4次迭代 领先未来提供一站式采购方案|产业互联网CEO访谈

This article is an exclusive interview by ebrun.com with the General Manager of Lingxian Weilai, a leading B2B corporate procurement platform, which collates key insights on the company’s development, industry trends and digital transformation practices. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Founded 15 years ago, Lingxian Weilai has gone through four iterations of transformation. It started as an office supplies business in North China, gradually built its in-house digital system, expanded product categories, and scaled its business from the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region to the whole country. Today, it offers 22 major product categories, covers more than 5,000 well-known brands and over 2 million core SKUs, operates nearly 1,000 service outlets extending down to county-level areas, and generates over 95% of its revenue from direct system-to-system connections.

2. The corporate procurement industry has completed its evolution from offline procurement to e-commerce procurement, and is now in a period of rapid growth for digital procurement. Currently, digital procurement accounts for around 10% of the total industry, and this share will continue to rise. The overall industry is moving toward high connectivity, efficient collaboration, and standardized transparency.

3. Lingxian Weilai has developed differentiated one-stop procurement solutions for different types of clients, enabling enterprises to digitalize the entire procurement process and ultimately achieve the goal of cost reduction and efficiency improvement.

This article shares key insights on industry trends, channel expansion and demand matching for B2B brand owners, with core content as follows:

1. Driven by national policy support and endogenous market demand, digital corporate procurement is now in a period of rapid growth, with an initial industrial structure already formed. Currently, digital procurement accounts for only 10% of the total industry, and its share will continue to increase. Full-scenario digital procurement is a clear growth trend, and brand owners can seize this digital transformation opportunity to expand their presence in the B2B market.

2. As a nationwide one-stop digital procurement platform, Lingxian Weilai connects a massive volume of enterprise clients across different industries and of different sizes. Brand owners can access the platform’s supply network, leverage its digital capabilities and down-market service network to quickly reach target customers and effectively expand their B2B sales channels.

3. The platform analyzes procurement demand trends via industry big data, which helps brand owners accurately match customer needs to secure more orders. It also enables brand owners to track shifts in market demand to guide product R&D adjustments and improve their brands’ market competitiveness.

This article shares industry trends, referenceable business models and clear growth opportunities for sellers in the B2B procurement space, with key insights as follows:

1. Driven by both policy support and market demand, digital corporate procurement is currently in a period of rapid growth. With digital procurement accounting for only 10% of the total industry today, the space for future growth is enormous, making it a high-potential growth track. Sellers can layout early to capture market share.

2. Sellers can draw lessons from Lingxian Weilai’s development path: always iterate and transform around customer demand, start from a niche product category, gradually build in-house digital capabilities, steadily expand product lines and service coverage, layout service outlets in down markets to cover multi-scenario procurement needs, and scale up market size step by step.

3. Sellers can develop tailored offerings to match the differentiated needs of different customers: build customized one-stop online procurement platforms for clients without in-house procurement systems, provide API integration services for large enterprise clients with existing self-built platforms, and launch dedicated services for specific scenarios such as employee benefits and marketing. This approach meets diverse demand and opens up new room for growth.

This article delivers clear actionable insights on digital transformation, procurement upgrading and business opportunities for manufacturing factories, with core information as follows:

1. In current factory operations, indirect (non-production) material procurement consumes almost 80% of total procurement manpower and time. Traditional fragmented indirect procurement also suffers from pain points including fragmented upstream and downstream links, disorganized SKU management, opaque pricing, and non-standardized services. Digitizing procurement is a key direction for factories to cut costs and improve efficiency.

2. Factories can partner with a professional digital procurement platform like Lingxian Weilai. Leveraging the platform’s digital service matrix, factories can digitize and intelligentize the entire indirect procurement process from product selection to settlement, achieve integrated procurement management, data-driven decision making, and standardized workflows, reduce procurement management costs, and free up manpower to focus on core production links.

3. Production factories can also join the platform’s digital supply network as suppliers. With access to the platform’s customer resources and digital capabilities, they can accurately reach procurement demand to secure more business orders, and use the platform’s big data to track shifts in market demand to adjust product design and production plans to better fit market needs.

This article shares industry trends, core customer pain points and mature implementation solutions for the B2B digital procurement service sector, offering high reference value for peer service providers, with core content as follows:

1. Industry development trend: The corporate procurement industry has entered a period of rapid growth for digital procurement. Currently, digital procurement accounts for only 10% of the total industry, leaving enormous market room for growth. The industry will develop toward high connectivity, efficient collaboration, and standardized transparency in the future. The core value of digital services is to help clients cut costs, improve efficiency, and boost the circulation efficiency of the industrial chain.

2. Core customer pain points: Demand varies significantly across different customers. Small and medium-sized enterprises lack the capacity to build their own procurement platforms, while large enterprise clients with in-house platforms need integration support, and there are also customized demands for niche scenarios such as employee welfare and marketing. Traditional procurement models generally suffer from low efficiency, high costs, and low transparency.

3. Referenceable solutions: Invest early in technology R&D to build an in-house digital system, develop a differentiated service matrix tailored to different customers and different scenarios, layout offline service outlets and front warehouses in down markets to build an online-offline closed-loop service system, and leverage big data to improve demand matching efficiency to better meet customer needs.

Taking leading platform Lingxian Weilai as a case study, this article shares the development path, operation practices and risk warnings for digital corporate procurement platforms, with key insights as follows:

1. Core logic of platform development: Customer demand is the core driving force for platform iteration. All four of Lingxian Weilai’s transformations centered on customer demand. Platform operators must always build their capabilities around customer needs to adapt to market development, a lesson valuable for all platform operators.

2. Mature operational practices to reference: Invest early in in-house digital technology R&D, launch differentiated service products for different customer groups to cover full-category, full-scenario procurement needs, layout nationwide service networks in down markets, build front warehouses to improve fulfillment efficiency, and leverage big data to achieve accurate demand matching and boost overall procurement efficiency.

3. Risk warning: Digitalization is only an enabler for procurement; its essence remains serving procurement. Platforms should avoid straying from the core nature of procurement to blindly pursue technology iteration. They must always build services around the core goal of cost reduction and efficiency improvement, build a collaboratively symbiotic industrial ecosystem, and avoid the risk of strategic misalignment.

This article records the latest industry developments and the innovative business model of a leading player in the B2B digital corporate procurement space, offering high value as research material. Core content is as follows:

1. Latest industry developments: China’s corporate procurement industry has completed two evolutionary phases (offline procurement and e-commerce procurement) and is now in a period of rapid growth for digital procurement. Currently, digital procurement accounts for 10% of the total industry. Driven by national policy support and growing market demand, the industry will develop toward smart procurement covering full scenarios, full processes and a full ecosystem, with core features of high connectivity, efficient collaboration, and standardized transparency.

2. Innovative business model of the leading player: Lingxian Weilai has developed a mature one-stop digital corporate procurement model, centered on customer demand through four iterations, building a differentiated service matrix covering different customers and different scenarios, integrating upstream and downstream resources via digital technology, and forming a closed ecosystem of online procurement plus offline services to achieve multi-stakeholder collaborative win-win outcomes.

3. Key directions for further research include: the implementation path for digital transformation of indirect procurement, the application of digital technology in B2B procurement, and the construction logic for industrial internet ecosystems, all of which are new research topics in this field.