Shanghai, June 3, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Is the corporate services market a blue ocean or a red ocean? Some experts suggest that it is neither a blue ocean nor a red ocean, but a "blue ice market." The explanation of the "blue ice market" starts with two properties of ice: it is somewhat hard; but when the temperature rises, it gradually melts.
Giants Eye the Corporate Services 'Blue Ice Market' Awaiting 'Unicorns'
With the explosive growth of mobile applications, smartphones are no longer just social or payment tools, but are increasingly being used as enterprise-level mobile application management tools. Once discovered, this frozen blue ocean market has attracted more and more companies to enter the field, akin to many people slowly chipping away at this "ice." When spring comes, the ice will naturally melt. There are two reasons prompting this market’s “ice” to begin thawing: one is the rising labor costs in China, and the other is the rapid development of social tools like WeChat.
The well-developed TOB market in the United States erupted after more than a decade of gestation. In the U.S., CRM provider Salesforce has a market cap approaching $50 billion, SAP has reached $84 billion, and enterprise application giant Oracle boasts an astonishing $170 billion. Yet, China has yet to see a unicorn in the corporate services market. Unlike the U.S., China has not had large-scale growth-stage TOB companies over the past 20 years, and the corporate services market has not been fully embraced by Chinese venture capital. But in just the last two years, with attention from domestic giants and capital, the corporate services market not only exploded in 2015, but is also set to grow rapidly in 2016 and beyond.
The corporate services market has continued to heat up over the past two years, becoming a new focal point for competition among giants. Faced with this huge...“pie”, a strong influx has occurred — including corporate applications from the BAT group, as well as numerous emerging startups and capital. And the increasingly fierce competition among BAT in this field has gradually pushed the corporate services market to the forefront of the business world.
Ctrip Business Travel Partners with Mingdao to Complete Mobile Office Ecosystem
To gain more market share in the fiercely competitive environment, more and more corporate applications are choosing to collaborate across industries. Recently, Ctrip Business Travel, a leading domestic travel management company, and Mingdao, the most popular enterprise collaboration app in the Chinese market, have formed a strategic partnership to share their strengths and jointly explore new business cooperation models through cross-industry collaboration.
This upgraded collaboration with Mingdao is another innovative cross-industry partnership explored by Ctrip Business Travel following its collaboration with WeChat Enterprise. After integration, users can directly install the Ctrip Business Travel corporate app from the Mingdao app marketplace and log in to Ctrip Business Travel’s travel booking and management platform without needing to log in again. This simplifies the cumbersome traditional process of having to log in before making travel arrangements. Ctrip Business Travel's entry into the Mingdao app marketplace not only enriches the product variety on the platform and fills the gap in travel management software, but both parties will also share resources to provide better services to their respective customers.
Integrated Travel Control is the Trend, with Strong Demand from SMEs
From the perspective of corporate travel management, surveys show that an increasing number of business managers hope that travel service providers can deeply integrate with both upstream and downstream partners within their ecosystem to achieve integrated travel control. The so-called front-end and back-end enterprises mainly include expense control, office software providers, banks and third-party payment providers, and service providers such as data integration and safety rescue. Through collaborations with Mingdao and WeChat Enterprise, Ctrip Business Travel is actively responding to market demand, helping businesses build bridges between employees, upstream and downstream industry chains, and corporate applications.
Currently, Ctrip Business Travel has achieved extensive cross-industry integration with corporate service applications such as WeCom, Zhiyuan, Yunzhijia, and Banliao IMO. To benefit more small and medium-sized enterprises, Ctrip Business Travel plans to engage in more cross-industry collaborations with mobile office software in the future. According to a recent survey initiated by Ctrip Business Travel targeting SMEs, 45% of companies still submit business trip requests via paper forms, while only 9% use mobile office software. With over 22 million SMEs in China, the penetration rate of mobile office solutions is far from meeting their urgent need for mobile applications, leaving many SMEs still outside the door of digital transformation. To address the mobile office needs of SMEs for business travel, Ctrip Business Travel launched the “Self-service Corporate Travel Platform” in 2014. By innovating its model, it lowered the high barriers to entry for TMCs in corporate travel spending, allowing numerous SMEs to benefit from the convenience and affordability of professional travel management. Since its launch, this travel management system tailored for SMEs has, in less than two years, garnered over 10,000 active corporate clients.