JD’s IoT Smart Housing Solution Brings the Future of Living to Hundreds of Residential Compounds Across China

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

Air conditioning that cools your house automatically before you get home; an elevator waiting for you before you even enter the lobby; a security system you can monitor while at work: welcome to the age of the smart living. With the help of JD.com’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform, more and more families across China are benefitting from a smart home lifestyle.

Thanks to growing consumer demand for convenience and security, the Chinese smart home market is growing fast: in 2018, it was valued at US $7 billion, and is expected to increase fivefold by the year 2025. Likewise, current household penetration for smart home appliances in China is expected to jump from 4.6% today to 13.7% by 2023. In 2019, sales of smart locks and smart curtains on JD.com increased by 62x and 22x respectively, illustrating the surge in demand.

With China’s white-hot real estate market finally beginning to cool off, real estate companies are now embracing the smart home community as a way to add value to their properties. But what makes JD’s smart home initiative unique is that it is focused not only on the individual house level, but at the residential compound level. What does this mean? Through a centralized visual operations system, for example, property managers can identify a broken street lamp and repair it instantly.

JD IoT has already signed partnerships with more than 20 leaders in the real estate industry across 30 cities in China to provide IoT solutions for smart home and smart property management. Some of the features available include, facial recognition for building access, temporary QR code access for visitors, smart parking payment, management via app and more.

One such partnership is with Tianrun Real Estate, which recently installed JD smart home solutions in the Tianrun Avenue Foch community in Beijing. Families in the residential community can enjoy a range of smart living features, such as air conditioning that turns on before they get home, elevators and lights scheduled to activate on their arrival, and air purifying and humidifying systems that adjust to climate conditions throughout the day.

Similarly, in the Caifu Building in Changsha, JD provides a fully integrated software and hardware system platform, which includes a property management system, smart services such as smart access, smart parking, and smart elevators, and parking smart payment and management apps for owners.

“JD IoT is China’s largest smart home ecosystem, now serving over 25 million homes, encompassing more than 4,000 different products from 1000 brands,” said John Zhou, President of JD IoT. “As more individual customers, and property developers embark on their “smart” transformations, JD is increasingly the partner of choice in this rapidly growing sector.”

“JD IoT provides the most comprehensive IoT ecosystem out there, enabling us to swiftly deploy IoT technology throughout our properties, and helping our residents enjoy a secure, convenient and advanced living experience,” said Cheng Jiang, Director of Marketing at Tianrun Tongtai Estate. “By deploying JD’s IoT platform throughout our properties, residents enjoy a lifestyle that they never even imagined was possible.”

JD Launches New Industrial IoT Solution for the Energy Sector

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

China’s largest retailer, JD.com is pushing into the energy sector with a new industrial Internet of Things (IoT) solution. Applying JD’s industrial IoT capabilities to the energy sector, JD is helping the energy sector to modernize and increase efficiency, satisfying consumers’ daily energy needs, while helping businesses on their low-carbon transformation journey.

JD has partnered with State Grid, China’s national power company, to implement its IoT solution in China. This partnership is announced just as JD.com and JD Digits, a leading digital technology company, jointly hold their largest tech event of the year, JD Discovery (JDD) on November 19, in the Shunyi District of Beijing. With a total attendance of over 4,500 people, JDD gathers industry experts from all areas of technology to discuss the most pertinent issues and developments in the industry today.

Through the partnership, JD’s IoT solution will help State Grid build its own smart platform to manage its devices and meters, including electricity meters, power distributors, humidity sensors, temperature sensors and more with its smart IoT platform. Through the implementation of IoT capabilities, State Grid will be able to eliminate data islands, and collect and analyze information about energy usage across different devices in order to take steps to optimize their operations.

JD’s solution addresses several challenges facing the energy industry. This includes overall management of entire systems, and even making adjustments at the granular housing community or resident level. Take electric car charging stations as an example. China is already the world’s largest electric vehicle market, with the country’s electric vehicle fleet expected to swell to 162 million vehicles by 2040, according to forecasts by BloombergNEF. Right now, China’s over 460,000 public charging points beat the U.S.’s 60,000 by roughly an 8:1 ratio. State Grid previously announced plans to build 120,000 public charging stations by 2020. The question then becomes how to optimize the number of electric car charging stations available at a single time and location to ensure that there are enough to satisfy demand but not so many that they are wasteful, inefficient, and unnecessarily costly. Adding JD’s IIoT solution to the equation can provide energy companies like State Grid with valuable tools to analyze and better and address energy needs. Say an electric car driver works nights and doesn’t need to charge their car at rush hour – in this case the system might analyze energy usage fluctuations throughout the day, and notify the driver that he or she can get a discount if they choose to charge at a time when the station is not busy, such as late morning.

