Chapter 2 Chapter 1 Dharma's five fingers, the core strategy of winning without moves

Ma Yun's business style always has the martial arts flavor of Jin Yong's novels, whether it is strategy, tactics, or management. In fact, the first time Ma Yun became a hot news figure, he also relied on martial arts. It was at the first West Lake Lunjian in September 2000. He summoned Wang Zhidong, Zhang Chaoyang, Ding Lei, and Wang Juntao, whose prestige and strength were far above him at that time.All along, Jack Ma has never concealed his preference for martial arts. Ma Yun has opened a translation company and worked on the China Yellow Pages. Since he founded Alibaba in 1999, he has made a wish to be an enterprise for 102 years, which spans exactly 3 centuries.Since then, everything that Ma Yun has done, whether it is the secret deployment of Taobao, the merger and acquisition of Yahoo China, or even the listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has only one theme: e-commerce.When acquiring Yahoo China, one of Ma Yun’s insistences was: “There is one thing that cannot be bargained for, which is corporate culture, sense of mission and values.”

Ma Yun's business thinking is very "smart". If Jack Ma is positioned as a character in martial arts, he is a swordsman.Swordsman emphasizes the unity of man and sword, relying on internal strength and wisdom to win by cleverness rather than brute force.Ma Yun's highest idea of ​​"serving small and medium-sized enterprises, making it easy to do business in the world" should be the most powerful interpretation of his use of the word "clever" to run through business. Bodhidharma is the ancestor of Zen Buddhism in China. The "Five Fingers of Bodhidharma" was undoubtedly invented by the martial arts master Jin Yong. However, Bodhidharma's Buddhist practice and achievements have far-reaching influence, far above the five-finger magic.Ma Yun is a fan of Jin Yong, so he is naturally very interested in the Kung Fu of Bodhidharma.He named the core technology research project team "Dharma Institute", and the five core strategies of search, payment, market, integrity system and software are called Alibaba's "Five Fingers of Dharma". definition.

Ma Yun applied the kung fu skills of the "Dharma Five Fingers" in the process of running a business, and achieved the business goal of connecting the world by integrating resources.He is like a light and elegant martial arts man, using his wisdom and internal strength to make every effort to make the world easy to do business. "Tianzhu Buddha Finger" is the acupuncture point stunt in Jin Yong's novels. It requires a quick and agile attack, and it can hit key acupuncture points with one touch, and end the battle quickly and effectively.Jack Ma acquired Yahoo China and began to develop a search engine. He also identified the crux of the matter and acted quickly to solve Alibaba's development dilemma.

In China, Ma Yun is one of the earliest entrepreneurs in the Internet field, especially in the field of e-commerce, he undoubtedly has a great advantage.At first, the website pursued the amount of information.After the market was developed, relying on the leading advantages, various websites under his banner quickly gathered a large amount of e-commerce information.But in the process of development, too much information gradually became a problem.Because Ma Yun has more than one business website, including B2B Alibaba, C2C Taobao, and B2C platforms, e-commerce information is scattered on these websites, and there is no connection between them, let alone sharing and delivery.If Alibaba wants to develop further, it must solve this problem as soon as possible.To this end, Jack Ma set his sights on search engines.

Alibaba and Yahoo jointly held a press conference on August 11, 2005.The two parties announced that Alibaba has acquired all the assets of Yahoo China, and at the same time received an investment of US$1 billion from Yahoo to build China's most powerful Internet search platform.Although Yahoo CEO Daniel Rosenger sat beside him, under the spotlight, Jack Ma became the absolute star and focus.This is the largest merger and acquisition in the history of China's Internet.And this day happens to be Valentine's Day in China - July 7th of the lunar calendar. Jack Ma cleverly used this specific time to unveil this legendary and sensational event.He announced to the outside world that after seven years of "long-distance love running", Alibaba and Yahoo have finally joined together.

