Lakara's life and death gambling: split the company into six to find entrepreneurial passion

If a strategist tells you that I want to split the company into six, from a small company that has not been big to six smaller companies, what is your first reaction? Of course, no one likes this feeling of insecurity, will the strength not be weaker and weaker?
Lakara, China's largest electronic terminal payment company, is now implementing this strategy to transform its former third-party payment company into six independent subsidiaries, allowing it to compete with wolves in their respective fields.
Obviously, no matter what your opinion is? Lakara is doing this.
One day in mid-August, on the outskirts of Beijing. More than 100 middle-level cadres in Lakara were taken to the hot spring resort in the suburbs of Beijing for a two-day closed-door meeting. In the three-hour speech, Lacara founder Sun Taoran's main purpose is concise – he will launch an unprecedented transformation. The core of its transformation is to slash the original Lakara into six separate subsidiaries: Lakara Payment, Mobile Internet, E-commerce, Electricity, Business, Sales and so on.
In the convenience stores in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places, the yellow-touch screen Lakara terminal attracts white-collar customers to pay by card. However, he is still not satisfied with this, and he hopes that the company will continue to expand and expand. Although Lakara still has a money-burning stage at the moment, Sun Taoran said: “If we need it, we can make a profit at any time.” The adventurous change not only proves Sun’s self-confidence, but also indicates what problems the company must encounter.
The reason for such a major change is that Sun Taoran believes that Lakara, which has not yet made money, has suffered from a big business illness. This is not the status quo he wants to see.
In the past 8 years, Lacala has laid more than 75,000 convenience public terminals in more than 300 cities across the country. In 2012, the number of transactions reached through Lakara reached 600 billion. However, Internet companies have put financial business in the forefront. Alibaba launched the balance of Baohong, and Suning, Jingdong Mall and Baidu also intend to carry out payment business. WeChat payment has already been carried out. Soon after Alibaba just launched Yu'ebao, there were fund companies that found Sun Taoran hope to cooperate with Lacala's “Yuebao”. As a result, Sun Taoran categorically refused. "This is not what Lakara needs to do. We need to continue to expand the scale of mobile payments in the main business, expand the scale of acquiring merchants, and expand the scale of community services." Sun Taoran firmly resists Enticement, deepen the physical channel to build channel advantages, and open up the Lakala online and offline ties.
The purpose of Sun Taoran's spin-off of Lakara and the group reform is that he hopes that the subsidiaries will be single “startup companies” and rely on their own strength to fight with the above Internet giants – who is the most motivated TMT company in China.
Any change in business management is never as simple and rude as imagined. Sun Taoran and his team will usher in an unprecedented adventure. His strategy is to introduce foreign competitors and subsidiaries to confront each other, hoping to achieve a "de-bureaucratic" struggle through the change mechanism.
In any case, the risk-taking spirit of splitting into six needs to face management problems.
"The biggest problem is that Lacara used to have only one president, that is me." Sun Taoran told reporters, "Now how many presidents are needed, how do each subsidiary team take it? How to authorize? What is their strategy?" All need to be considered." In the past two months, Sun Taoran is full of brains is the implementation plan for change.
According to Lacala, the size of the transaction through Lakara in 2013 will exceed 1 trillion, which is more than 67% compared to 2012. But Sun Taoran still only gives Lakara 70 points. In his view, Lacala has gradually become a mature enterprise, but the disease of large companies has already appeared. So the change happened in the last 8 months, and it hopes that by restoring the speed of the startup, the company can be on the channel – “Hurry up, then faster.”
Li Guangyu, the deputy general manager and executive committee member who joined Lakara in 2006, was deeply touched. At the end of last year, at the Shenzhen meeting, Lakara Executive Committee and Sun Taoran made the first change. At that time, the Shenzhen meeting concluded that the internal and external environment has undergone tremendous changes for Lakala and the third-party payment industry.
Throughout Lara's product line, the original simple payment business has spawned multiple product lines, mobile payment, acquiring and community services. These product lines are growing rapidly, but the users are completely inconsistent, the product form is different, and the sales methods are of course different.
Therefore, Sun Taoran was determined to form a group company and built each product line into an independent subsidiary, which made the product lines professional and focused. However, bureaucratization is another important factor that Sun Taoran has repeatedly emphasized to reporters.
For example. The last incident that irritated Sun was that when the product was optimized, the entire team was inefficient. He is outspoken. "A small technical problem, the technical department actually developed the schedule until November, I am very annoyed. Why is the small problem scheduled for two months to go online? I think this is actually a bureaucracy. ".
He did not hide the anger against the officialization of Lakara. In technology research and development, although TMT companies have queues and scheduling problems. But mainly refers to the planning, schedule and scheduling required for large projects. For a technology optimization, it will be delayed for three months due to the expiration of the schedule, and the efficiency is very problematic. Sun said, "This is a small optimization. It takes three hours to get rid of three people."
Bureaucratization seriously violates Sun Taoran's persistence in entrepreneurship. He is still worried, "What is the so-called bureaucracy? It is to deal with things according to written things and things on paper, not according to how it should be done." The violation of entrepreneurship, to some extent Accelerate Sun Taoran's transformation process in Lacala. "The company has this problem when it is big. Some people have solved the problem through sports in the history, such as what kind of rectification movement. I think that it is necessary to solve the problem through the mechanism." That is, the large company splits the independent subsidiary to be responsible for its own profits and losses. . This is more in line with Sun Taoran's understanding of entrepreneurial companies.
