Time Travel: 2014

Why such a nondescript name?

Ahri believes that the shared platform of Super Cell is different from both the front office and the back office in the popular sense, so they named this shared platform "middle platform".

Regardless of whether such a name is appropriate or not, the operating model of the company Super Cell in the previous life deeply shocked JACKMA and Ahri executives.

Ali executives believe that the middle platform can make the organization lighter and faster.

JACKMA also thinks so.

So after returning from the Super Cell visit, JACKMA took the lead in proposing the concept of China-Taiwanization.

Later, the people who worked on the matter further proposed the strategy of "big middle office, small front office" on this basis.

Under the guidance of this concept, Ali carried out a mid-level transformation.

On the business side, a "Shared Business Division" has been established to communicate between the front-end business department and the back-end cloud platform.

This reform has greatly improved the coordination capabilities among various departments within Ali Papa, and to a large extent promoted the sharing of data, products and other resources among its internal departments.

In addition to business-related actions, in terms of data, Ali also vigorously develops technology middle platforms such as data middle platforms.

Ahri's approach was quickly copied by other companies, giving rise to the "China-Taiwan fever".

In his previous life, Zhang Yiming also integrated the mid-stage architecture into Bytedance's architecture.

Companies such as Gouchang and Goudong have successively followed up on organizational changes and adjustments and introduced "middle platforms".

In Lin Hui's view, China and Taiwan have indeed had a certain positive effect for a period of time.

As for how to understand China and Taiwan?

To understand the middle office, we must start from the concepts of front office and back office.

It is generally considered that the front desk is the business system, and the e-commerce platform, portal website, mobile APP, WeChat/Information/public account, etc. built by the enterprise all belong to the front desk;

The backend is IT support, including cloud computing platform, database, operation and maintenance system, financial system, product system, customer management system, warehouse logistics management system, etc.

The front desk must innovate and iterate quickly because it must quickly respond to the needs of front-end users;

The backend needs to be stable first, because it faces relatively stable backend resources, and it is often an old and complex system.

The front-end and back-end are like two gears running at different speeds, so the back-end is often unable to support the needs of the front-end.

In this case, Zhongtai emerged as the times require.

The middle office is like a "gear wheel" between the front office and the back office.

It makes up for the contradiction between the front-end "driven by innovation and rapid change" and the back-end "driven by stability, reliability and relatively slow change cycles".

The middle platform model is the foundation of digital transformation. The middle platform model is the foundation of digital transformation.

In addition, the rise of China and Taiwan is also related to the domestic Internet environment at that time.

In the early days of the Internet's brutal expansion, the speed of seizing the market was higher than the requirements of organizational construction, so the business formed a self-closed loop.

As different businesses continue to develop, there is a lot of "reinventing the wheel" work.

For example, Alibaba’s main business is e-commerce transactions, and all front-end products have many similar business contents.

For example, functional requirements such as product display, user incentives, search, order transactions, payment and collection, and advertising may be required.

By introducing the concept of middle platform, many common parts can be abstracted to form universal building block-style "accessories", which can be used directly when encountering the same scenario in the future.

From this perspective, the concept of middle platform is somewhat similar to a special "modular design."

With the help of abstract "middle platform" construction, enterprises can avoid duplication of construction of each business and avoid waste of resources.

China and Taiwan have played a positive role in a short period of time (2015~2018).

But after 2018, domestic Internet companies found that China and Taiwan were not so successful.

Ali, who once pioneered the concept of China-Taiwan in China, discovered that China-Taiwan was not that effective.

Around 19 years ago in the previous life, he began to take the lead in "dismantling China and Taiwan."

The reason why this happens is because when these companies apply the middle platform, they find that the middle platform is often just a beautiful concept.

The middle platform gives people a very vague feeling. To really implement it, it needs to be things like data and data warehouses.

In addition, building an efficient middle platform requires high communication and collaboration.

But imagine if a company could maintain a high level of communication and collaboration.

Even if you don’t build a middle platform or something like that, wouldn’t you still be able to succeed?

It is worth mentioning that Super Cell, a company considered by the outside world to be the birthplace of China and Taiwan.

In the actual operation process, it has never claimed that it has such a thing as a middle platform.

In other words, the China-Taiwan thing is largely the product of the wishful thinking of domestic Internet companies.

From the transformation of the central platform to the dismantling of the central platform, how much waste of resources will be caused by such toss?

However, it is not easy for Lin Hui to judge from the moral high ground. After all, under normal circumstances, it is difficult for anyone to predict things related to business model/architecture.

Of course, this is just difficult for the natives to predict.

For Lin Hui, a reborn person, he can predict things because of his rebirth.

Even if Lin Hui can only predict for seven years, this is still a huge advantage.

Lin Hui suddenly realized that after his rebirth, not only the various technologies he mastered were overwhelming to people of this era.

Some of the business models and enterprise structures that he is familiar with are also an extremely valuable asset.

The business models and enterprise structures that other companies spent billions, tens of billions or even hundreds of billions on can be found at Lin Hui's fingertips.

And what does a mature business model/architecture mean?

This means no additional trial and error is required.

This will greatly save various resources required for business operations.

At the same time, a mature business model/structure also means that many risks can be avoided when the company is operating.

In addition, the mature business model/structure also means that there seems to be another possibility for Lin Hui to choose in the future.

Although there are many companies that have been launched in this time and space, it is definitely impossible to cut them off.

But just because you can't cut off your beard doesn't mean you can't confront him directly, right?

Take domestic BAT as an example. Although these companies have taken advantage of the east wind of mobile Internet, they seem to be full of vitality and everything is competing for success.

But so what?

What will happen if Lin Hui directly uses the more mature strategies of these companies seven years later to recruit these current companies?

These companies may be resilient in the face of powerful rivals.

But can these companies defeat their stronger selves seven years later?

It seems impossible to beat.

Imagine holding the same hero solo. The opponent is only a few levels up, but you have a full-level divine outfit.

What will the opponent use to fight you?