联想公司过去10年的PC商业策略，重要的都在这儿了

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The PC business is a conservative industry...PC-makers' greatest innovations may be not in what they sell, but in how.                                                                                                                                            — The Economist

Lenovo's success in recent years is startling. The company became the world's largest seller of PCs in Q3 2012 in terms of shipments, ahead of Hewlett-Packard (HP), and this record had lasted for 10 quarters. By 2015, Lenovo operates in more than 60 countries, serves customers from more than 160 countries, holds 21 percent of the global PC market, and targets to obtain 30 percent outside China. Compared with its humble beginning, which was an initial capital of $25,000, the sheer speed of change and progress that the company has made are quite significant.

A review of the evolution of sales approach that Lenovo has adopted might illustrate the idea that "gales of creative destruction" indeed comes from the ongoing efforts that made by entrepreneurs in finding better ways to serve the markets.

The global PC industry didn't involve many remarkably new technologies except for the "Wintel" pairing that Intel and Microsoft has made, other improvements for products were mostly feature-wise. As The Economist has observed, "The [PC] industry's biggest innovation of the past 25 years was not technological but logistical. ...PC-makers' greatest innovations may be not in what they sell, but in how".

LENOVO'S DUAL BUSINESS MODEL IN CHINA

The "Dual Business Model" is one of the cornerstones contributes to Lenovo's success in China PC market. The model "lies in the end-to-end integration of product development, marketing, sales, manufacturing and customer service", Yang Yuanqing, Chairman and CEO of Lenovo explained, this model "allowing fast, yet disciplined, response to market shifts, allowing Lenovo to operate efficiently on an optimized cost structure".

Back to 1990s when Lenovo launched its own Legend PCs and expanded sales in China, the company set up extensive distribution network and channels throughout the country. Thousands of distributors and retailers were encompassed in the system, and Lenovo maintained good relationships with them. The company knew that the local vendors had better perceptions and understandings of rural consumers, and sometimes they were also able to provide seamless after-sales service. These were a few homegrown advantages at that time lent to the company.

Statistics showed that till 2009, the marketing reach of Lenovo had access to over 13,000 sales points in the Chinese distribution network, covering 100% of all Tier 1-6 cities, of which 80% were exclusive distributors of Lenovo products—a scale that cannot be matched by its foreign competitors like HP, or predictably, HP would kill itself if the company started trying.

At the mean time, another group of clients—the commercial users in the market had increased rapidly. Unlike individual consumers, business buyers had various demands over PCs and services, like customized configurations, imaging, asset tagging, bundling of products, and so on. In this regard, Dell's direct sales mode 'made-to-order' had a particular strength to meet these diversities and to win business clients. As a result, Lenovo's market leader position was threatened.

In addition, from 2003, the Chinese government began to set goals to construct e-government for online processing of public administration to promote overall national informatization. It was a blueprint setting out to capitalize on the enormous commercial potentials that technologies had brought to the country. Therefore, at that time, almost every corner of social and economic life, witnessed a fast grow of demand for IT system solutions.

To keep up with these increasing trends, in 2004, Lenovo took the innovative "Dual Business Model" as an approach to regain its dominant position in China market. The company segmented current customers into two types: transactional customers and relationship customers (transactional customers refer to individual buyers and clients from small and medium-sized businesses, while relationship customers refer to clients from large enterprises with more than 1,500 employees such as ICBC, education institutes, and government agencies), Lenovo built complementary business models on the basis of their different needs and preferences, in terms of products, services, and buying channels.

Lenovo's Dual Business  Model                                                                      Source: Analyst Roundtable—Protect Strengths, Attack Opportunities, by Chen Shaopeng, President in Emerging Markets Group and Senior VP of Lenovo Group, 2009.

For transactional customers, more often than not, price and design are their main concerns. They are more likely to collect external information to help them find out which functions are most suitable, and they usually prefer to have their PCs delivered immediately once a purchase decision is made. Responsiveness is important to them. Thus, in the support of transactional customers, Lenovo hinged on its already-built network of distributors as the primary channel, rather than the online platforms and physical storefronts.