The solution can even help optimize energy usage for residents and housing communities, while providing incentives for individual users to reduce their energy usage. AC usage in the summer is case in point. Without seamless, smart integration of temperature sensors, energy meters and other systems, most residents likely do not know that turning their AC down just one degree cooler actually puts a lot of strain on an already strained energy system. With JD’s IIoT capabilities, however, it would be possible to not only analyze energy usage but also to implement a dynamic pricing system that can notify consumers of their energy usage, and incentivize them to make minor adjustments that result in better usage and efficiency for all.

“Most people, from corporations to individuals, are conscious of the urgent need to better manage and reduce energy consumption, but without reliable data and analysis capabilities, it is hard to know how to do so,” said John Zhou, President of IoT at JD.com. “Our IoT platform solution for the energy industry breaks down barriers between devices, companies and even individuals, allowing for a complete picture of energy usage. With this information, we can work with companies like State Grid to take steps in the right direction to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and bring more benefit to society. This is just one example of how we can leverage our capabilities to empower industries beyond the ones JD.com operates in with innovative solutions to address their most pressing challenges.”

Everything You Need to Know About JD.com’s Pinnacle Tech Event of the Year

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

We are kicking off JD Discovery (JDD), our pinnacle tech event of the year. With over 4,500 attendees, JDD gathers industry experts from all areas of technology to discuss the most pertinent issues and developments in the industry today. This year’s event is focused on technology-driven opening and empowerment.

Our commitment to technology and the role that it plays in our business is clear. Just take a look at the numbers: Today, JD already has 18,000 R&D employees, many of whom hold master’s degrees or above. In 2018 alone, we applied for over 3,400 patents covering technology solutions in a wide range of industries.

In JD’s 10 years of development, from retail to logistics to digital technology, we have witnessed the gradual transformation of the retail industry driven by technology. We have also seen technology’s important role in promoting the transformation of other industries.

In the past year, JD has continued to enhance its core technology capabilities in order to support existing retail, logistics, digital technology and other businesses, as well as to be able to support future external demand, covering international business projects, commercial projects, and enterprise systems transformation.

As we look ahead, we have our eyes on being the technology backbone of the industrial internet, helping businesses of all sizes in all industries to address their pain points, and providing real, tangible value to society.

 

 

ANNOUNCED AT JDD

JD Launches New Industrial IoT Solution for the Energy Sector

JD.com is pushing into the energy sector with a new industrial Internet of Things (IoT) solution. Integrating JD’s industrial IoT platform with the energy sector’s devices and meters, JD is helping the energy sector to modernize and increase efficiency, satisfying consumers’ daily energy needs, while helping businesses on their low-carbon transformation journey. JD has partnered with State Grid, China’s national power company, to implement its IoT platform solution in China, starting with Heilongjiang, Liaoning, and Inner Mongolia in Northeast China.

JD’s IoT Smart Housing Solution Brings the Future of Living to Hundreds of Residential Compounds Across China

With the help of JD.com’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform, more and more families across China are benefitting from a smart home lifestyle. What makes JD’s smart home initiative unique is that it is focused not only on the individual house level, but at the residential compound level. JD IoT has already signed partnerships with more than 20 leaders in the real estate industry across 30 cities in China to provide IoT solutions for smart home and smart property management. Some of the features available include, facial recognition for building access, temporary QR code access for visitors, smart parking payment, management via app and more.

 

RECENT TECH-RELATED NEWS:

JD.com Helps Farms Go Digital to Bring Safer, Healthier Food to Chinese Customers – JD is using technology to help the traditional farming industry bring delicious food to your table faster than ever.

JD.com’s AI Targets Your Kitchen – Through its signature Customer-to-Manfucturer (C2M) initative, JD is using AI to figure out how to tailor products to meet demand, and working with brand partners to bring them to market. Our recent case study with paper products company Vinda is a great example of this.

