Entity enterprises are characterized by complete organization, complete functions and closed operation. For example, a physical company has its own workshop.
Virtual enterprise is characterized by some virtual organizations and functions, and it can only complete business processes through cooperation with other enterprises.
At present, enterprises in China are mainly entity enterprises. Entity enterprises can learn from the management ideas of virtual enterprises, implement virtual management of enterprises, and enhance their market adaptability. Enterprise virtualization management is the main mode of business model reform in China.
* * So far, virtual enterprise has not formed a completely unified definition. Theoretical and practical circles have made different understandings and definitions of virtual enterprises based on different environments, or from different angles, emphases and scope of application. Compared with the traditional enterprise entity management, the management mode of virtual enterprise is "virtual management".
First, the operating characteristics of generalized virtual enterprises:
1, business outsourcing. This is the main form of virtual enterprise management. First of all, we must determine the core competitive advantage of the enterprise, concentrate the intelligence and resources within the enterprise on those activities with core advantages, and then outsource the remaining activities of the enterprise to the best professional company. Each team in the virtual enterprise is located in the "strategic link" of its own value chain, pursuing the realization of core functions and virtualizing non-core functions. For example, Boeing, the world's largest aircraft manufacturing company, only produces cockpits and wing tips; Nike, the largest sports shoes manufacturer in the world, has never produced a pair of shoes, and so on. The virtual cooperation mode of business outsourcing not only makes the production cost of different products tend to be lower and the efficiency is improved, but also can promote enterprises to constantly adapt to the changing market demand and reduce risks, thus creating competitive advantages for enterprises to operate with high flexibility.
2. Enterprise * * *. Enterprise * * * is also called "* * * with the same position", that is, several enterprises have the same needs, and for the sake of technical confidentiality or cost, they jointly invest to establish specialized manufacturers to produce the parts that they are unwilling to outsource, and share the benefits and be responsible for the costs. For example, a financial institution is not good at information management, because it involves its own interests and is unwilling to outsource, but it is also unwilling to bear the cost of training professionals independently. It can set up a special department to handle information management business in conjunction with other financial institutions. The merged information service is not only convenient for its own needs, but also easy to produce economies of scale.
3. Strategic alliance. Strategic alliance means that different enterprises have different key resources, and form a strategic alliance to exchange each other's resources and create new competitive advantages for each other's interests and the needs of developing the market. For example, Compaq Computer Company has established strategic alliances with dozens of well-known software and hardware companies (such as Microsoft) in order to quickly intervene in the unfamiliar personal computer market. In addition, most of the components of Compaq are outsourced, and it has only mastered the rapid R&D capability and marketing network, and achieved great market success. Strategic alliance can not only obtain economies of scale, but also restrain excessive competition and maintain competitive order through strong alliance.
4. Virtual sales. The so-called "virtual sales" is to separate the "property right" relationship between the headquarters of an enterprise or company and its sales network, and virtualize sales, so that the sales network of an enterprise becomes a sales company with independent legal personality. This virtual sales method can not only save the management costs and marketing expenses of the company's headquarters, but also make full use of the distribution channels of independent sales companies to widely promote the products of enterprises, urge enterprises to devote themselves to the innovation of products and technologies, continuously enhance the competitive advantage of enterprise brand products, and also promote the rapid growth of sales companies, recruit a large number of excellent marketing personnel, and continuously expand the marketing network of enterprise products.
Combined with the above characteristics, the virtual enterprise includes three aspects:
First, the virtual form of enterprise organization. The networking of information technology makes almost no boundaries between different enterprises, institutions and customers to some extent.
Second, the virtualization of internal functions of enterprises. Virtual enterprise organization forms externalize the internal functions of enterprises and directly face the external market, so that some internal organizational functions of traditional enterprises are realized by external enterprises or institutions.
Third, the virtualization of enterprise management methods and means. Virtual enterprises can not rely on the authority and orders of top managers to achieve and maintain the integrity and fixity of organizational structure, but rely on the economic interests of enterprises to maintain their order through information exchange and resource sharing.
Therefore, the virtual enterprise in this paper refers to the open organizational structure between independent enterprises based on market opportunities, and the relationship between member enterprises is a combination of relative stability and dynamic adjustment. With the development of information technology and network economy, they quickly integrate the unique advantages of their respective professional fields, realize the optimal allocation and integrated utilization of external resources, and thus complete the market functions that a single enterprise cannot bear with strong structural cost advantages and flexibility. Therefore, from the perspective of value analysis, the member enterprises that make up a virtual enterprise are essentially complementary in value. Each member enterprise has a well-planned coordination mechanism and a fully functional information network, and realizes the best configuration through the rapid transportation system. On the basis of complementary advantages, the member enterprises of virtual enterprise have actually formed a cross-enterprise, cross-industry and even cross-regional value chain.
