service. Many express delivery companies even develop their own apps to enable smartphones to have the basic functions of traditional HHT.
In terms of sorting operations, domestic express enterprises have begun to introduce fully automatic sorting equipment on a large scale. Sf Express has applied fully automatic sorting equipment in Beijing, Shenzhen and other places, with the maximum processing capacity of 20,000-40,000 pieces per hour. Yto, STO and other enterprises have also launched fully automatic sorting projects in Hangzhou and Jinhua. The cost of automatic sorting is high. In general, manpower is sufficient to meet the ordinary operation process, but the maximum limit of automatic sorting equipment, the increase of peak processing capacity is undeniable.
By the end of 2015, the daily processing volume of express companies such as YTO and ZTO has exceeded 10 million pieces, and is still growing at a very fast speed. Compared with the multinational express giants UPS and FEDEX, the gap is narrowing rapidly. China will soon have a giant express company with a daily processing capacity of 15-20 million pieces, including direct operation and franchizing.
3.Intelligent latecomer advantage of China's express delivery
In terms of data infrastructure, there are also cases of Internet companies in China promoting the express delivery industry in turn, such as Cainiao Network, one of its main functions is to provide a data sharing platform for the express delivery industry and a series of data infrastructure products, such as electronic waybill, which has unified the data standards of the logistics and express delivery industry and greatly improved the operation efficiency of the express delivery industry.
The franchise mode of China's express industry has been widely criticized. In the past, the academic and industry recognized that China's logistics and express delivery is large but not strong, which is based on the economic theoretical premise that the cooperation cost between enterprises is high enough and the transaction cost within enterprises is low under the industrial economic conditions. In short, in the past, a large enterprise, with a unified system and all the branches, then the cooperation between departments must be high, the development of multinational giant enterprises all follow this law, which is also the reality of the post-industrial era. However, such a premise is being broken by the data public platform. Under the condition of platform economy, the cooperation cost between enterprises is rapidly reduced. Countless small and medium-sized enterprises, as long as they connect with the data public platform and accept the allocation and scheduling of resources, their overall efficiency is not necessarily lower than that of a giant directly operated enterprise.
Since 2013, the phenomenon of express warehouse bursting has been decreasing year by year, and the prescription has been increasing year by year. For example, the prescription of Double 11 in 2015 decreased by 14 hours compared with the same period last year, which is a fact in front of us. Platform economy and Internet revolution have fundamentally changed the theoretical basis and practical development path of China's express industry.
Internet platform enterprises and logistics and express delivery enterprises are born into a community of interests. Internet enterprises are born with genes in cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, robotics and other fields, which makes China's logistics and express delivery industry a latecomer advantage. Based on SLAM technology and based on environment perception, reconstruction and positioning, the functions of perception and trajectory prediction of different entities have been realized. Cainiao ET laboratory has developed a robot named G, which can deliver goods by itself. It relies on "Qiancheng" positioning support outdoors, uses laser and visual technology to locate indoors, and can interact with elevators through Bluetooth. Carry out independent distribution. It is almost as advanced as the British STARSHIP distribution robot of The Times, and its functions are even more comprehensive than SHARSHIP's, such as indoor and outdoor universal, and can climb buildings.
In the field of customer service, the general experience is that one customer service is needed for every 500 parcels, but many express delivery companies are already developing their own artificial intelligence customer service systems. In the express industry, the needs of customers are generally relatively simple, most of which are "where is my express?", "when can it be delivered?" and so on. Artificial intelligence is fully capable of doing this, but it is still unable to meet the humanized needs such as customer emotional talk.
From big data to cloud computing to artificial intelligence, these are the values that come from China's firm grasp of the opportunities of the second information revolution. Delivery is one area where poor physical commerce infrastructure, global factory sourcing and low logistics labor costs have led to the rapid rise of e-commerce and its supporting services in China. At the same time, the latecomer advantage brought by the second information revolution also enables China's express delivery industry to catch up quickly. The former is the driving force, while the latter is the opportunity of The Times.