For relationship customers, the PCs/IT products/systems are used in the workplace where a specific situation or environment is involved, clients in this regard often asked for a higher standard in stability and security, thus, tailor-made solutions and personalized service are critical. Sales for relationship customers, in real operation, were executed through a combination of internal sales representatives and business partners.

Even though certain dedicated teams and business units were established to deal with different type of customers, Lenovo, in parallel, also integrated several functions together (such as producing platforms, corporate communication, supply chain management etc.) so as to operate with higher efficiency on an optimized cost structure.

In a nutshell, this dual model in essence was an arrangement, to capture the convergence through leveraging the complementary nature of the two customer bases.

LENOVO'S RAPID GLOBAL EXPANSION

Nowadays Lenovo controls nearly 30 percent of the Chinese PC market, and is steadily building its share outside China with diverse product portfolio. To further drive growth in shipments and expand market shares, and to increase global presence, Yang Yuanqing put the corporate strategy "protect and attack" in motion since 2009. This strategy indicated that Lenovo sought to protect its two profit centres — global commercial PCs and China, and meanwhile to attack high growth opportunities existed in other geographical areas like the U.S. and the emerging markets.

Speed was highly valued in every aspect, which took in many forms.

Mergers and acquisitions have been useful for Lenovo to quickly grow its global presence. Except for the significant move of acquiring IBM's PC division in 2005, Lenovo has also completed several takeovers in recent years. For example, in 2011 it bought the European electronics firm Medion, the deal effectively doubled the company's share in German PC market, in 2012, it acquired CCE, Brazil's largest PC and consumer electronics vendor.

Think global, act local. Lenovo also set up overseas factories in order to localize productions and to raise the company's profile in major markets. In the U.S., for example, it announced its official opening of the first PC manufacturing line in June 2013. Despite of starting with only a few million dollars and just over 100 workers, "…this is the first of many steps to increase our production capabilities", said Mr. David Schmoock, the company's former president for North America. However, the company had yet become popular in the U.S. as it does elsewhere, in 2014, the market share for U.S. PC shipments was a little more than 10%, ranked 4th, behind HP(27%), Dell(24%) and Apple(12%). Even though Lenovo is among the top PC brands that U.S. consumers consider to buy, nonetheless, "awareness doesn't translate into sales until you crack the top three".

Replicate China models in emerging markets. Countries like India and Russia, have sizeable domestic demand bases and rapid rates of economic development. To address the high-growth opportunities in these areas, Lenovo has broaden its production line with innovative products which were elaborately-priced, and also extended the company's strategic experience that tried out in China to these newly-created business settings, expecting that in other regions their past success would also repeat.

India, for example, a country has traditionally been a price sensitive market for PCs, where the computer penetration rate was only at 10%, lower than several other developing countries. As believed that the country's consumer behaviors are similar to the Chinese, Lenovo India, replicated the China "Dual Business Model " (Transactional and Relationship) in building its own channel structure, made products available in specific channels that customer preferred. However, operating in a hard-to-predict market environment for years, although the company held a 3rd place in 2014 with 15.8% market share, it was still facing very intense competition from rivals HP, Dell, and Acer. And for the time being, the potential of China model's applicability in India is too early to tell, the outcome in the long-term remains to be seen.

CHALLENGES AHEAD

Today's PC industry is undertaken a sweeping transformation driven by the development of mobile Internet. Lenovo refers it as "PC-plus" era, a period where consumers use smart connected devices such as tablets and smartphones to meet their day-to-day computing needs. To echo the new trends the era has brought along, in 2014, the company adjusted its organizational structure, established four new and distinct business groups, namely, PC business group, mobile business group, enterprise, ecosystem and cloud services, with an aim of becoming faster, more focused and efficient to grab the diverse global market with a wide range of technology needs.

Despite financial statement reported high restructuring costs, which even incurred a loss in six years for the first time, few can deny that Lenovo has taken impressive strides in recent years running. We therefore, very much hope to see that in the near future the company will rebound, be strengthened, and enhanced as a true leader by the ongoing transformation, and be reinvigorated, to attack the "PC-plus" opportunity.

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