Source: opinion leaders
Opinion leaders | Pan and Lin
A few days ago, the State Council issued the "Tenth Five-Year Plan for the Development of Digital Economy" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"), which defined the guiding ideology, basic principles, development goals, key tasks and safeguard measures to promote the healthy development of digital economy during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period. The "Planning" pointed out that during the "14 th Five-Year Plan" period, China’s digital economy will turn to a new stage of deepening application, standardizing development and universal sharing. In this process, efforts should be made to realize the rapid development of agricultural digital transformation, deepen the digitalization, networking and intelligence of manufacturing industry, accelerate the integration and popularization of producer services, significantly accelerate the diversified expansion of life services, and basically complete the supporting service system for industrial digital transformation, thus achieving the development goal of industrial digital transformation to a new level. Specifically, the Plan has deployed four key tasks in vigorously promoting the digital transformation module of industries. One is to accelerate the digital transformation and upgrading of enterprises; the other is to comprehensively deepen the digital transformation of key industries; the third is to promote the digital transformation of industrial parks and industrial clusters; and the fourth is to cultivate the transformation support service ecology.
It is worth mentioning that this is the first appearance of "cultivating transformation and supporting service ecology" as one of the key tasks in the formal planning objectives and development tasks, which fully released the signal of the government to accelerate the development of the digital economy. It reflects the determination, confidence and courage of the digital transformation of the government service industry and the high-quality development of the digital economy. In the market with balanced supply and demand, an effective industrial digital transformation and upgrading system should be able to effectively connect and absorb all kinds of resources needed for industrial digital upgrading. However, from the existing experience, in some regions and industries, the government has provided a lot of policy guidance and supporting services for their digital transformation. Obviously, however, from the perspective of input-output efficiency, the effect is not great. The most fundamental reason may be the lack of an organic ecosystem that can effectively support the digital transformation and upgrading of the service industry. Therefore, in the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, it is not only necessary for development, but also necessary for reality to promote the construction of digital transformation to support the ecological cultivation project and improve the speed and efficiency of industrial digital transformation.
The goal and structure of digital transformation supporting service ecology
Today, with the surge of digitalization, almost all industries and enterprises feel the unprecedented digital power. According to the RSA Digital Risk Report recently released by the United States, 60% of the respondents indicated that their organizations are "extensively" committed to digital transformation. The process of industrial digital transformation is actually a dynamic development process in which capital, labor, technology, data and other elements are reconfigured between enterprises or industries. However, digitalization is not only a technical update, but also an all-round change in business philosophy, strategy, organization and operation, which needs to be planned from the overall situation. Although the prospect of digital transformation in this process is infinite, new digital risks also follow. Therefore, digital transformation is a "brave" game. For enterprises with poor resources, it may be an adventure with the future of the enterprise. Even some small and medium-sized enterprises are about to or have been in the dilemma of transformation and upgrading and maintaining the status quo.
The above dilemma mainly reflects three problems: first, the problem of not turning due to insufficient transformation ability; Second, the problem of non-transfer caused by the high cost of transformation; Third, the problem of not dare to turn because of the long period of transition pain. Based on this, the Plan proposes to establish a digital transformation service ecology with two-wheel drive of market-oriented services and public services, supported by technology, capital, talents, data and other factors, in order to solve the problems that enterprises can’t turn, can’t turn and dare not turn. From the perspective of architecture, in the ecological framework of digital transformation support services, it includes the subject and object of industrial digital transformation. The main body is composed of government, enterprises, trade associations, universities and intermediary service institutions. The object includes capital, technology, scheme, information and policy. The task of the transformation support service ecological project is to break through the current situation that the existing resource elements are lack of organic connection, unsystematic and incompatible through the unified integration of these resources, so as to effectively solve various problems that may be faced in the digital transformation and upgrading of industries. Therefore, the transformation of supporting service ecology should require a system that integrates the physical platform and the digital service platform organized by the technical support platform and the service support platform into one, in which all subjects participate together, the object elements flow freely, and are seamlessly integrated and dynamically adjusted with the external environment.
In order to solve the problem of "not turning", the third party is introduced to strengthen the supply of digital solutions.
At present, most enterprises are still in the perception stage rather than the action stage of digital transformation. At the same time, limited by the synchronization of technology and the scale, variety and quality of data, they often face the lack of core digital transformation schemes. However, the general-purpose solutions, which account for the vast majority of the market, cannot meet the personalized and integrated digital transformation needs of enterprises and industries. Therefore, the first problem to be solved in the transformation of supporting service ecology is to reduce the threshold of enterprise digital transformation. It is one of the important tasks to support the construction of service ecology to provide institutional support and direction guidance for enterprises and help small and medium-sized enterprises to take the first step of transformation. The Plan also points out that digital transformation support services should focus on transformation consultation, standard formulation, testing and evaluation. In this process, we should also pay attention to guiding the development of lightweight, easy to maintain, low-cost and one-stop solutions. Only by cultivating a number of third-party specialized service organizations and ensuring that relevant services for enterprises can be effective can we gradually enhance the scale and vitality of the digital transformation service market.
Aiming at the problem of "unable to transfer", we will build a digital transformation promotion center to help transform, reduce costs and increase efficiency.
The problem of insufficient imbalance in the digital transformation of traditional industries is more prominent and generally faces the problem of high cost. Despite the strong demand and expectation of transformation, but limited by the constraints of transformation funds, digital talents and so on, it is generally "willing but unable." On the other hand, the mismatch between the cost of transformation and the income after transformation is also an important reason why enterprises cannot easily transform. It is pointed out in the Plan that the next step is to establish a public digital transformation promotion center based on industrial clusters, parks, demonstration bases, etc., and carry out public services such as the convergence of digital service resources and the display and promotion of high-quality solutions. The purpose is to solve the common needs of small and medium-sized enterprises, reduce the cost of digital transformation and improve the efficiency of transformation by carrying out resource services, technical services and training services. On the other hand, most small and medium-sized enterprises have a low level of digitalization and a weak foundation of networking and intelligence. The scale expansion of new infrastructure and the first breakthrough and application projects of large enterprises can also effectively help small and medium-sized enterprises reduce the cost of digital transformation.
Aiming at the problem of "dare not turn", we will guide the supply mechanism of innovative transformation support services according to the situation.
In the initial stage, the digital transformation of enterprises will indeed have a certain impact on their own operation and development, which is an inevitable law in the process of transformation and a "painful" process that any industry and enterprise must go through. For the transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises, there are differences in different regions, industries, product characteristics, target customers and other factors, which will make the process and pain period of digital transformation different. Therefore, it is the best way to encourage and protect the willingness and interests of enterprises to participate in industrial transformation and upgrading. Therefore, it is necessary to guide the situation according to local conditions and become the basic principle of supporting service supply in transformation. At the same time, in the process of research and construction of the transformation support service ecological cultivation project, it is necessary to tap the needs of enterprises and the role that the government needs to play in the transformation process according to the progress of industrial digital transformation and upgrading, innovate the supply mechanism of support services, and enrich and improve this ecosystem in a targeted manner.
The "Tenth Five-Year Plan" for the development of digital economy provides direction guidance and practical follow-up for the digital transformation of enterprises in terms of overall coordination, organization and implementation, and policy guarantee. However, in the final analysis, digital transformation still needs to be established first and then broken, and it is urgent and slow. Whether it is the demand of enterprise transformation or other elements such as service supply, only through trial and error and iteration can we find a correct and efficient digital transformation path step by step. (The author is a member of the Expert Committee on Information and Communication Economy of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Executive Dean of the Digital Economy Research Institute of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law)