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出行百人，a media under the umbrella of the company, focuses on the evolution of the automotive industry chain.

By emptying the money bag of Ford and making a full turn towards mobile service providers, the slogan of “user service-oriented enterprise” has come and gone.

However, after five years, there are many who choose to ride the wave, but there are few who really move forward against the wind.

Not long ago, SAIC Group pointed out the problems in the reflection of transformation. Traditional car companies have always preached “starting from the user,” but when encountering user problems, engineers’ thinking still dominates.

The huge system supports millions of annual sales, but it also makes the pace of transformation slow and cautious. Everyone knows that the transformation that affects the system requires drastic changes and is very risky.

If they win, they become the heroes of the era. If they lose, the battle-weary warriors lament. Traditional car companies find it difficult to make up their minds to shake the system and change significantly unless they are in dire straits.

The CEO of Volkswagen China, Feng Sihan, once said, “If we have sufficient funds, no worries, I will definitely try and work hard to create a ‘superlative’ product for users.”

This carmaker, with millions of global sales, also knows how much determination is needed to achieve true user operation, and breaking down the original system to rebuild user operation concepts requires “flowing water-like” costs.

It can be seen that the transformation is extremely difficult. However, the times have indeed changed.

The inertia accumulated in the traditional automotive era must be broken. The absence of burdened new forces also forces giant companies that have spent over a century building castles to transform in user operation methods.

However, Great Wall Motors has a saying: “New forces will not always be new forces, and traditional car companies can also be non-traditional.”

Only 20 words of change

As for how to be non-traditional, Great Wall Motors’ 2025 strategy provides an answer.

After the 8th Technology Festival of Great Wall Motors, the headlines of newspapers all quoted Great Wall Motors’ boss, Wei Jianjun, saying, “There is only one chance for Chinese auto brands,” and only during these three to five years, can we quickly expand our advantages.

There are two well-known cards: intelligence and electrification. It sounds simple, only six words, but it makes the whole industry flock, consume huge sums of money, and shed blood. This is especially true for Great Wall Motors.

# Great Wall Motors and Chairman Wei Jianjun’s dream has always been “to take Chinese cars to the world stage”. Based on this constant goal for the last 31 years, Great Wall Motors has put forward a new positioning in their 2025 strategic plan with 20 words – “global layout”, “big R&D investment”, “corporate transformation”, and “user-focused operation” being the core concepts.

Among them, user operation is the main thread running through this transformation, which can be called the “basis” and “framework” of this change. The global layout, R&D investment, corporate transformation form the “skeleton” to support Great Wall Motors transformation to a technology-focused company.

People familiar with Great Wall Motors know that “improvement every day” has been the motto for the last 31 years. Wei Jianjun’s personality has led this company with grand dreams to break down large goals into smaller and more refined steps.

This is especially evident in this transformation where Great Wall Motors has prepared solidly for each step, and also why, even when questioned, they are able to confidently state that they will reach their goal of producing 4 million cars by 2025. This thorough preparation and self-discipline leave no room for risks for Great Wall Motors, from Wei Jianjun to every person in the company.

In summary, the goal is to create a new business model based on the industrial Internet, deepening the C2B user operation mode, establishing a “product + software + service” value chain that connects the entire life cycle of car consumption, and achieve co-creation, sharing and win-win with users.

While the industry is focused on the question of how to reach 4 million cars, Great Wall Motors has already pushed beyond mountains and oceans with their efforts.

Wei Jianjun believes that the key to the transformation of automotive companies lies in the transformation of the mindset and organizational mechanism. Internally, Great Wall Motors has implemented innovative organizational mechanisms in version 3.0 to guarantee the implementation of C2B mode.

Over the past three years, Great Wall Motors has restructured the organization, mechanism, process, and enterprise ecology, forming a 3.0 version of the organizational structure of “strong backend, big mid-range, small frontend”. With the user-oriented frontend as the core, a “one car, one brand, one company” organizational form has been formed, creating several operational organizations to connect with users more accurately and sensitively.Two rounds of equity incentive plans were implemented in 2020 and 2021, granting nearly 12,000 people and covering 50% of core employees. Subsequently, a broad-based equity incentive model will be implemented, covering 100% of valuable employees and achieving a transformation from “employees” to “partners.”

With more and more companies entering the field of smart cars, competition for smart car talent has reached a fever pitch. Large-scale equity incentives help achieve positive talent flow and reserves. Attracting and retaining talent and collaborating together are key to transformation.

Putting each individual into a great transformation, the intersection of an individual’s life and the tide of the times. Great Wall Motors has always been good at telling these stories.

Of course, cultivating internal strength not only involves mobilizing the enthusiasm of “partners,” but also forging “hardcore strength” to promote enthusiasm. Therefore, Great Wall Motors has launched the “Green Intelligent Trend” strategy, achieving the goal of a “global layout” through green carbon neutrality, cognitive intelligence, global tide brands and tide products, and collaborative innovation.

Among them, research and development are key, becoming the foundation of the transformation.

In the era of gasoline vehicles, Great Wall Motors always adhered to the principle of “excessive research and development investment”, preferring excess technology over falling behind in technology. In the era of intelligence, they will do even more.

In the next five years, Great Wall Motors’ accumulated research and development investment will reach 100 billion yuan. By 2023, the number of global research and development personnel will double from the current 15,000 to 30,000, including 10,000 software development personnel.

