To be an enterprise, "stability" is the foundation and "progress" is the purpose. When the cycle goes up, we can go faster, and when the cycle goes down and the pressure is high, we should go steadily. The steady operation of an enterprise is to make as few mistakes as possible, not to make mistakes, not to be defeated first and then to win; to plant one mu of land well, and learn to create a small environment and climate suitable for the enterprise itself. "Stability" creates conditions for "progress", and "progress" contributes to the long-term "stability" of enterprises, which is a dialectical relationship. In the final analysis, the competition of
enterprises is the competition of advantages. Over the past few years, Chinese enterprises have gained considerable advantages, starting with the low-cost advantages of labor, land and other factors, and later relying on the strong manufacturing industry to achieve the cost-effective advantages of products. Integrating new policies and environmental changes, enterprises should adapt to new changes and actively shape new advantages.
First, to gain strategic advantages
with new quality productivity, any economic difficulties are driven by innovation and new productivity. At present, with the rapid development of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, the Central Economic Work Conference emphasizes that scientific and technological innovation should lead the development of new productive forces and build a modern industrial system. Faced with the pain of industrial restructuring, enterprises should increase technological innovation, embrace new quality productivity, and actively explore new tracks, new momentum, new models and new formats suitable for their own development.
First, we should actively use digital technology and green technology to transform and upgrade traditional industries. The new quality productivity emphasizes the quality state, not the simple format. Traditional industries account for more than 80% of China's manufacturing industry, which is the base of the modern industrial system. We cannot ignore or abandon traditional industries. Over the past few years, I have visited more than 400 listed companies and more than 100 non-listed companies. In the process of investigating enterprises, I was deeply impressed by the fact that in recent years, Chinese enterprises have accelerated digital and intelligent transformation, while actively promoting green transformation, glowing with new vitality and promoting industrial upgrading.
Second, foster and strengthen strategic emerging industries. Strategic emerging industries are the new track of enterprise competition and the main position of developing new quality productivity. Many of the new industries are developed by some traditional enterprises in the "second curve". Enterprises have a life cycle, before the growth curve appears turning point, they should realize that a business may gradually enter a recession period, take precautions, develop new business in time, and form a development trend of new and old kinetic energy echelon succession.
Third, the layout and construction of future industries. The future industry is driven by cutting-edge scientific and technological innovation. Although it is in its infancy or early stage of industrialization, it has great potential for development, such as artificial intelligence, quantum information, bio-manufacturing, new energy storage and other fields. Enterprises should strengthen the forward-looking layout, establish a growth mechanism for future industrial investment, strengthen long-term capital and patient capital investment, attach importance to the deep integration of industry, University and research, strengthen basic research and key core technologies, promote the transformation of original achievements, and create the source of original innovation.
2. The Decision adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the Twentieth Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China emphasizes that all kinds of enterprises should be supported and guided to improve the utilization efficiency of resource elements and the level of management. The work of enterprises is numerous, and two things are particularly important to sum up: one is operation, and the other is management. There are both connections and differences between them. Management is to do the right thing, the purpose is to improve efficiency, looking outward, to open up new sources, to make more money, to draw "three buckets of water" from the market, while management is to do the right thing, the purpose is to improve efficiency, looking inward, to save money, to squeeze out "three drops of water" from dry towels.
The 20th century can be said to be "a century of management", which is the era of production management to solve the problem of product availability and quantity. From the earliest Taylor's scientific management to Ford's assembly line, including Toyota's lean production, many management practices and theories revolve around efficiency improvement. Over the past 40 years of
reform and opening up, the management level of Chinese enterprises has been greatly improved through learning and practice, but the environment faced by enterprises has undergone significant changes, with the advent of high-tech and new economic era, the acceleration of technological iteration, production efficiency is no longer the main contradiction, and business forms have also undergone great changes, including internationalization. "Uncertainty" and "vulnerability" reflect the characteristics of the new era, and enterprises have entered the era of management. On the one hand, we should make correct business decisions, on the other hand, we should also have fine management.