Sun Jianling, head of hardware technology at Lakara, said, "In the past, in the Lacala system, if the boss did not focus on a project and did not specify who was responsible, everyone would not take the initiative. Because my KPI is fixed, there are ten products this year. You let me do pre-sales support. Sorry! I don't have this item in my KPI. Assuming that my KPI does not declare intellectual property patents, I will not apply for two patents." At the same time, another Lakara software development design is responsible for Zhang Liming said that after the grouping, the cumbersome reporting process was shortened by 50%. In the past, there were at least ten processes from the declaration project to the product formation.
The goal of splitting into six is ​​to reduce the management procedures of each subsidiary and enhance its own competitiveness in order to deal with competitors on all fronts. Zhang Liming believes that the bottom-up process was cumbersome. Projects can now be launched simultaneously because of the different needs of each subsidiary. For example, when reviewing requirements, a single subsidiary's needs can be put together to concentrate resources and improve efficiency.
Li Guangyu believes that the rapid changes in the external environment have also allowed Lakara to stand on the verge of change. It is undeniable that since the payment of licenses in 2011, the openness of the financial industry has increased and marketization has become a trend. The new financial policy, the liberalization of interest rate liberalization, the introduction of new acquiring methods and the concept of Internet finance have given opportunities to many private institutions, including Lakara, and intensified competition.
Such as Alibaba, Suning, Jingdong Mall are approaching the financial sector. In the process of confronting giant companies, only faster will have opportunities. To do business in the Chinese market, speed is sometimes power. "There are some business rules that have changed. Some market conditions have changed. We have adjusted and sorted out many businesses accordingly. If we don't do it, it may lead to inefficiency of our company." Li Guangyu told reporters.
After the Lakala group, internal competition is inevitable. The group structure allows each subsidiary to be independently accounted for, and the subsidiaries are already market-oriented. For example, the ultimate goal of hardware products is to attract more users. If a company can sell hardware products better than Lacala sales company, the terminal company will provide more sources for it. If a subsidiary can't fight the opponents in the market, it will be eliminated naturally. The management risk of one company is spread to the six companies.
In the face of Sun Taoran, you will find the word "adventure" written in the bones. He founded an advertising company, worked as a business executive, and even founded Lakara without any financial background. In his own proud work, "The 36 Military Regulations of Entrepreneurship," he wrote: "Success always favors those who are adventurous." This sentence guides Sun Taoran from the beginning of the establishment of Lacala: If you have 60% of the things you have to do, you should do it.
Because when things are more certain, it means that the more people do it, it may not be your chance.
Now, Sun’s biggest adventure comes from his community online shopping terminal “open shop treasure”. This is a trading terminal with Android platform - 8-inch capacitive touch screen, which is expensive. Lacala hopes to make this product a "Swiss Army Knife" for community merchants: it can complete the traditional POS machine payment function, and also allows the owner to help customers complete the ordinary Pad online ordering function.
In Sun Taoran's view, Kaidianbao can help community merchants solve three problems: the first to increase popularity, because there are convenience deposits, living services and other content on the store treasure; the second increase in the store category, the store treasure can gather such as Jingdong Mall and other mature E-commerce, community stores can get through the e-commerce website; the third is to reduce costs, in fact, the shop owner is to help e-commerce company sales.
The biggest risk of this product comes from the price. The Pad terminal, which is priced at nearly 5,000 yuan, is not easy to get into the purchase list of small businesses.
Li Guangyu has calculated an account. If a merchant opens a community store, runs a cash register software, buys a computer, installs a POS, etc., the cost of accumulation will be nearly 10,000 yuan, and the cost of opening a store treasure is only half.
Even with this evolution, it is not easy for small and medium-sized shopkeepers who have not yet formed e-commerce thinking to convince them to buy this product. Li is more willing to use the "sub-account" mode to impress the owner. "If you simply divide the ratio, the gross profit is at least 10%. In addition, all the business on the store, the transaction flow will give the owner a fee." Li Guangyu explained that if the owner manages to open the store, he will E-commerce and Lacala have been continuously divided. At the same time, e-commerce has also expanded its business.
The story sounds impeccable, the key is cost and execution, whether it can make its ideas come true.
Sun’s strategy is to sell Lacala store treasures, and does not adopt a “free gift” model. On the one hand, the cost of opening a store is high; on the other hand, Lakara found that the free gift does not achieve the effect that Lakara hopes to achieve - if the owner does not want to operate this product, in fact, the opening rate and activity of the store will be Very low.
Take Lakakara's other mobile phone card reader as an example. “Whenever you buy it, the opening rate is over 95%, and the activity rate is very high. And through some group purchases or through some conference gifts and employee benefits, The opening rate is only half. It doesn't make sense to everyone." Li Guangyu bluntly said.
In the past, Lacala has been eating credit card bonuses, and now it has seen e-commerce dividends. This is the success of Sun Taoran's "60% grasp".
In this transformation, Sun Taoran personally served as CEO of the e-commerce company. Sun judged individual users