Establish full-stack self-research capabilities for software and hardware integration around intelligent driving, intelligent cabins, and intelligent services. As a strong backend, the forward-looking technology team continuously innovates to deliver ammunition for operational unit and product development.

“Only by being well-prepared can we collaborate with users without any worries,” says a Great Wall Motors research and development engineer, never satisfied with such achievements.

Letting “collaboration” no longer be a concept.

A solid backend unleashes the full potential of the frontend. The focal point is the “collaboration” between the brand and the user.

User collaboration is a keyword and a popular concept. It means growing and enriching the brand’s connotations and extensions with users, forming a new ecology centered on people, car, and enterprise.

A few years ago, brands and users had an initial sense of “collaboration,” mainly in the naming of car models, which was an improvement on marketing methods, but there was almost no interaction between car companies and users in the production and manufacturing processes.In other words, at that time, “co-creation” was just a concept. “From technological research to product innovation to user experience, they were all detached from each other.”

The one who truly showed exceptional capabilities in co-creation was probably Haval Automobile. The naming of “Big Dog” last year gave rise to the specific pattern of user co-creation concept. Obviously, Great Wall Motors has much deeper thoughts on co-creation from a top-level design perspective.

Nowadays, the value system of automotive products has transformed from “driving performance” to “intelligent experience”. To truly operate based on users, two conditions must be met: one is sustainable closed-loop operation and the other is to form a stable interest community with users and manufacturing enterprises.

Great Wall Motors has achieved both of these points. The significance of C2B is to gain insight into user development trends, to think in terms of categories and to express with the brand, and to achieve mutual benefits with users.

Great Wall Motors is well aware that when facing new challenges, changes are not only technological but also a matter of market awareness and user mindset.

Last year, Great Wall Motors released three major technological brands, “Lemon”, “Tank”, and “Coffee Intelligence”, and launched multiple new models. The 2025 strategy is a shift in mindset from product focus to user focus.

Great Wall Motors is an enterprise that builds brands based on categories. Each brand is a combat unit, and each product has a combat unit responsible for it. It is fully committed to achieving user-centered and comprehensive innovation.

Based on this, Great Wall Motors has formed a matrix of six major brands: Pickup, Haval, WEY, Euler, Tank, and Salon, and created a new era of “trendy brands and products” for global consumers, including the ten major regional markets such as Russia, ASEAN, EU, and South America. In 2021, Great Wall Motors will launch more than 10 new models, and by 2023, it will reach over 60.

Great Wall Motors hopes to accurately focus on user needs through sustained category innovation and move from “one-time purchase of automotive products” to “providing sustained services for users”.

For example, with the rise of “Her Power”, the Euler brand has delicately tapped into the needs of female consumers and implemented the “Love Princess” plan, being called “the world’s car brand that loves women more”.# “Fire Alliance” – the Official Car Club of Great Wall Cannon

Great Wall Cannon named their official car club “Fire Alliance”. The club has gathered heroes from Alashan, trekked along the road to Mount Everest, and accompanied almost 100,000 users from the coast of the East China Sea to the snow-capped plateau. It has appeared in bustling urban centers and desolate deserts, fully demonstrating the product power of the Great Wall Cannon and subverting the market’s inherent perception of pickups. The club also provides a diverse pickup lifestyle.

According to surveys, users have high loyalty and low conversion rates to both Euler and Great Wall Cannon, and have a high degree of stickiness. Of course, Great Wall Motors’ user brand plan goes beyond these, including Tank Fuzhou, Yi Qi Chuang Ha, and Qianlima.

In addition, the implementation of the Mars plan is centered around 4 dimensions: product, service, brand, and value, and involves co-creation with users. With the user at the center, user suggestions run through the entire process of product planning, development, and verification, reconstruct the R&D decision-making chain, and create products that users truly love.

Building upon this foundation, Great Wall Motors has achieved remarkable results.

Haval has maintained the top spot in China’s SUV sales for 11 consecutive years; Great Wall pickups have been the domestic sales champion for 23 consecutive years and the export champion as well. Euler, as the world’s “first car brand that loves women more”, is loved by female users; Tank leads the global trend of intelligent off-road vehicles with the positioning of “trendy off-road SUV”…

The march forward will not stop.

Great Wall Motors will continue saturated and precise investment in the three major areas of pure electricity, hydrogen, and hybrid by releasing more than 50 new energy vehicle models by 2025. In addition, it will actively explore new business models such as “hardware pre-embedded, software unlock pay”, “software free, content pay”, and promote the transfer of the entire industry ecology to the back-end of the value chain.

“The new forces will not always be new forces, and traditional automakers can also be non-traditional.”

This sentence by the rotating president of Great Wall Motors, Meng Xiangjun, does not mean abandoning the traditional advantages of traditional cars, but inheriting the excellent engineering culture, daring to innovate, and playing with users and upstream and downstream partners to create new ecological value.

Although achieving true “customer operation” is a long and arduous journey.However, the real value of Great Wall Motor’s C2B mode lies in its focus on multiple categories to target segmented users, achieving coverage of segmented markets; High loyalty at the user level allows the enterprise to obtain sustainable value returns. This model is becoming a benchmark for Chinese auto companies.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.