Liu Wu is engaged in logistics. His clients include Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Philips, Amway, Samsung and other Fortune 500 companies. His Baogong Logistics is one of the best private logistics enterprises in China, and it is rated as the most valuable logistics enterprise in China by McKinsey and Morgan Stanley.
Dating back to the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, China's "Top Ten Industrial Revitalization Plan" is being formulated. Whether the tenth largest industry is "real estate" or "new energy" is hotly debated. But unexpectedly, the logistics industry gained the last position. On February 25th, 2009, "China Logistics Revitalization Plan" was released, which indicated that the revitalization of the logistics industry had risen to the height of China's national strategy. As the vice president of China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, the vice president of Logistics Branch of China Communications and Transportation Association and the president of Guangdong Logistics Industry Association, Liu Wu has made great contributions to the development of the logistics industry.
Do logistics, also need a unique way of thinking, Liu Wu said, it is because of diligent thinking, just got the success now-depth determines the height.
Introduce service thinking for Procter & Gamble.
From 65438 to 0979, Liu Wu, a high school graduate, worked in Shantou Supply and Marketing Cooperative, Guangdong Province, engaged in storage and transportation.
1992, Liu Wu contracted a railway freight transfer station in Guangzhou, which was responsible for assembling some odds and ends of goods into complete vehicles and delivering them to customers. "At that time, I was purely a transporter!"
Liu Wu works very hard, pursues perfection, provides customers with 24-hour freight service, keeps the warehouse clean and tidy ... all these make this "transport runner" a little famous. Two years later, P&G (P&; G) found him.
1994 P&G China is headquartered in Guangzhou, and its business in China is developing rapidly, and traffic has become a bottleneck. P&G has cooperated with other storage and transportation companies before, and the goods were delayed, lost and seriously damaged. At the last straw, P&G found Liu Wu, which enjoys a high reputation in this field. Liu Wu was very excited and immediately agreed to many strict requirements put forward by P&G. ..
Liu Wu said: "At that time, I was trying to make money from P&G. I didn't realize that this was a customer who had a great impact on my life and career."
The first business I got from Procter & Gamble was to send four containers from Guangzhou to Shanghai by rail.
P&G felt uncomfortable for the first time and reiterated their standards and requirements. Liu Wu dare not neglect and take good care of P&G's goods. After loading the container on the train, Liu Wu immediately flew to Shanghai to track all aspects of unloading and delivery, striving for perfection ... This cost was extremely high, and Liu Wu didn't make any money at all, but he got high marks in this "exam" of P&G.
Since then, he can get more and more business from P&G that makes his colleagues "jealous".
1994, Liu Wu stopped contracting freight stations and established Guangzhou Baogong Storage and Transportation Company. When the company was founded, only Liu Wu, accountant and driver, and only P&G were customers.
A friend asked Liu Wu, "Your company is so small, but how can you have such a big customer as Procter & Gamble?"
Liu Wu said: "The company is not afraid of small scale. The key is that I know that the traditional operation mode must be changed and the company will always grow up! "
The cooperation with Procter & Gamble prompted Liu Wu to study, think and improve constantly, from quantitative change to qualitative change, and finally completed his first ideological revolution, the core of which was "service thought".
"Service, or service!" Liu Wu said: "The secret of our survival is service. Look at the problem from the customer's perspective. Don't think about what you can do As long as customers need it, you must provide it. What you can do is to provide customers with better services! "
In order to provide better services for Procter & Gamble, Liu Wu Company has gradually set up branches in Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, and established operation systems throughout the country to provide "one-stop" services for loading, receiving, unloading and delivery. P&G was very satisfied with Liu Wu's self-improvement, and signed the Railway Transportation General Agent Contract with him, handing over all the railway freight business to Baogong Storage and Transportation Company in Liu Wu.
Due to the revolution of service thought, the storage and transportation of Bao Gong developed rapidly.
Burnout gave birth to the "information flow revolution"
From 65438 to 0996, Baogong Logistics has more than 300,000 square meters of warehouses, and its business volume has grown by leaps and bounds, with outlets all over the country, but it has encountered the problem of information bottleneck. When the company started, there might be only one business a day. Liu Wu can carefully track this business and learn its detailed information, such as when it will be delivered, when it will arrive, whether it is damaged, whether it has been received in storage, and so on. With more than 100 business orders every day, it is difficult for employees and operation departments in Liu Wu to master complete data even if they spend a lot of energy.
The response speed of Baogong storage and transportation decreased obviously, and the service deviated.
For a time, Liu Wu was overwhelmed by the constant complaints from customers, but he couldn't find a solution. By chance, he met Tang Yousan, an information technology expert, and was suddenly enlightened. Can you build a logistics information system?
After in-depth communication with Tang Yousan, Liu Wu found that things were far from simple. At that time, hardware and software were very expensive, and a large sum of money was needed to carry out the information transformation of Baogong headquarters and outlets all over the country. Tang Yousan said: "It is also possible to invest half of Bao Gong's total assets."