Trash Sorting: it’s a Piece of Cake with JD AI The application of new technology greatly simplifies process for China-based consumers and businesses – Earlier in the year, China issued new trash regulations. JD is using AI to help customers navigate the new regulations with ease, bringing consumers peace of mind, and helping protect the environment.

JD.com Self-developed Blockchain Framework Now Open to Businesses – JD began using blockchain in its operations to enable consumers to trace the origin of products they purchase, giving them an additional authenticity guarnatee. The company has opened up its JD Chain blockchain framework to other businesses, enabling companies in industries who don’t have their own blockchain capabilities to benefit from this technology.

JD.com and Rakuten to collaborate on unmanned delivery solutions in Japan – Back in 2015 JD began developing its drone delivery program to solve last mile delivery challenges in rural areas, where terrain is particularly challenging for traditional delivery logistics, and later began developing its autonomous delivery vehicles to solve challenges in urban last mile delivery. As part of its broader strategy to open up its technology to partners, JD partnered with Rakuten to collaborate on unmanned delivery solutions in Japan.

Click to for more tech-related news

 

Lower-Tier Cities, Quality and Omnichannel Innovation Drive Record-breaking Singles Day for JD.com

Posted on by Rachel Liu

The continued pursuit for high quality products and services drove JD.com, China’s largest retailer, to a record breaking Singles Day. Total transaction volume was RMB 204.4 billion for the 11-day sales event (held from November 1-11). Key highlights were performance in lower-tier cities (defined as 3-6 tier cities), continued focus from Chinese consumers on quality products and deeper omnichannel integration across the business. This Singles Day also brought great results for our green supply chain, leading to significant reduction of unnecessary waste. Below please find an infographic with highlights from the sales period, followed by additional analysis.

2019 Singles Day Shopping Festival,an infographic with highlights from the sales period

Lower-tier cities (as defined as 3-6 tier cities)

JD has been investing in lower-tier cities consumption for years, having established its nationwide logistics network to cover these areas early on. Lower tier cities are a key area of growth for JD, and this can be seen by choice of purchase, investment in building our e-commerce platform, Jingxi, which is focused on providing this demographic with good value, quality products, as well as further development of our logistics to provide rapid and trustworthy delivery. Lower tier cities drove new customer growth during Singles Day, with the number of lower tier cities users placing orders increasing 60% YoY and over 70% over new users on JD from lower tier cities.

Consumers in lower-tier cities sought high quality, big ticket items on JD.com for Singles Day. Top categories continued to include home appliances, mobile phones, desktops, sports, baby and maternal products. Popular categories with new users from lower tier cities included oil, shampoo, massage equipment, gifts, foot care basins, and others. Categories enjoying fast growth include luxury products, furniture, sports and apparel, curling irons, smart toilets

Jingxi – how we engage with lower tier cities

Jingxi（京喜）is part of our ongoing strategy to better engage with consumers in lower tier cities and is a big driver of new customer growth. JD has been investing in lower tier cities since our IPO. Jingxi is JD’s Pingou business, rebranded and upgraded, and uses social e-commerce to delight consumers and offers incentives, rebates, and promotions as marketing tools to encourage online shopping. During the Singles Day promotion season, nearly 40% of new customers to JD came from Jingxi, while over 70% of Jingxi users came from lower tier cities, and 55% were women.

Simon Han, Vice President of JD.com and Head of Jingxi shares: “With Jingxi, we’ve developed a platform that can better serve the consumption needs of lower tier cities. JD connects manufacturers of quality products with consumers, providing a clear channel for these goods to reach lower tier cities consumers.”

Consumption Upgrade

It’s clear that Chinese consumers remain confident in spending & when they open their wallets and purses, they seek quality – whether it’s in lower tier or upper tier cities. JD PLUS, our premium membership program providing a range of benefits, saw membership surge to over 15 million. While our new customer acquisition in lower tier cities is strong, we are also seeing solid growth in tier 1 and 2 cities with middle class users. During the Singles Day sales period, the average consumption volume by PLUS members was four times that of non-PLUS members. PLUS members are attracted to new and higher quality products, with one member’s purchase reaching RMB 467,000.