For this shocking acquisition in the Internet industry, many people can't help but have doubts while being surprised.There are different opinions about the ultimate goal of Ma Yun's big acquisition of Yahoo China.People doubt whether Alibaba acquired Yahoo China, or Yahoo China acquired Alibaba. What kind of combination will "Alibaba + Yahoo China" become in the future?Does the addition of Yahoo China herald new victories for Alibaba?All these questions have not been answered for a while. Ma Yun gave the answer: the search engine is just a tool.This acquisition made Jack Ma the most powerful figure on the Internet in China, but the acquisition was not aimed at blindly expanding the field.Ma Yun did not turn Alibaba into a search portal like Google and Baidu, but continued to do e-commerce unswervingly.Search engines can make e-commerce more perfect, and Alibaba needs the help of search engines, nothing more.A basic premise of Alibaba's acquisition negotiations with Yahoo is that the search engine is only a tool in the final analysis, and must serve Alibaba's e-commerce, and absolutely not the other way around.

In Ma Yun's plan, he personally controls and operates the search business of Yahoo China, which has been separated from the key points.Yahoo's China portal continues to develop independently, but it is likely to integrate content with Alibaba's China website. After a series of integrations, Alibaba has "renewed its old look". Not only has the shareholder changed, but the company's asset structure has also undergone major adjustments.The most important thing is that Yahoo has mastered 40% of the shares and 35% of the voting rights of the new Alibaba at once.The outside world is therefore worried that Yahoo will control Alibaba, but Ma Yun is very optimistic about this. He clearly told everyone: Alibaba is still in his hands.The new Alibaba board of directors consists of only four members, namely Ma Yun, Yang Zhiyuan, Sun Zhengyi and Cai Chongxin.Cai Chongxin is the chief financial officer of Alibaba and Ma Yun's old partner. Ma Yun is the chairman of the board of directors.From the first day of the establishment of Alibaba, Jack Ma has always declared that he will not let any company have absolute control over it.Only then did the outside world finally understand that Yahoo is just an investor and partner of Alibaba, not a controller.

Mergers and acquisitions are not for making more money, but for adhering to the long-standing ideal: to be the greatest company in the world, to be a 102-year-old company, which is what Jack Ma has always emphasized.Now is to do a good job in Yahoo! China!Do Taobao well!Do Alibaba well! The alliance between Alibaba and Yahoo has the effect of the times and has had a profound impact on the search market.Relying on the technical strength formed by Yahoo's billions of dollars of annual development investment, Alibaba has gradually established the world's first influential and revenue-generating specialized search.In terms of e-commerce, domestic small and medium-sized enterprises will thus obtain more and newer development opportunities.

Although Alibaba’s acquisition of Yahoo China has its overall consideration, and also referred to many other comprehensive factors, the original intention of Ma Yun’s acquisition is obviously to find a super powerful search tool to help Alibaba quickly optimize and improve the application capabilities of e-commerce .In terms of perfecting Alibaba's e-commerce system, he has taken another step, and is one step closer to the goal of his own e-commerce empire. In addition, with the help of cooperation with Alibaba, Yahoo China launched the concept of "Search 3.0", unlimited capacity "lifetime mailbox", and entered the community market. In these three markets, Yahoo's combat effectiveness was rekindled.It can be said that the cooperation between the two is an absolute win-win choice.

"Removing Worry Finger" is one of Jin Yong's mysterious kung fu, which even has a humorous taste. The implication is: once this finger is put out, it can make people carefree, and there will be no worries and sorrows from now on.When Ma Yun solved the biggest worry in the development of the e-commerce field - security issues, he gave full play to the power of "removing troubles". Once this trick was used, he really got rid of his troubles. "Only by solving the payment problem can real e-commerce be realized", this is a sentence that Ma Yun often hangs on his lips.He is always thinking about how to solve the security problems of online transactions.