Today, in the face of difficulties, many business leaders feel that it is because of poor management, so they practice hard, but the root cause of business problems is often not here, excessive management can not make up for business mistakes. Of course, management still needs to be done well. Enterprise leaders should look at problems from the perspective of operation, think about how to improve in the decision-making process, and check the orientation and obtain resources for enterprises. It is not that management is not important, but that operation is more important. The main leaders of enterprises should pay more attention to management, learn to transfer management work to their subordinates, shift the focus from management to management, and grow from effective managers to effective operators. Peter Drucker, a master of
management, focuses on the five elements of effective managers in his book Effective Managers, namely, time management, emphasis on contribution, utilization of strengths, priority of important matters and effective decision-making. Based on my own business experience and observation, I summarize and put forward five tasks for effective operators, namely, correct choice, effective innovation, resource integration, value creation and sharing mechanism.
Of course, if we want to build a strong manufacturing country and a strong quality country, management is still the foundation, and we should pay attention to the use of management methods to strengthen management. The construction method is not a systematic theory, but a practical method suitable for operation and copying. In recent years, Chinese enterprises have become stronger, better and bigger, and accumulated a lot of management methods, which are worth further excavation and summary. For example, the extreme manufacturing in the Ningde era is very characteristic. In the past enterprise career, I led the team to practice and explore repeatedly, and summarized the three fine management, which has a certain reference for different types of enterprises.
According to the previous management theory, enterprises have core business and core technology, and the way of self-development and endogenous snowball development is organic growth. However, in the process of enterprise expansion, it is difficult to expand rapidly in a short time only by organic growth, and the market window period may be lost. Therefore, enterprises should attach importance not only to organic growth, but also to mergers and acquisitions. M & a is an important channel to optimize the allocation of resources and realize value discovery.
China's market is large enough, there are enough enterprises, and the challenges faced by business operators are not only the ability to create resources, but also the ability to integrate resources, and even the ability to integrate resources is more important than ability to create resources. Some industries are in a state of many, scattered and chaotic, and enterprises can increase market share and industry concentration through mergers and acquisitions, which conforms to market rules and industry rules.
In 2024, "Several Opinions on Strengthening Supervision and Preventing Risks to Promote the High-quality Development of Capital Market" (hereinafter referred to as "Opinions", also known as the new "Nine Articles of the State") made important arrangements to activate the M & a and restructuring market, and the Securities Regulatory Commission successively promulgated policies and measures such as "Sixteen Articles Supporting Science and Technology", "Eight Articles Supporting Science and Technology" and "Six Articles Supporting M & A". At present, China's M & a and reorganization has entered a critical stage, and M & a and reorganization is an important breakthrough to solve some of the current difficulties.
I conclude that mergers and acquisitions have four aspects of significance: First, it is conducive to enterprises to become stronger, better and bigger, and to build leading enterprises in the industry. Second, it is conducive to the introduction of innovative resources, new quality productivity, structural adjustment, transformation and upgrading of listed companies, so as to improve the quality of listed companies. Third, it is conducive to innovative enterprises to enter the capital market through the reorganization of listed companies, as well as private equity funds and other investors to raise funds, manage and withdraw closed-loop, and activate the capital market. Fourth, it is conducive to increasing industry concentration, overcoming industry involution and realizing the healthy development of the industry market.
Mergers and acquisitions is a more complex business art, from the world point of view, the success rate is not high, there are two key points to improve the success rate of mergers and acquisitions. First, mergers and acquisitions are not big for big, not to see the acquisition of enterprises. It is necessary to obey the strategy, to produce obvious benefits, to have synergistic effects, and to be able to control and bear risks. Secondly, M & a and reorganization is a chemical reaction, after the reorganization of enterprises, integration is more critical, such as business integration, institutional integration, market integration, management integration, cultural integration, the most difficult of which is cultural integration, culture is the collective memory of an enterprise. Enterprises should integrate high-quality cultural elements from all sides, integrate new cultures suitable for the development of enterprises, and enhance the recognition of new cultures of enterprises. In the final analysis, an
enterprise must have value. An important indicator to measure the value of an enterprise is the total social contribution of the enterprise, which mainly includes several aspects, such as employee wages, welfare expenditure, taxes, net interest expenditure, net profit, etc. For enterprise owners, profits are of great concern, and the value of the capital market is sometimes affected by the profits of the product market. To improve the profits of enterprises, we need a good market environment and a healthy competitive environment.