Chunhui Meng, Head of JD Plus: “JD PLUS members are some of our most loyal users and this Singles Day was no exception. PLUS is not just a membership but a lifestyle – our insights reveal that PLUS members like to enjoy their lives, eat good food, care for their families and travel – and we’ve designed our membership to suit these needs by partnering with all sorts of organizations, online and offline. We’ll have a few new partnerships before the end of the year – stay tuned. By helping facilitate Chinese consumers’ pursuit for high quality products and services, JD PLUS has grown to over 15 million members.”

JD’s C2M initiative which leverages JD’s data and analysis capabilities to help brands identify new products to bring to market, remains popular with consumers and Singles Day was no exception. For every five displays sold, two were C2M products. Whether through C2M or other new product initiatives, JD remains the platform of choice for brands to launch new products. 90% of FMCG brands have chosen JD to launch new products.

Omnichannel Integration: E-SPACE

A key component of JD’s overall strategy is leveraging its technology to seamlessly integrate online and offline to put consumers at the center of the retail experience. In its biggest omnichannel pursuit yet, JD E-SPACE, a fully immersive experience store opened officially at midnight on November 11. We had a soft opening on November 8, and JD E-Space officially opened its doors this morning, November 11. As of noon on November 11, more than 30,000 customers had already visited the store. Sales totaled more than RMB 10 million in just the first hour of opening.

Believed to be the world’s largest experience store and the first one to be covered by 5G, JD E-Space is a colossal 50,000 square meter shopping mall in Chongqing that is roughly the equivalent of seven soccer fields. With over 200,000 products available for sale in store, JD E-SPACE redefines the consumer shopping experience with fun and convenience and is equipped with dynamic price tags which ensure consistency of online and offline pricing, and allow for easy purchase and delivery by JD Logistics within one day for people in the area. For more information on JD E-Space, see our blog post here.

AI and Marketing

JD leveraged big data and AI to help customers navigate a “barrage of deals” offered during the Singles Day sales period. We offered product-specific coupons, category-specific coupons, channel-specific coupons, store-specific/brand-specific coupons, and cross-category coupons. This helped consumers save much time and hassle. Our marketing solutions employ technology to help customers make the right selection as well as rewarding them as they go. Live streaming engagement drove average daily sales increase 15 times during Singles Day compared with the JD’s 618 anniversary shopping festival.

JD’s AI open platform Neuhub handled more than 29.8 billion requests during Singles Day, which provides content review, sentiment analysis and voice recognition technology support. JD.com’s Smart Sentiment Customer Service handled over 34 million inquiries while JD’s StarLink IoT platform supported over 10,000 offline stores transforming to smart stores, integrating over 1,000 technologies and applications.

JD Logistics: Deeper, Faster, Greener

While we’ve invested in lower tier cities since our IPO in 2014, we are going even deeper with our logistics in China to improve delivery speed. This Singles Day, 90% of China’s administrative districts and counties achieved same- or next-day delivery speeds.

Our commitment to responsible consumption throughout our business and advocating for a sustainable supply chain has paid off. JD Logistics has prevented over 40,000 tons of waste this Singles Day sales period, from recycling, to saving over 18.6 million meters of tape. Meanwhile, cold chain incubators have been used 1.4 million times while 50,000 logistics pallets from the JD Cloud Box project have been shared and used in the industry, which is equal to saving 12,500 trees. From November 1-9, Rooftop photovoltaic power generated nearly 30,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in JD’s Shanghai Asia No.1 logistics park, which is equal to one 1.5P air conditioner continuously on for three years. From November 1-9, over 5,000 new energy vehicles traveled 9 million kilometers, which is equal to 115 laps around the Earth.

“Our commitment to sustainable logistics and supply chain is bringing us very tangible results,” said Feng Gao, Head of Green Stream Initiative, JD Logistics. “A clear example of this is that over the course of the Singles Day sales period which we are just wrapping up, we’ve reduced 40,000 tons of delivery waste through implementing recyclable packaging, using slimmer tape, going paperless and more.”