Liu Wu, of course, reluctantly, dragged on for half a year. In the past six months, his mind has not been idle, and he has been thinking, is his enterprise just muddling along and getting rich, or taking the risk of "information flow revolution" and moving in the direction of large-scale logistics? Finally, active Liu Wu decided to invest in information system.
Liu Wu's "information flow revolution" is a painful and long process. Buy hardware, debug lines, buy software to develop software independently, and improve the integration of software systems and business processes. In order to adapt old employees to new working methods, Liu Wu even took the lead in learning computer operations ... It was not until the beginning of 1999 that Baogong's logistics information system was initially formed. Since then, this system has become a "selling point" of Baogong Business, and brought a new big customer to Liu Wu in the spring of 1999: Philips.
This year, Liu Wu renamed the company Baogong Logistics Group, turning a new page.
Today, Liu Wu Baogong Group has dozens of big customers such as Philips, Samsung and Red Bull, among which 80% are foreign-funded enterprises. Liu Wu said: "This system is the key for our business to continue to double and our assets to grow dozens of times. If there is no information flow revolution, it is unimaginable! "
As early as many years ago, Baogong headquarters realized personal computers, and each manager had a laptop. When meeting with customers, Bao Gong's people all brought laptops, and even some customers of well-known foreign companies lamented. ...
Seeing the huge benefits brought by the information system, Liu Wu later added100000 yuan to develop Baogong Logistics Information Management System. This has become Bao Gong's core competitiveness.
The great logistics thought brought by a basket of peaches
Once, Liu Wu went to a remote place in Jiangsu on business. One morning, when he passed a highway, he saw a peasant woman selling a basket of peaches. Those peaches are fresh, sweet and very cheap. In the afternoon, when Liu Wu passed by again, she found that women were still selling things. He asked, it was still that basket of peaches in the morning, and none of them were sold!
The quality of imported fruits in Guangzhou supermarket may not be as good as these peaches, but the price is 10 times higher, and there are still many customers ... "It's all because I didn't do a good job in logistics! Such a good peach will sell well if it is packaged a little and then transported to big cities at low cost, especially Guangzhou and Shenzhen. "
This is a small matter, but it touches Liu Wu greatly. After doing storage and transportation logistics for so many years, he gradually realized the importance of logistics, which is the foundation of the economy and involves all aspects of the economy, including a peach and even a grain of rice.
At the end of the story, Liu Wu bought all the peaches at a price higher than the farmer's bid 100 yuan. He thinks it's worth it, because what he bought is the concept and sense of responsibility of doing big logistics. Since then, Liu Wu has devoted himself to his career.
He vigorously promoted industry cooperation and exchanges, cooperated with Beijing Technology and Business University, and with the support of the National Development and Reform Commission, the Economic and Trade Commission, the Ministry of Commerce and the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, began to organize a non-profit "Advanced Seminar on Logistics Technology and Management Development in China" to explore the development direction and mode of logistics industry in China. In the first seminar, he always sent 300 invitations to government departments, foreign-funded enterprises, scholars, experts and peers. As a result, none of my colleagues came, only two state-owned enterprises came ... but Liu Wu went on his own way. Today, the "Advanced Seminar on Logistics Technology and Management Development in China" has been held for ten consecutive sessions, which is amazing.
Under the sponsorship of Liu Wu, Bao Gong invests a huge sum of money every year to set up Bao Gong scholarships in 20 universities to motivate young students. And set up Baogong Logistics Incentive Fund to reward talents who have made outstanding contributions to the logistics industry. The whole industry pays for itself, which shows Liu Wu's enthusiasm for the cause of "Big Logistics".
Liu Wu also put forward and implemented the "Logistics Base Strategy". Previously, Bao Gong adopted a business model of light assets, and warehouses, operating facilities and even office space were leased, which is also a model generally adopted by the logistics industry. In 2002, Liu Wu put forward the strategy of logistics base, and invested heavily in building 15 ~ 20 logistics bases nationwide, each covering an area of about 100 ~ 200 mu. When this plan came out, the industry was booed. However, Liu Wu believes that today, when modern enterprises pursue zero inventory, short circulation and make-to-order production, logistics enterprises can solve the inventory problem for these production enterprises and provide integrated supply chain services in order to win more customers' hearts. ...
Under the pressure of doubt, Liu Wu firmly embarked on his "big logistics" road. Today, Bao Gong has established more than ten logistics bases in Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing, Shenyang, Shunde and Hefei. More and more customers have taken a fancy to Baogong's integrated supply chain service. Among the top 500 enterprises in the world, more than 50 enterprises have established strategic partnership with Bao Gong.
Under the control of Liu Wu, Baogong Logistics has been operating for 15 years, and won the titles of "Top 100 Logistics Enterprises in China", "Leading Circulation Enterprises in Guangdong Province", "Top 500 Information Enterprises in China" and "Top 50 Most Competitive Logistics Enterprises in China".
In July 2009, Liu Wu's latest plan is to invest 500 million yuan to build a 200,000-square-meter Baogong integrated logistics base in Tianjin Xiqing.
Facing the grand blueprint, Liu Wu was calm. "We would rather do 500 years than top 500!"