Second, the value chain analysis of virtual enterprises
(A), the virtual enterprise's internal value chain analysis
Product design, production, market planning, distribution and after-sales service within the virtual enterprise constitute the value chain within the enterprise. The internal value chain of virtual enterprise includes both the value chain between alliance member enterprises and the internal value chain of each member enterprise (including the leader enterprise).
The key to analyze the internal value chain of virtual enterprise is to find out which activities in the whole value chain system of virtual enterprise produce the competitive advantage of virtual enterprise and which are the real value-added activities in the value chain, and then manage these activities more effectively. The significance of implementing internal value chain analysis in virtual enterprises lies in optimizing the core business process of the whole enterprise alliance, reducing the organization and operation costs of virtual enterprises and enhancing the market competitiveness of the value chain. It is based on the changing needs of customers and the increasingly competitive market, with process management as the main line and the ultimate goal of maximizing the overall profit of the value chain.
(B), the virtual enterprise industry value chain analysis
The industry value chain analysis of virtual enterprise is to achieve a certain goal, select some manufacturers from the industry value chain conditionally, and temporarily form a relatively close connection of supply, production and sales by the best dynamic combination. Because virtual enterprise is a multi-functional and dynamically combined value chain, the basic components of the whole virtual enterprise include "upstream" parties such as suppliers and "downstream" parties such as suppliers, customers and cooperative enterprises. , can increase the overall functional value of product development, production, sales and management, so as to realize the optimal allocation of assets, product value and product cost.
To this end, we need to consider from two aspects:
Firstly, determine the independent links related to virtual enterprise business in the industrial value chain;
The second is to evaluate the position and relative strength of each link of virtual enterprise in the industry value chain. By analyzing the independent links of the industrial value chain, the most important and key nodes in the virtual enterprise value chain can be identified and separated. Through the further analysis of key nodes, we can deeply understand the value creation activities of virtual enterprises, guide virtual enterprises to optimize nodes, and thus gain value added.
(C), virtual enterprise competitors value chain analysis
No enterprise can go beyond the value chain of its industry, and there are often competitors producing the same product in the industry, and the competition between enterprises has evolved into the competition between enterprise value chains. Leading enterprises in virtual enterprises must consider the value activities of existing and potential competitors, understand the value chain of competitors and adjust the cost drivers of value activities, so that virtual enterprises can compete effectively with them. Generally speaking, on the basis of market investigation, leading enterprises decompose competitors' products into parts through disassembly analysis, thus inferring their value chain and product cost and finding out their competitive advantages and disadvantages. In contrast, if the cumulative total cost of all activities in the virtual enterprise value chain is less than that of competitors, it has a strategic cost advantage.
The competition faced by virtual enterprises is the competition between value chains. What customers care about is no longer the core competitiveness that a single member enterprise can provide, but the competitiveness of the whole value chain. Therefore, the scope of virtual enterprise management must also extend from enterprise internal expansion to the whole value chain. The significance of implementing value chain analysis in virtual enterprises lies in optimizing the core business process of the whole enterprise alliance, reducing the organization and operation costs of virtual enterprises and enhancing the market competitiveness of the value chain. It is based on the changing needs of customers and the increasingly competitive market, with process management as the main line and the ultimate goal of maximizing the overall profit of the value chain.
Third, the new development of value chain research
Virtual value chain can be seen from the new changes of value chain under knowledge economy and the analysis of virtual enterprise value chain. In the face of the rapid development of information technology, the extensive use of the Internet in the production and business activities of enterprises, and the brand-new competitive environment, the traditional value chain theory can not give a reasonable explanation for the rational behavior of many enterprises, and it is increasingly showing inaction. In this situation, the emergence of virtual value chain, a new product of value chain research theory based on current historical conditions and competitive environment, is inevitable.
(I) Proposing Virtual Value Chain Virtual value chain was first proposed by Jeffrey Freyport and John J Svikola, professors of Harvard Business School, in the article "Developing Virtual Value Chain" in 1995. They divide the competitive environment of enterprises into two parts: one is the material world called market place, and the other is the virtual world called market space. The material world is made up of tangible resources, while the virtual world is made up of information, which can conduct e-commerce and create new value. They also pointed out that virtual value chain creates value by collecting, organizing, selecting, synthesizing and distributing information. From their description of virtual value chain, it is not difficult to draw that virtual value chain and traditional value chain are two parallel value chains, the former exists in the material world and the latter exists in the information world. Then, in the traditional value chain, the information flow formed by the collection, processing and utilization of information by enterprises serves the production and circulation of physical products, only as an auxiliary activity, and does not create value itself. The virtual value chain is the information itself, so the information collection, processing and processing at this time are regarded as the basic business activities of enterprises, and the process itself will produce value added. Therefore, if the value chain is defined as a generalized value chain, it includes the material value chain of material space (that is, the traditional value chain) and the virtual value chain of market space. The former mainly relies on physical products to achieve value-added, while the latter mainly relies on information products to achieve value-added. They are interrelated and parallel.
