Originated from China Business Network
2020 social responsibility report was formally released on May 18. A report on donation of disinfection products valued 200 million Yuan was eye-catching. It was a huge donation to fight the epidemic of the daily chemical industry.
For president of Liby Group Chen Zebin, this report had another meaning: Digitalization reform that he resolutely upheld yielded unusually brilliant results in the two-month donation action. It was just because of the 5-year digitalization reform that Liby Group overcame the difficulties in work resumption, allocated more than 10000 employees and succeeded in donating above 1t disinfection products.
During the epidemic, Chen Zebin and all Liby people not only endured the hardship but also delivered a satisfactory report.
How to quickly deliver disinfection products valued 200 million Yuan
The epidemic broke out on the eve of Spring Festival, followed by stockout of disinfection products such as mask and disinfectant. Frontline hospitals were even caught in shortage of epidemic prevention materials. On January 27, chairman of Liby Group Chen Kaixuan made a decision on donating and distributing disinfection products valued 200 million Yuan to more than 2000 designated hospitals across the country.
Chen Zebin made a first response to this decision by “a matter of course”. Facing the unexpected epidemic, he thought Liby must make every endeavor to protect frontline medical workers in badly need of disinfection products.
Meanwhile, he considered execution more as a pragmatic leader: Before the epidemic, disinfection products were minority commodities with limited capacity. After the outbreak, existing capacity could not satisfy the soaring need and there was a must to enlarge the capacity! Nevertheless, it was hard for factories to resume work and traffic was cut off. How to quickly organize to produce 33 types of 10000t disinfection products and deliver them to more than 2000 designated hospitals in 363 cities was a heavy task.
Chen Zebin recalled: “Donation of disinfection products valued 200 million Yuan was backed by a series of difficulties in organizing work resumption quickly, allocating production materials urgently and coordinating with logistics transportation resources, which was not easy during the Spring Festival when the whole staff was quarantined at home!”
Liby Group did not back down from the epidemic. On January 28, the Company established “200 million Yuan donation project action group”, which consisted of all business divisions and comprehensively started deployment of donation. On one hand, the group distributed a few inventories to Hubei, “the severely afflicted area”. On the other hand, the group hurried up to prepare for work resumption.
Internally, Liby Group should coordinate with R&D, purchasing, production, logistics and warehousing of bases and brand service providers. At this special time, the digital operation platform built under the leadership of Chen Zebin played a critical role.
Although the epidemic disabled site office, Liby Group quickly organized all employees even brand service providers across the country to enable telecommuting by February 3 and telecommuting+ site office by February 10 using the digital mobile office platform-Dudu, made full use of “cloud office” to improve efficiency, fully supported production and transportation scheduling of “donation of materials valued 200 million Yuan” and realized whole-staff epidemic fighting.
How difficult it was to seek upstream materal suppliers during the epidemic. Upstream suppliers were also confronted with the difficulty in work resumption. The supplier database of Liby Group came into play within a very short time. For instance, disinfectant was mainly intended for individuals before, but large package was more suitable for hospitals. Existing packing material suppliers could not satisfy this need, so the Company quickly searched new suppliers of large barrel in the database.
Backed by “an invisible hand” digitalization, donation of Liby Group was in an orderly way. On January 29, some products donated by the Company have arrived in Wuhan, Xiaogan, Shiyan and the construction site of Leishenshan Hospital. On the same day, the Company urgently allocated 42 employees to resume the disinfection production line of Maanshan production base.
On February 1, Liby Group allocated 1022 employees of Panyu, Xinxiang, Siping and Sichuan bases to resume work.
On February 7, the first batch of products donated by Liby Group was successfully delivered to 5 hospitals such as UHAN JINYINTAN HOSPITAL and Wuhan Caidian District People’s Hospital.
On February 10, Liby Group resumed work of Tianjin, Kunming and Nansha production bases again and the headquarters also resumed work roundly.
Chen Zebin introduced that a total of more than 10000 employees, 680 brand service providers and more than 1000 transport vehicles with a load distance of 400,000km were mobilized for this donation. On March 15, 2020, Liby Group completed distribution of all donated products 5 days prior to the time agreed with Red Cross Society of China, which was attributed to strong supply chain ability of Liby Group.