Since the rise of e-commerce websites, electronic payment is the most important link in the development of e-commerce.However, at the beginning, there were many hidden dangers in terms of safety.In particular, vicious cases such as "Internet Bank Thief" and "Securities Thief" have caused panic.The online payment business has almost stagnated, and the popularization and development of the entire electronic transaction has also encountered huge obstacles.For a time, the future of electronic payment business hangs over a huge shadow. Seeing the unfavorable status quo caused by these vicious cases, Jack Ma believes that whether the payment problem can be successfully resolved will determine the long-term development of e-commerce.An e-commerce environment without security guarantees has no real integrity and trust at all. If it is not safe, e-commerce cannot become a mature business model.Only by starting from the transaction link and completely solving the payment problem can we finally solve the security problem. Must take some action in solving the security problem of e-commerce payment, Jack Ma decided to enter the field of electronic payment. In October 2003, Alibaba launched Alipay, an independent third-party payment platform, on Taobao.com.The emergence of Alipay has allowed Ma Yun to realize the dream of "a world without thieves". The business operation process of Alipay is: buyers and sellers conduct transactions through Alipay.After confirming the purchase, the buyer first remits the payment to Alipay, and Alipay notifies the seller to deliver the goods after confirming the receipt of the payment. After the buyer receives the goods and confirms satisfaction, Alipay remits the money to the seller to complete the transaction.During the transaction process, Alipay, as an honest and neutral third-party organization, does not charge any fees, and plays an important role in ensuring the security of the payment and safeguarding the interests of both buyers and sellers. In February 2005, Taobao launched the "Full Compensation" system of "You Dare to Pay, I Dare to Compensate". For users who have been cheated and suffered losses by using Alipay, they will fully compensate their losses.Later, the "full compensation" system was further extended to Alibaba B2B and all e-commerce companies using Alipay payment tools.In this way, the risk of the transaction is completely left to the third-party "guarantor", and the trust barrier between the buyer and the seller has been completely eliminated under the condition of an imperfect credit system.This system not only shows Alibaba's absolute confidence in "Alipay" products, but also shows Alibaba's determination to solve e-commerce payment problems. Alipay is no longer a pure payment and clearing tool, but has gradually extended its influence to the scope of transaction management.Alipay can retain various information during the transaction process, such as product name, price, quantity, and logistics company name, delivery time, receiving time, etc.With this series of information, it will undoubtedly play an important role in urging both parties to conduct transactions in a standardized manner. Alipay's concept of building trust, simplifying complexity, and improving the credit system through technological innovation has won the hearts of the people.In just 3 years, users have covered the entire C2C, B2C and B2B fields.As of September 1, 2008, the number of users using Alipay has exceeded 100 million, the total daily transaction volume of Alipay has exceeded 450 million yuan, and the number of daily transactions has exceeded 2 million.Now Alipay has become the first choice of domestic netizens, and it is also the most widely used online payment technology, and there is even a trend of "credit card". Alipay has won the recognition of partners such as banks for its steady work style, advanced technology, keen market foresight and great sense of social responsibility in the field of electronic payment.Alipay transactions are a pioneering work in the development of the Internet and a milestone in the development of e-commerce.The Alipay brand has won unanimous praise from users and the industry for its safety and integrity. With the development of e-commerce, the role of the network economy is no longer just a supplement to the real economy, but gradually changing people's life style through itself.In this development process, Alipay played an important role in promoting.At present, Alipay has occupied more than half of the market share, leaving more than 30 domestic third-party payment companies far behind.Alipay is undoubtedly the leading online payment company in China. Ma Yun cooperated with banks in the form of Alipay to gradually improve e-commerce, and skillfully solved the payment security problem that plagued the development of the industry.He solved the difficulties for himself, created opportunities for the bank, and relieved the worries for the majority of users.Jack Ma is not only the creator of Alipay, but also its strong backing.He regards Alipay as a child in the Alibaba family. Although this child is only in elementary school, he is very ambitious, so he must be supported by all costs to go to Harvard. It is a novel collectively presented by Shaolin Kungfu, and "Great Wisdom Uncertain Fingers" is one of the novels that collects the mastery of martial arts.This kung fu is derived from the "Great Wisdom Sutra", which requires profound internal strength, superior wisdom, and unpredictable changes.Although the book of war states that "soldiers have no shape, water has no shape", but if you want to use it perfectly, you have to devote yourself to practice.Ma Yun seems to have been deeply inspired by this achievement. After years