Competition is the soul of market economy, but there are good and bad competition, benign and orderly competition is good competition, malignant and disorderly competition is bad competition. We advocate healthy competition, in which enterprises compete by technology, quality, brand, service and, of course, reasonable price, rather than simply price war. Benign competition creates value and vicious competition destroys value.
The Central Economic Work Conference proposed to comprehensively rectify the "involution" competition and standardize the behavior of local governments and enterprises. The "involution" competition is usually manifested in the excessive homogenization competition of one-sided pursuit of low prices. Objectively speaking, it is because of surplus, but it is also related to the competitive mentality of enterprises.We should give full play to the leading role of trade associations, strengthen industry self-discipline and promote the healthy development of the industry.
Industry interests are higher than enterprise interests, and enterprise interests are bred in industry interests. There are no eggs under the nest. Enterprises are not only competitors, but also stakeholders, and they should learn to cooperate in competition. Leading enterprises in the industry have the responsibility to take the lead in maintaining market prices and jointly build industry ecology with small and medium-sized enterprises.
Reasonable price is very important, profit = sales volume X price-cost. This formula is common sense, but some people often make common sense mistakes, think that the price is determined by the market, is objective, enterprises can only follow the market, to reduce costs and increase sales as the main means of competition.
Pricing is operation, and pricing determines life and death. Price is the lifeline of an enterprise and must be taken seriously. In the past, when we were in China's building materials industry, we proposed that we should go from quantity to price. Volume, cost and profit are effective in the shortage economy, as long as more sales can reduce the unit fixed cost to make profits, but in the case of excess, they can not release the volume. Under the surplus economy, enterprises should follow the management concept of price, cost and profit, stabilize the price, guarantee the quantity, reduce the cost, and reduce the quantity appropriately.
In the fierce market competition, if enterprises really can not grasp the pricing voice, they should learn to change their competitive thinking, through differentiation, subdivision, high-end, branding and other ways, from the Red Sea to the Blue Sea. Enterprises produce homogeneous products and ordinary goods, and the competition must be very fierce. If they produce differentiated products, the benefits may be better. Market segmentation is also a way for enterprises to gain value advantages. Segmentation can increase the added value of products. Many enterprises have achieved value enhancement by taking the high-end route. In addition, enterprises should actively build their own brands. We should increase our confidence in domestic brands, tell good stories about Chinese brands, and create product value and enterprise value with brand value.
Fifth,
after more than 40 years of reform and opening up, Chinese enterprises have a large domestic market, while developing overseas markets in depth, and the overall foreign trade has maintained steady growth. Now, in the face of international trade protectionism and the deepening adverse effects of the external environment, where are our enterprises going, where is the market, and what should we do?
China has the advantage of super-large-scale market and huge market demand. The market with domestic circulation as the main body is a stable and long-term market, which must be cultivated intensively to stimulate demand. We advocate that enterprises sell good products in China, because this is a long-term market. At the same time, we should consolidate and expand the international market, study the new changes in the international market, and make the best use of the situation and make a positive layout.
Now we often say that "if you don't go to sea, you will go out". This round of Chinese enterprises go to sea with capital, technology, equipment, brand, management and so on, and go to sea to build factories or mergers and acquisitions. Behind this is also the logic of enterprise growth, enterprises develop to a certain extent, will gradually expand, from localization to multinational companies, this is an inevitable trend. Of course, there are also problems that enterprises should focus on and pay attention to in this round of going to sea.
One is to sum up the experience and lessons of going out before and going to sea recently, with research first and investment later.
The second is to go to sea in groups, with large enterprises leading small enterprises and main engine factories leading supporting factories.
Third, we should go out according to local conditions and pay close attention to the different situations in different regions.
Fourth, we should pay attention to and guard against risks, such as political risks, policy risks, legal risks, exchange rate risks, security risks, etc. When we are away from home, we should have more eyes and minds, and pay attention to personal and property safety.
Fifth, to stand on the moral high ground as an enterprise, enterprises should abide by the rules of the international market, contribute to the local economy, cooperate with local enterprises, do good things for the local people, pay attention to integrating into the local society, and achieve real access.