 

* Transaction volume is calculated to include total value of all orders for products and services placed in the company’s online platform, regardless of whether the goods are sold or delivered or whether the goods are returned and shipping charges paid by buyers to sellers, and excludes products or services with list prices above RMB100,000 as well as transactions conducted by buyers who make purchases exceeding RMB1,000,000 in the aggregate in a single day (similar to the company’s major industry peer GMV definition)

JD’s Marketing360 boosts growth for Dyson in China

Posted on by Yuchuan Wang

JD.com is using its advanced technology to empower yet another group, advertisers, helping companies like renowned home appliance company Dyson win in China. When Dyson decided they needed to boost sales in the country while maximizing their marketing resources, they turned to JD and its innovative Marketing360 platform. Leveraging Marketing360, Dyson and JD.com were able to target potential Chinese customers with an unprecedented degree of accuracy and efficiency.

Dyson’s decision to partner with JD.com comes as China has become its fastest growing market, and is expected to be its largest market by 2021. During JD’s “6.18” anniversary shopping festival this year, sales of Dyson products increased 60% year-on-year. JD is now Dyson’s largest retail channel globally.

“JD’s Marketing360 platform is an incredibly powerful tool for connecting brands with the Chinese market, as we’ve seen through our partnerships with Dyson and other leading brands,” said Paul Yan, President of JD Retail Business Growth. “Our tech-driven model enhances user experience by bringing consumers the products and content most relevant to them.”

JD Marketing360

JD’s Marketing360 platform formulates marketing solutions through its unique “4A” model which systematically identifies customers in four different categories: 1A – ‘Aware,’ 2A – ‘Appeal,’ 3A – ‘Act,’ and 4A – ‘Advocate”:

  • 1A Aware – users who have been exposed to the brand via advertisements
  • 2A Appeal – users who pay attention to the brand – indicated by browsing, searching, and/or adding products to cart – but still don’t make a purchase
  • 3A Act – users who make a purchase, write product reviews, and/or use after-sales services
  • 4A Advocate – users who make multiple purchases, recommend products to others, and/or share on social media

Infographic for aware, appeal, act and advocate

By analyzing the characteristics of users within each group, the “4A” model enables a targeted approach in converting users who have not yet made a purchase (“1A” and “2A”) into users who have (“3A” or “4A”). User groups are then further divided into subcategories according to their potential conversion rate, allowing the company to allocate its marketing resources in the most effective way.

Marketing360 tailored for Dyson

In Dyson’s case, JD’s Marketing360 platform utilized the “4A” model to identify 1A and 2A users, and also identified users in five closely related categories who had strong potential to purchase a Dyson vacuum. The five categories were:

  • Baby and maternal products buyers: young parents eager to ensure a clean and safe environment for their offspring;
  • Gift givers, with recent trends showing Chinese consumers now often favor buying Dyson products for loved ones due to their practicality and high quality;
  • Auto accessory shoppers: car owners who have a need for car vacuums;
  • Pet products shoppers;
  • Home furnishing products shoppers who are likely to buy vacuums for their new homes.

Based on this analysis, JD can help Dyson forecast the sales of different user groups and rationally allocate marketing resources to attract users and boost sales.

JD and Dyson also worked to develop several video advertisements tailored to different categories of consumers. Tailored scenarios included people with allergies using a Dyson vacuum cleaner to clean their beds, pet owners cleaning animal hair and parents who want a safe and clean environment for their children.

The videos were then promoted throughout JD’s vast ecosystem of partners, including video streaming site iQIYI, social messaging service WeChat, and news platforms like Toutiao and Baidu.

video streaming site iQIYI

Dyson’s experience with the JD Marketing360 platform shows how JD’s cutting-edge technological infrastructure can help advertisers overcome common bottlenecks within China’s digital marketing landscape, and address the major challenge of turning traffic into sales. As a result of the campaign, Dyson tripled the efficiency of its new customer acquisition for vacuum products, and the sales on JD during that month exceeded expectations by 22%. Dyson continues to use the model to better target its users.

JD.com Helps Farms Go Digital to Bring Safer, Healthier Food to Chinese Customers

Posted on by Ling Cao

While China is the world’s largest agricultural economy, the country feeds 22% of the world population on just 7% of the planet’s arable land. Through its JD Farm initiative, JD.com is using innovative logistics technology to take the industry to the next level, providing healthy, high quality options to consumers, while preserving natural resources and helping local farmers around the country improve their living standards.