of accumulation and honing, he has used e-commerce to do business for small and medium-sized enterprises. benefit. In the e-commerce market, Jack Ma has two trump cards: B2B based on Alibaba and C2C based on Taobao.The process of the development of Ma Yun's e-commerce empire is the process of the continuous development of these two businesses. B2B (BusinessToBusiness) refers to business-to-business e-commerce. In addition to online transactions and product displays, the more important significance of B2B business is to closely integrate the corporate intranet with customers through the B2B website, and through the rapid response of the network, for customers Provide better services to promote the business development of enterprises. From the moment Alibaba was born, its unique B2B model serving small and medium-sized enterprises has been widely recognized.Alibaba's success is largely due to Ma Yun's strategic choice of serving small and medium-sized enterprises. He has his own reasons for choosing SMEs: Asia is the world's largest export supply base, and many countries are export-oriented economies.Here, small and medium suppliers are very dense, but many small exporters are often forced to be subject to individual large trading companies due to poor channels.Foreign B2B companies are mainly large enterprises. When they come to China, they still look for large enterprises. However, there are not many large enterprises in China, and some of them have a low degree of informatization.Based on this analysis, Ma Yun decisively decided to open up the situation from small and medium-sized enterprises.As long as these small companies log on to the Alibaba website, they can be brought to broader markets such as the Americas and Europe.Later facts proved that his choice was completely correct. It can be said that this model of serving small and medium-sized enterprises is uniquely created by Alibaba.It wants to find its own way, and does not want to simply imitate the past practices of those mature companies. Alibaba's ultimate hope is to complete the blueprint of "liveatalibaba" (living in Alibaba), so it is necessary to create an ecological chain that co-exists and co-prospers with small and medium-sized enterprises.Compared with other companies in the same category, the biggest advantage of Alibaba B2B lies in its strong customer service capabilities accumulated over the years and the resulting huge customer base.Its platform is very localized.An important factor for Alibaba's current success is to establish a Chinese-style platform and community based on Chinese soil to serve Chinese businessmen.Alibaba's current industrial layout has penetrated into all aspects of the work of a small and medium-sized enterprise operator.Jack Ma even believes that the future business world is made up of small companies.He asked: "If e-commerce solves the channel problem, why does Wal-Mart exist?" In addition to B2B business, Alibaba also has a trump card, which is C2C business.As Ma Yun said: "It is a market, anyone who has something can come up and sell it." The representative of C2C is Taobao. Taobao was largely forced out by eBay, which acquired eBay in 2003 and became the leader of C2C in the Chinese market.Based on the belief that "the best defense is offense", Jack Ma decided to enter the C2C field. In July 2003, Alibaba entered the Chinese C2C market, which has been monopolized by eBay and EachNet with a 90% share, and launched Taobao, which takes free as a breakthrough.When he founded Taobao, Jack Ma redefined C2C. He changed the "personal auction" used by eBay to "personal transaction".Although the emergence of Taobao has caused many doubts, the most important thing is that Taobao finally defeated eBay and became the C2C leader in one fell swoop. In the first half of 2007, the total turnover of Taobao exceeded 15.7 billion yuan, and the number of people who log on to Taobao to shop every day exceeded 6 million, equivalent to more than 600 hypermarkets.There are two main reasons for Taobao’s victory over eBay: one is that eBay is not acclimatized and arrogant; The best is Taobao's free service. After Taobao became the leader of C2C, it ushered in its own challenger - Baidu. On October 17, 2007, Baidu announced that it would establish a C2C trading platform.In the face of this new competitor, Taobao acted like a king. On the same night, Taobao responded: "As long as companies join, no matter whether they are Internet companies or not, it is a good thing for the Chinese online shopping market." It not only shows the demeanor of Taobao, but also shows its self-confidence. In terms of B2B, Alibaba initially provided primary services of online transaction platforms for small and medium-sized enterprises, and has now transformed into a more advanced B2B business, that is, providing services for the ecological chain of small and medium-sized enterprises.Alibaba not only provides information flow, logistics, and capital flow services for enterprises, but also provides more comprehensive value-added services in aspects such as loan financing, information management, and offline exhibitions that SMEs lack the most.In terms of C2C, after chasing eBay away, Taobao played the "China Time-honored Brand" card. Since June 2007, more than 50 "China Time-honored Brand" companies have successively boarded the express train of e-commerce.Undoubtedly, this strategy will further consolidate the market for Taobao. "Diamond finger" is the unique hard skill of Shaolin Temple. This skill has profound attainments. The finger can break gold and stone.It requires internal strength to be assisted by external strength to be practiced, so that it can reach the state of being as hard as a diamond.The improvement of