(B) the characteristics of virtual value chain:
Virtual value chain has the following characteristics:
1, immaterial. In every link of virtual value chain, the object of value activity is no longer material resources, but information. Enterprises in market space are no longer bound by traditional production factors such as land, labor and capital, but are only influenced by information processing ability. Material resources are scarce, while information resources are growing at an explosive rate. The utilization of material resources requires a lot of costs, and with the increase of scarcity, the cost will rise faster. The richness and availability of information resources greatly reduces the cost of enterprises, enabling enterprises to process and utilize information at very low cost or even zero cost.
2. flexibility. The flexibility of virtual value chain is mainly manifested in two aspects: first, enterprises can provide diversified services to customers at multiple levels and in different types by handling information flexibly; Second, enterprises can provide customers with valuable information in every link of the virtual value chain, that is, there are multiple value-added points that can provide customers with value.
3. unique. Different enterprises can design the same product line and produce products with similar styles and functions to compete. However, in the field of using information to create value, due to the richness and diversity of information itself and the different ways of information processing, each enterprise's virtual value chain is unique and can't be imitated by opponents.
4. stick to it. Virtual value chain is not the synthesis of technology, but the performance of enterprise experience and skills in information utilization. The different development process of enterprises determines that the experience and skills of enterprises are difficult to imitate, which makes the virtual value chain persistent in maintaining the competitiveness of enterprises. The general models of virtual value chain are as follows: online supply management, virtual production, online inventory management, online marketing, information technology platform, power, capital, intelligence, third-party logistics technology development and online service generation. It can be seen that the virtual value chain originated from the traditional value chain, but its concept has been improved, which is the new development of the traditional value chain in the information field. From traditional value chain to virtual value chain, enterprises have a process of processing different levels of information, that is, the information of every value activity in the traditional value chain. Through the five-step processing process of collecting, organizing, selecting, synthesizing and distributing, corresponding information value-added activities can be formed in the virtual value chain. Virtual value chain is the reflection of the information value-added process of traditional value chain in market space, so every link in virtual value chain can correspond to traditional value chain.
(C) the construction and optimization of virtual value chain:
Applying virtual value chain theory to enterprises can inject enough vitality into enterprises and enhance their competitiveness, which is undoubtedly a development direction of enterprises in the information economy era. The following will analyze the main countermeasures for the construction and optimization of virtual value chain:
1, advocating business process reengineering. Business Process Reengineering (BPR) means to fundamentally rethink and completely transform the business process of an enterprise, so that the enterprise can significantly improve its performance in terms of cost, quality, service and speed, and emphasizes that the performance can be greatly improved by making full use of information technology. An all-round business process reengineering includes the reorganization of ideas, organizational structure, production processes, business models, resources and culture. In the process of enterprise process implementation, the process reorganization within the function can be carried out, that is, the reorganization within the functional department; It can also be reorganized between functions, that is, between different functional departments; It is also possible to carry out process reengineering between organizations, that is, process reengineering between two or more enterprises.
2. Implement the e-commerce plan. 1997165438+10 At the World Electronic Commerce Conference held in Paris in October, the International Chamber of Commerce made a conceptual exposition on e-commerce: e-commerce refers to the electronic realization of the whole trade activity, that is, any form of commercial trade conducted by the parties to the transaction by electronic means rather than through comprehensive exchanges or direct interviews. E-commerce is the main way of enterprises' activities in the market space, and it is also the concentrated expression of various value activities in the virtual value chain. It includes information exchange in the market space, the realization of electronic transactions and the realization of various products or services trading activities in the market. If an enterprise wants to occupy a place in the highly competitive information economy era, it must put its traditional business activities into the market space, re-examine all kinds of traditional activities by using the virtual value chain, and extract some information from them, thus forming the virtual value chain of the enterprise and guiding its trading activities in the market space. And this action process needs e-commerce to support, otherwise it will become a castle in the air. 3. Establish the management system of customer relations department. Customer relationship management is a customer-centered management concept. Its core idea is to regard customers as important enterprise resources, and improve the service level to customers through systematic research on customers, so as to better meet customers' needs and provide relevant support for enterprise decision-making, with the ultimate goal of realizing customers' maximum profit contribution to enterprises and enterprises' best service to customers. When optimizing the virtual value chain, enterprises must make use of the advanced network communication technology and the powerful function of the database to provide online services for customers, and analyze the changes, flows, opinions and suggestions of customers in time, so as to better grasp the dynamics of customer demand, serve customers, effectively connect the value chain of enterprises with the value chain of customers, and finally form an interest alliance between enterprises and customers, thus contributing to the emergence of a win-win value chain system.