JD Farm addresses several pain points traditionally faced by the agricultural industry. For one, customers in China are increasingly demanding safer, better quality food. At the same time, farmers are pressured to maximize the yield they can get from limited land resources to generate more profit. This can lead to the overuse of harmful chemical fertilizers and other agents, in turn affecting the quality of the food and greatly harming the environment.

JD Farm implements JD’s sophisticated technology, including IoT, AI and blockchain in order to help farmers digitize their business and adopt a more data driven approach to farming, which in turn ensures consistency, accuracy, and efficiency of produce. For example, IoT devices such as sensors and cameras connected to a central system positioned across the farm can monitor any issues, including pests or disease agents, and alert farmers to take action. It can also help to provide guidance on the optimum amount of fertilizer to use.

Naturally, farms participating in the initiative further benefit from JD’s status as China’s largest retailer, gaining access to JD’s expertise in marketing and sales channel selection, as well as JD’s unrivaled self-built nationwide logistics network. At the same time, JD’s IoT, big data, and blockchain technology enables customers on the JD platform traceability of the fresh produce, which serves as a greater incentive for shoppers to buy the locally sourced food products.

Another challenge is the standardization of processes in agriculture. But this is essential to ensure the consistent, high quality products that JD customers are used to. To this end, JD is helping to establish new agricultural management standards in partnership with some the field’s leading academic institutions, such as China Agricultural University, Northwest A&F University, South China Agricultural University and Heilongjiang Bayi Agricultural University. JD will also provide training sessions to farmers and help them apply smart farming standards to their business.

The better quality crops resulting from the application of JD’s technology can be sold online through JD’s platform, significantly benefitting local farms. So far, JD has already set up 17 smart agriculture projects in partnership with farms across China, setting new standards of efficiency in Chinese agriculture. A peach farm in Shandong province and a pear farm in Hebei province were able to increase their average prices by 30% to 50% as compared to previous offline sales. The pear and peach farms have already sold a total of more than 32.5 tons of fruit since launching on JD.com in late August and late September respectively, and the peaches are already completely sold out.

The pear and peach farms have already sold a total of more than 32.5 tons of fruit since launching on JD.com

“The rollout of these cutting-edge initiatives at the forefront of smart agricultural technology is a game changer not just for participating farmers or customers on the JD platform, but the Chinese agricultural industry as a whole,” said Zhiwei Qiao, Head of JD Farm. “The end result is that farmers can now adopt a more viable business model, while consumers have access to more nutritious, safer produce. At JD.com, we always put customers at the center of our business. We are revolutionizing entire food production process and providing comprehensive, superior service at every step, from the farm, to the eventual delivery of high quality food to our customers’ dining tables. “

JD.com Opens Its Largest Offline Store to Date, and in Western China

Posted on by Rachel Liu

Advancing its vision of a truly boundaryless retail experience for its customers, JD.com, China’s largest retailer by revenue is launching “JD E-SPACE,” a custom-built, 50,000-square-meter modern shopping destination in Chongqing, China. The new JD E-SPACE opens its doors November 11, 2019, just in time to offer shoppers tens of thousands of Singles Day specials.

Going well beyond traditional offline electronics stores, JD E-SPACE enhances shopping by offering unique and immersive experiences, allowing customers to interact fully with state-of-the-art, innovative, and smart products from more than 1,000 of the world’s leading brands in various themed experience areas.

JD E-SPACE features popular and bestselling offerings in product categories from electronics, home appliances, and digital accessories to health, fitness and beauty products, office supplies and more. In particular, it brings experiential shopping to the electronics and home appliances category, enabling consumers to touch and test in store, and then buy online, hassle free.  It also features some groundbreaking brand-experience zones, such as Apple’s largest authorized offline experience store, Microsoft’s first future smart home experience area in China, GE’s first omnichannel home appliances store in China, and ninebot’s first authorized offline experience store in China.

JD.com, China’s largest retailer by revenue is launching “JD E-SPACE,

“JD’s boundaryless retail strategy is to integrate online and offline retail, enabling customers to buy whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want.” said Zisheng Yang, head of Offline Business, JD Home Appliances. “Equipped with the most advanced technologies and state of the art products, JD E-SPACE provides consumers not only shopping convenience but also an immersive and interactive experience.”