personality quality is like practicing Vajra Finger, which requires both internal and external cultivation.To be a person, you must first be honest. The better a person is honest, the better his reputation will be, and the more confident he will be, and he will be as indestructible and invincible as having a "Diamond Finger" in dealing with others.Being an enterprise is like being a human being, and reputation and integrity are equally important to the development of an enterprise.Ma Yun attaches great importance to whether the companies on the Alibaba website can operate with integrity. He wants to build the integrity of Chinese companies and establish the integrity of Alibaba. China's e-commerce encountered a crisis of integrity in the early stages of development. At the end of 2001, the famous B2C website My8848 collapsed, directly pushing the network credit to the brink of collapse.At that time, many Internet companies unilaterally tore up the previously promised free agreements, and transformed from free Internet services to paid services, and Internet credit became precarious.This is also a microcosm of China's Internet environment becoming very impetuous. In addition, as various e-commerce companies have lowered the threshold in order to expand their scale, it is difficult to guarantee the quality of customers on the platform. There has been a mixed situation of good and bad, and the overall environment of the virtual market has been affected.The issue of integrity in electronic transactions has thus been brought to the fore, becoming a difficult problem that Ma Yun and Alibaba have to solve immediately. Ma Yun is not only good at finding problems, but also good at finding solutions to them. In March 2002, against all odds, he cooperated with a credit management company and launched the "TrustPass" program.The plan is mainly to review the integrity of merchants applying for the "TrustPass" service through five aspects: third-party certification, certificates and honors, Alibaba activity records, credit references, and member evaluations.The results of the implementation of the plan show that the turnover rate of members of "TrustPass" has increased from 47% to 72%. Integrity is a single-plank bridge in front of China's e-commerce, and only by bravely crossing can we win. In 2004, after Alibaba successfully raised more than 80 million U.S. dollars, Jack Ma has already realized that Alibaba's top priority is to establish and improve its integrity system.He has a slogan: "Only honest businessmen can get rich." When e-commerce reaches a certain stage, it will encounter a threshold, that is, the social integrity system.E-commerce is carried out on a virtual network platform. If there is no integrity, there will be no business in the end. In an environment where online integrity is deteriorating, Alibaba began to reshape online credit. This is because in Jack Ma's mind, integrity is very important.He believes that in the B2B field, the ultimate decision is integrity, not capital or technology.The absence of a domestic credit environment, the lag of the postal network and the underdevelopment of the online payment system all make secure payment a major "bottleneck" for the development of e-commerce.If there is no perfect integrity system as a guarantee, e-commerce information flow will become worthless. Alibaba provides services to merchants, and at the same time charges 2,300 yuan membership fee to "TrustPass" members every year.Aiming at the mentality that merchants want their products to be ranked first in the search, Alibaba has launched a new fee-based service of "search keyword bidding".Enterprises can lock keywords through bidding rankings, so that their products can rank high among many commodities, so as to obtain more business opportunities. However, this kind of credit service system also has defects. For example, some companies are not willing to disclose credit evaluations. After the two parties complete the transaction, no matter whether they are satisfied or not, based on psychological factors such as unwillingness to pay time costs and unwillingness to be demanding, they may both Choose silent instead of public evaluation.Moreover, whether website members can evaluate each other's credit fairly and objectively still needs to be tested.In order to increase the credit index, some companies do whatever they can to exchange good comments with those companies that have no business relationship at all. It often happens that a company with a low credit index rises to the top within a few days. For these disadvantages, Jack Ma believes that this is related to China's current environment: the current shackles of China's e-commerce development are still the imperfect integrity system.In order to drive the entire Internet into the era of "online business", there must be a sound integrity system to escort it.If this approach is redundant in developed countries where honesty is common, it is just the right time in China. However, before a large social integrity system has been established, can Alibaba establish this integrity mechanism on its own?Faced with this question, Ma Yun's answer is: To play under Alibaba's game rules, you must abide by the mechanism of TrustPass.Over time, Alibaba's TrustPass service will become a new industry standard.Because Chengxintong can make people easily understand the other party's business reputation record, so as to reduce the possibility of being cheated in the transaction.Therefore, when doing business in the long run, everyone will naturally consider whether the other party is a Chengxintong user.In fact, Alibaba has indeed established a credit system with Chinese characteristics on its own. Ma Yun made every effort to build