(D) Virtual enterprise strategy based on virtual value chain analysis:
Cost management framework The formation of virtual enterprises and the choice of partners have great influence on the cost management of virtual enterprises. In the process of establishing virtual enterprises, the application of virtual value chain analysis method to optimize virtual enterprises can fundamentally reduce and control the operating costs of virtual enterprises.
1. Value chain analysis of virtual enterprises In the process of establishing virtual enterprises, partners can be optimized through value chain analysis. The value chain analysis of virtual enterprise involves three key concepts: value chain, core competence and enterprise agility. Value chain is a system composed of interdependent and interrelated activities, which describes a series of activities to increase the value of enterprise products or services. Core competitiveness is the key ability and resource that enterprises rely on to seize opportunities and participate in market competition. Enterprise agility means that enterprises can quickly allocate resources such as technology, equipment and talents, and respond to customers' needs quickly and effectively. In the process of value chain analysis, the core competence and enterprise agility of each enterprise are analyzed, evaluated and compared to determine whether the overall core competitiveness of the virtual enterprise meets the needs of its objectives and the requirements of the project. According to the strategic objectives of virtual enterprises, we should weigh and choose between value activities, adjust the relationship between value chains, and eliminate enterprises that do not have core competitiveness until we find an ideal partner. It can be seen that the purpose of virtual enterprise value chain analysis is to blur the weak, strengthen the alliance and enhance the overall competitive advantage.
2. Cost driver analysis of virtual enterprise. The strategic cost drivers of virtual enterprises have a great influence on the cost, which is also plastic. Considering the strategic cost driver, cost management can control a large number of potential cost problems in the daily operation of virtual enterprises. Strategic cost drivers include structural cost drivers and execution cost drivers, which have different meanings for the choice of strategic objectives of virtual enterprise expansion. Structural cost drivers involve the rational choice of enterprise scale, scope, technology and experience, not the more the better. Blindly expanding the scale, scope and technological development will have a negative impact on the cost, which is not conducive to the development of enterprises; Abandoning the development strategy and sticking to the original scale, scope, technology and unfavorable geographical position will be at a competitive disadvantage, which is not conducive to the survival and development of enterprises. Visible, from the perspective of structural cost drivers, in the final analysis, it is a choice of expanding strategic objectives. The implementation cost drivers involve participation, total quality management, capacity utilization, contact, factory layout and product appearance, rather than "selection". It can be seen that the structural cost driver analysis is helpful to the choice of expansion strategic objectives of virtual enterprises, while the implementation of cost driver analysis is helpful to strengthen management in an all-round way and ensure the realization of expansion strategic objectives of virtual enterprises. The former is to optimize the strategic allocation of basic resources, while the latter is to strengthen internal management and improve the strategic guarantee system.
3. Analysis of the strategic positioning of virtual enterprises The general competitive strategy of enterprises emphasizes where enterprises gain competitive advantages. According to Porter, enterprises can gain competitive advantage through three basic competitive strategies, namely, cost leading strategy, differentiation strategy and target agglomeration strategy. (1) cost leadership strategy. The cost leading strategy is the clearest of all strategies. Under the guidance of this strategy, the goal of virtual enterprise is to become a low-cost producer (service) in its industry, that is, to strive to reduce costs and gain a competitive advantage when the functions and quality of the products or projects provided are not much different. (2) Differentiation strategy. When the virtual enterprise can provide some unique products for the buyer, the virtual enterprise has operational differences that are different from other competitors. The differentiation strategy requires the virtual enterprise to be unique in the industry in some aspects that customers attach great importance to, and to produce products (projects) with stronger functions, better quality and better service than competitors to show business differences. Even if the cost is relatively high, you can get rich returns through higher prices. (3) Target agglomeration strategy. Target agglomeration strategy is to focus on a specific customer group, a certain part of product series or a certain market segment in order to gain a competitive advantage in the target market. If we choose the cost-leading strategy, we should pay more attention to the production and operation costs of partner enterprises in the process of virtual enterprise formation and partner selection; If we adopt the differentiation strategy, we are more concerned about the development ability of new products and the application ability of new technologies of partner enterprises, and less concerned about the cost. For large-scale projects, especially aerospace projects and nuclear power projects, differentiation strategy is more important than cost leadership strategy. Because for this kind of project, the quality, performance and safety of the project are often in an extremely important position, and the project owners often do not choose low-priced bidders when bidding for the project.