Customers also have the chance to experiment with some new technologies at unprecedented connectivity speeds, because JD E-SPACE will be the country’s only major store to offer blazing-fast 5G network coverage. The store also features dynamic price tags to ensure store prices are aligned with online prices, QR codes for consumers to place orders instantly, and robots to guide customers and introduce products.

After experimenting with the products, consumers can scan a code to buy and have items delivered to their homes by JD Logistics, usually within 24 hours, or they can complete their purchase onsite and carry home in-stock products immediately. Consumers can also enjoy the same high-quality after-sales service they get when shopping on JD.com.

Open Platform for Digital Supply Chain: The Next Wave of Efficiency

Posted on by Ling Cao

By Zhenhui Wang, CEO of JD Logistics

Nearly any company you ask will recognize the importance of having agile, efficient operations, but the role supply chain plays in this is often overlooked.

The fact of the matter, though, is that there is no denying the importance of a good supply chain when it comes to a successful business. The numbers are particularly telling.

Deloitte found that 79 percent of companies with high-performing supply chains achieve revenue growth greater than the average of their respective industries, while only 8 percent of companies with less capable supply chains report above-average growth.

What all this means is that to win in the face of stiff competition from across the globe, an agile supply chain is not just a competitive advantage, but an essential, inseparable piece of the puzzle.

Despite the importance of supply chain across industries, we are not yet at the point where every business needs to or has the resources to operate their own supply chain and logistics department. In fact, many of the companies I’ve spoken to don’t think this is an economical or even viable move. So what to do?

Nearly any company you ask will recognize the importance of having agile, efficient operations, but the role supply chain plays in this is often overlooked.

The answer is simple, at least on the surface: an open supply chain platform that would enable everyone, not just the world’s smartest or most technologically advanced companies to participate in the next revolution in supply chain. This is just what we have done at JD Logistics, an independent business group under JD.com. Leveraging our over 10 years of extensive experience in logistics and supply chain, as well as our capabilities in core advanced technologies like AI and even 5G, we are breaking ground on our Open Platform for Digital Supply Chain. It integrates all of our experience and strengths in order to deliver high value supply chain services across a wide range of industries.

The goal of the platform is simple: we want players of all shapes and sizes to reap the benefits of an agile supply chain. As I see it, the Open Platform for Digital Supply Chain will do two important things:

1)    Enable a comprehensive and integrated supply chain service that spans across purchasing, production and sourcing, consumption and distribution/circulation. Expanding from purely providing logistics and supply chain distribution service to retailers, to supporting the entire process from production to distribution. With a transparent, open, end-to-end supply chain, the sourcing of a product from a small rural farm, for example, through the purchase of that product and eventual delivery to the customer are inextricably linked.

2）Serve as a smart technology platform. Leveraging advanced technologies, to realize intelligent planning, production, supply chain and logistics. Take for example, our transformation of a logistics park by fully enabling 5G connectivity throughout it, allowing faster communication and even greater integration and productivity.

our transformation of a logistics park by fully enabling 5G connectivity throughout it

Looking at the auto industry gives us some insight into what this looks like in practice. Take an auto manufacturer who services the entirety of China stores all of its accessories in one warehouse. It will be nearly impossible for this manufacturer to provide efficient, fast services. But, through digitalization, the manufacturer can benefit from setting up a multi-warehouse layout where the accessories are closest to the offline auto services stores (referred to in China as “4S” stores) who will install them. By incorporating capabilities such as intelligent inventory forecasting and enabling accurate replenishment recommendations, the overall fulfillment costs will be significantly reduced. This just takes care of downstream supply chain. From an upstream perspective, integrating different data into auto manufacturers’ existing systems, and helping them build automated fulfillment facilities, can help auto manufacturers also optimize their own supply chain systems by designing them for more efficiency from the start.

These are the kinds of benefits we stand to gain by further investing in the supply chain. We have been deeply committed to making the investments that will advance our business. Now we are opening up these capabilities to our partners and other enterprises across various industries. Undoubtedly, supply chain will go through several stages of reform before we are able to fully maximize its benefits—from horizontal and vertical opening to improved coordination and integration. However, one thing is for certain – a stronger, more agile and efficient supply chain ensures a better experience for everyone’s customers, and we are already seeing this transformation in action.

(This piece was originally posted on Supply Chain Asia, here https://supplychainasia.org/open-platform-digital-supply-chain-next-wave-efficiency/)