Chengxintong, improve the electronic market environment, and regulate the behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises. This not only increased Alibaba's business volume, but more importantly, enhanced Alibaba's brand influence.Ma Yun made "integrity" truly accessible to the world. Martial arts are ever-changing and unpredictable.Blindly responding to the challenge and following the pace of the opponent will eventually fail.Therefore, "Cheng Jing Zhi" emphasizes stopping with stillness and striking later.This is exactly what the master said, let nature take its course, move with the times, and respond to all changes with the same.When Ma Yun was hot in the software, he stood still.When his e-commerce "Five Fingers of Dharma" reached a certain level, he judged the situation, made the best use of the situation, and launched Ali software.Although the software came out relatively late, but the effect is very obvious.Alisoft will help small and medium-sized enterprises solve management problems, so as to "let the world have no difficult business to manage". On January 8, 2007, after three years of planning, Alibaba (China) Software Company was incorporated in Shanghai.Its positioning is to provide small and medium-sized enterprises with a series of solutions such as customer resource management, marketing management, capital credit management, risk prevention management, information management, cost control management, and logistics distribution management.Alisoft and Alibaba Group's Alibaba, Taobao, Alipay and Yahoo China together form the "Five Golden Flowers". Ma Yun has been waiting for a long time to enter the software industry. He decided to establish Alisoft after five years of serious consideration.When Ma Yun first set foot in e-commerce, the prevailing American model in e-commerce was to make enterprise management software first and then do online transactions.But Alibaba took the opposite path. At that time, many people were very puzzled by this, predicting that Alibaba would go bankrupt, and some even said that they would acquire Alibaba.These things gave Jack Ma a lot of stimulation.Although he believed from the bottom of his heart that the other party would not be able to beat Alibaba, and believed that Alibaba's model would be successful, he did not know at the time whether he could win against the other party, and how he would win.The development of things proved that Alibaba's original model was successful. After Jack Ma made Alibaba bigger and stronger, he turned around and aimed at the software market. As an important member of Alibaba's "Dharma Five Fingers", Alisoft has actually been adhering to Alibaba Group's long-term understanding of the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises.Due to problems such as complex operation and high cost, existing management software is difficult to be further popularized in small and medium-sized enterprises.According to statistics from the Ministry of Information Industry, the informatization rate of small and medium-sized enterprises in my country is less than 10%, and the market has great potential for development.Therefore, the emergence of a low-threshold software has become an urgent need, which is why "Ali Software" was born. In April 2007, Alibaba.com and Taobao.com launched a free trial version of the "Alibaba Software" series, which includes a domestic trade version, a foreign trade version and an online store version. The goal of "Ali Software" is to extend e-commerce to small and medium-sized enterprises, and provide software tools such as e-commerce marketing tools, customer management, and supply chain management.From the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises, in fact, part of the management and marketing functions originally completed by enterprises are outsourced to Alibaba.And some users also gave feedback like this: In fact, it is not a software at all, but a virtual professional manager. "Alisoft" adopts the SAAS (online software service) model, and the software can be used without installing client software.Because of this, "Alibaba Software" can help customers save data safely and prevent virus attacks, which is very safe.And as we all know, SMEs are accustomed to using the Internet for business search and marketing. The SAAS model has not yet maturely applied products in China, so "Alibaba Software" launched a formal commercial SAAS model software product, which can be described as a unique approach. In less than a year since the launch of "Alibaba Software", it has become the number one in the SAAS market. "Ali Software" provides more scientific, advanced and convenient methods and means for enterprise management, and what it does is worthy of full recognition.It is also an OPEN platform, open to all software companies in China and the world.All of these provide sufficient reasons for many small and medium-sized enterprises to choose Alisoft.Today, Alisoft has played a leading role in its industry like Alibaba, Taobao, and Alipay.Of course, its success is inseparable from Alibaba Group's huge SME resources. In Ma Yun’s new blueprint for the company, B2B mainly provides a trading platform for small and medium-sized enterprises, Taobao mainly provides online sales for enterprises and individuals to end consumers, Yahoo China mainly provides low-cost online marketing for enterprises and users, and Alipay mainly provides Enterprises and individuals provide a powerful online payment system, and Ali software mainly helps merchants manage their businesses.On the five major platforms, information, credit, communication, payment and other major systems support and influence each other.As a result, the structure of the e-commerce empire in Jack Ma's mind has taken shape.