Business Story丨The wave of going overseas, AI blossoms

21st Century Business Herald reporter Dong Jingyi reported from Shanghai

For all walks of life, there is a very big variable this year - artificial intelligence (AI), and the future opportunity for enterprises to go overseas also lies in the changes brought by generative AI.

In the past, when companies wanted to make their products better attract potential overseas customers, they had to spend a lot of time and energy to release products, polish product descriptions, shoot introductory videos, and match vivid pictures. When overseas customers want to know more about these products, they have to stay in front of computers and mobile phones late at night to communicate across time differences, and craft reply sentences to avoid misunderstandings caused by various cultural differences.

These most preliminary processes alone involve a lot of repetitive and trivial work, as well as multilingual environments, time differences, and other issues. A number of foreign trade practitioners told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that over the years, a large number of trivial transactional work has long occupied the working time of foreign trade salesmen.

And that's where AI comes in. AI applications such as material generation and intelligent customer service have blossomed everywhere, and when overseas enterprises hand over these complicated tasks to AI, the threshold for foreign trade is lowered, and employees can be liberated to do more important things such as product development and market selection.

According to the data shared by Zhao Kun, an analyst at iResearch, going overseas is already one of the industries with the most use of AI, and more than 7 percent of cross-border sellers have used AI tools to assist operations.

In the view of Zhang Kuo, president of Ali International Station, AI is driving the foreign trade industry to become fully intelligent, which will bring about a comprehensive reduction of the threshold of foreign trade and an exponential improvement in efficiency.

Entering 2024, the global economy is still facing many challenges and changes, from the adjustment of global trade policies to the rise of emerging technologies, foreign trade enterprises will also face many changes and competitive pressures. In this ever-changing era, the effective use of innovative technologies such as digital technology and artificial intelligence will become the key to the survival and development of foreign trade enterprises. "In the future, AI is destined to reshape the way foreign trade enterprises work." Lu Yi, general manager of the AI division of Focus Technology, said.

Dense layout of enterprises

Since the advent of ChatGPT, the cross-border e-commerce industry has also become a member of the active entry into AI, and AI has appeared in the annual reports of many listed companies.

Last year, Jihong Co., Ltd. launched a number of vertical models, including the e-commerce text vertical model ChatGiiKin-6B, the e-commerce intelligent design and material generation vertical model GiiAI, and the intelligent delivery assistant G-king, etc., to achieve efficiency improvement in product selection decision-making, product selling point sorting and advertising copy output.

By deeply integrating AI technology into business processes, the company has achieved rapid profit growth in 2023. The annual report shows that in 2023, Jihong Co., Ltd. will achieve operating income of 6.695 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.53%; The net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 345 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 87.57%.

Guohai Securities said that the company's independent research and development of cross-border social e-commerce operation management system and the application of AI in cross-border social e-commerce scenarios will promote the gross profit margin of cross-border e-commerce business in 2023 to increase by 3.82 percentage points year-on-year to 63.31%.

Another listed company, Huakai Yibai, said that the company began to invest in ChatGPT and conduct relevant tests at the end of March last year, and some applications have been implemented.

Specifically, Huakai Yibai has improved the level of automation and intelligent operation by building the AIGC engine, and has been applied in 8 specific business links such as procurement, product selection, and customer service.

Huakai Yibai said that focusing on the comprehensive application of intelligent publication and intelligent copywriting library, and developing the intelligent reply function of AI customer service will be another focus of the company's work, and will continue to explore the application scope of AIGC technology in the field of cross-border e-commerce in the future.

Focus Technology, a cross-border service listed company, launched an AI product for B2B sellers earlier, namely AI Michael, a foreign trade assistant, to provide intelligent and automated solutions for enterprises. According to Focus Technology, within one year of its launch, AI Michael has served more than 5,000 foreign trade enterprises.

The product's features bring a significant increase in efficiency to users. For example, video generation has helped businesses reduce the time it takes to produce a video from an average of 4 hours to 5 minutes, while the number of visits to the video has increased by 30%; The image processing function reduces the average processing time of a single image from 10 minutes to 30 seconds, increasing product exposure by 30%. Guohai Securities believes that AI assistants are expected to gradually penetrate the existing paid members of the platform, promoting the overall membership payment rate and ARPU value increase.

In fact, in the past few years, the company has applied AI technology in the automatic generation of product text descriptions and intelligent customer service. "The use of AI is an inevitable trend, and AI will gradually improve the work efficiency of each of us." Focus Technology said in the record sheet of investor relations activities.

Ali International Station, which also focuses on toB business, also has OKKI, an intelligent workbench for foreign trade business, which focuses on intelligent marketing, customer management, and auxiliary decision-making, and is open to all small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises. This has fueled the rapid growth of its digital trade worldwide. Zhang Kuo mentioned at the Greenwich Forum that in the past five years, the average annual growth rate of Ali International Station has reached 22%.

In the past six months, the first batch of users of OKKI AI have improved by more than 30% on average, both in terms of the response rate of AI writing development letters and the improvement of management efficiency. At the same time, the reception time has been greatly shortened, and the conversion of orders has increased by 3 times.

For platform-based enterprises, the empowerment of sellers by AI products optimizes the operation process of foreign trade enterprises, undoubtedly enhances the stickiness of sellers, and enhances the overall competitiveness of the platform.

Zhang Zhouping, chief researcher of the True Color Think Tank, told reporters that cross-border e-commerce companies have explored and deployed AI to meet the current needs and the general trend of development. For them, the application of AI technology can help them better understand users and market needs, improve their operational efficiency and effectiveness, expand their business areas, and maximize business value.