He was delighted that his philosophy for public benefit was fully verified and practiced in this donation: “Social benefit is more than a figure of donation but driving more people to get involved and giving everyone the sense of participation and value. The strongest support for public benefit is that everyone does what they can in work and life.”
Model for digitalization reform
Except for donation, Liby Group endeavored to satisfy the market need for disinfection products and facilitated to fight the epidemic. By virtue of the digital operation platform, Liby Group launched more than 1000 purchasing meetings with more than 20000 downstream retailers and quickly distributed disinfection products to the market.
Digital deployment helped the Group not only pass the test but also deliver a good report. The maximum daily shipment reached 560 trucks during the epidemic, setting a record since the establishment of Liby Group.
At the mention of digitalization reform, Chen Zebin considered himself as more than the impeller but benefited from Liby’s cognition and mastery of the Internet era and the digitalization trend.
Relative to the last generation insensitive to digitalization and informatization, Chen Zebin, the generation after 85s, benefited from Internet and new media and had obvious advantage of digital interconnection. By means of great concern about digitalization and Internet of Things and comprehension of the business environment in the new era, Chen Zebin deployed digital transformation strategy early in 2015, which raised the curtain of marketing digitalization 3.0 project.
With his help, Liby Group upgraded the IT Department to “digital intelligent center” and started to march towards industry interconnection, organization ecologicalization and business digitalization. The Group gradually fulfilled upgrading and transformation of business digitalization of “marketing 3.0”, “supply chain 3.0” and “management 3.0” and preliminarily built a diversified digital product matrix based on core business.
2017 was a commemorative year in the development history of Liby Group, in which Liby Group generated a sale exceeding 20 billion Yuan and sales of detergents ranked China’s first and the world’s fourth.
However, as a leading daily chemical enterprise, Liby Group did not immerse in previous performance but prepared for danger in times of safety, looked into the future and focused on deployment of digitalization strategy.
As a leading daily chemical enterprise that competed against state-owned enterprises and overseas-funded enterprises and grew stronger in the 1990s, Liby Group mainly engaged in fabric cleaning, household cleaning, tableware cleaning, household disinfection, air refreshing, hair care, facial care, oral care and body care and has 6 self-owned brands and 15 agent brands. How to further improve operational capacity of Liby Group is a question that “the entrepreneurial second generation” must ponder. As new retail rises, channel marketing of the daily chemical industry turns complicated and consumer need changes, how to quickly satisfy market needs is also a test.
Informatization, digitalization and intelligence are the trend that manufacturing enterprises must embrace and the whole process of organizational production, operating management, marketing, logistics and customer management has entered the era of informatization, digitalization and intelligence. “For traditional manufacturers such as Liby, it is hard to realize digitalization upgrading by one step. Intelligent manufacturing is a progressive process which is constantly adjusted and upgraded as appropriate. Just like a game, equipment upgrades, energy increases, new skills and breakthroughs are tried to approach perfection.” Chen Zebin said.
At the beginning of the epidemic, Liby Group’s digitalization reform has taken into initial shape and built an ecosphere making up of brand service provider, shopping guide, consumer, employee and supplier, which can be linked for rapid collaboration. With the supply system as an example, Liby Group has realized online new product development, whole-process visualization, inter-system new product information sharing, whole-process systematic management of purchase order and supplier’s order response speed up to 8.4h.
The epidemic demonstrated great perspectiveness of digitalization layout of Liby Group.
In Chen Zebin’s opinion, the epidemic will be a catalyst for traditional enterprises to accelerate digitalization transformation and reform, “When social needs and the media environment grow rapidly today, business leaders also need to adapt to and change concepts quickly in order to face problems directly and effectively.”
Digitalization transformation makes the 26-year old enterprise younger and opens up a new journey. After the epidemic, Liby Group makes a deeper exploration of digitalization and the digitalization course displays strong risk resistance of national enterprises. Digitalization transformation may become an excellent model for transformation of the daily chemical industry.