Finding a breakthrough in the competition

Behind the rush to embrace new technologies is increased competition.

According to public data, in the past five years, the scale of cross-border e-commerce trade in the mainland has increased by more than 10 times, and the number of cross-border e-commerce entities in the country has exceeded 120,000. Large factories have left the market one after another, becoming the leader of going overseas, and shifting from domestic to overseas markets.

"In the five years from 2022, our judgment is that going overseas will enter a concentrated outbreak period." Yang Yuan, CEO of Xiaoman Technology, told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, "Many businesses may achieve huge growth in this round of outbreak, or they may be left behind because of competition." How to face this round of competition is a common challenge for us. ”

However, AI technology has brought more incremental space, and the industry generally reflects that most enterprises have a more positive attitude towards embracing AI technology.

Zhao Kun said that in the field of commercial customer operation services, the application penetration rate of AI has reached 40%. In addition, the use of AI in customer service has reached 25%. "We recognize that in foreign trade application scenarios, many operational tools have a natural fit with artificial intelligence technology."

Especially for small and medium-sized enterprises that are relatively short of talent and lack of budget, AI as an assistant solves many real problems. According to the "Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Day Report" released by Ali International Station, nearly 30% of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in the world tend to use AI tools on a daily basis.

Taking talents as an example, Ma Tongwei, founder of Shandong Ruitu, shared with reporters that he likes the function of AI writing development letters the most. In the past, the foreign trade industry had high requirements for recruiters' language ability, but with the application of AI technology, even if there is a barrier to English communication, development letters can be quickly generated by entering keywords, and the content can be adjusted according to needs, which greatly improves efficiency.

"The recruitment requirements have also changed, and I originally hoped to recruit English majors, and then it will be level 6, and then level 4." Ma Tongwei said that when this factor is aside, enterprises will pay more attention to talents with more professional backgrounds, and ultimately achieve higher business efficiency.

At the same time, when AI lowers the threshold for global trade, companies that could only do local business can also develop their business globally in a simplified way, and gain more room for growth by participating in the global supply chain. In today's wave of domestic trade to foreign trade, AI will become an accelerator.

Yang Yuan concluded that the main obstacles faced in the field of foreign trade can be divided into several main categories. The first is the language communication barrier mentioned above, which is also the main one. Many people who trade on Taobao, Tmall, and in China are often afraid of not being able to communicate effectively with foreign customers because of their low level of English.

The second is the mastery of foreign trade knowledge. Foreign trade involves global trade, including trade agreements, payment methods, tariff policies, logistics processes, and laws and regulations between different countries, which are often very complex and detailed.

Current AI products will lower the threshold for these sellers to enter the foreign trade industry. When these barriers are lowered, it will be found that many people engaged in domestic trade will be able to take advantage of their accumulated experience and capabilities in digital operations.

"Because the manufacturing process is the same, but overseas markets may have different specifications and certification requirements, but these thresholds are not high. Once the communication and rules barriers are mastered, the rest of the process is practically similar. Yang Yuan said.

Reality under vision

However, although the industry as a whole has expectations for AI empowerment, it still faces multiple obstacles in the practical application process.

The first key challenge that enterprises face when adopting and applying generative AI technologies is the construction of data and infrastructure. This includes the collection and collation of data, the improvement of internal data systems, and the construction of the necessary technical infrastructure, which are the basis for ensuring the effective operation of AI systems.

In particular, foreign trade enterprises have a lower degree of digitalization. Zhang Kuo revealed that B2B, as the main body of global trade, still has a single-digit digital penetration rate, and more micro, small and medium-sized enterprises urgently need to quickly open digital trade through AI technology.

Second, how to measure the return on investment (ROI) of enterprises after investing in AI technology is a core issue. Since the effects and benefits of AI technology may not be immediately visible, companies may face uncertainty in decision-making when the ROI has not been clearly verified.

"The relatively low willingness of most Chinese companies to pay for software is related to the lack of awareness of intellectual property protection in China and the overall business environment. This situation is expected to improve as the environment changes. Yang Yuan told reporters.

Furthermore, internal decision-makers are critical to the successful adoption of AI technology. Decision-makers need to demonstrate sufficient leadership and decision-making to drive the implementation of AI projects and overcome the resistance and challenges that may be encountered during the adoption of the technology.

After the application of AI, it is still not advisable to be overly optimistic about its effect, after all, it is the people themselves who make decisions. Zhang Jun, vice president of marketing insights and solutions for Google Greater China, told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that AI has helped improve efficiency, but it is not the key to determining the enterprise itself, the key is whether the decision-makers of the enterprise have grasped the needs of consumers.

For example, the development of generative AI has made it easy to produce material in batches, improving content production efficiency and reducing labor costs. But to achieve effective communication, it is more important to create personalized creatives that resonate with each consumer, which requires decision-makers to decide the final solution based on industry knowledge and user insights, among the wide range of options provided by AI.

More importantly, from the perspective of AI technology itself, its current application scenarios in the industry still need to be further developed, as shown in the "report card" of the above-mentioned AI products, the application of AI focuses on material generation, intelligent customer service, business opportunity follow-up and other aspects to achieve cost reduction and efficiency increase in specific links, but it has not yet formed a system, and the "change" and industrial restructuring expected by the industry are still far away.

This is obviously not a problem for enterprises, nor is it a problem for the industry, and all attempts at AI are just the beginning.

"Taking the analogy between the internal combustion engine and the car, the level we are doing now is the car that Ford and Benz just invented at the beginning, and there is still a long way to go from a car like Tesla." Zhang Kuo said metaphorically to reporters.

Obviously, it will take time for both the industry and enterprises to really use AI well.

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