Will Weimob continue to lay off employees?

Half a year later, 60% of Weimob’s R&D department has been laid off

As early as May, Lao Wang interviewed an employee of Weimob. The revelation at that time was that the R&D department of layoffs. Weimob: During the epidemic, the R&D department laid off 20% of its employees, nearly 300 people, and the compensation was N+1.

In previous interviews, it was mentioned that Weimob will have at least 20% layoffs in the future. It is already November, and half a year has passed. Lao Wang has received the latest news: It turns out that the R&D department has nearly 2,000 employees. There are only 400 people left in the group, and the layoff rate exceeds 60%!

As for why the situation is so severe, we have to start with Weimeng’s popular WOS system.

This WOS system was launched at the end of November last year, and the public beta will actually start in March this year.

The external publicity is: This is the first commercial operating system for the decentralized era in the Chinese enterprise service field. In the context of the digital economy, the Weimeng WOS system helps enterprises achieve sustainability through decentralized operations. Growth adds another milestone to the development history of Weimob Group. Provide a solid foundation for the implementation of the strategy of "customization, ecology, and internationalization".

The story is as grand as ever, the kind that capital likes to hear. But in fact, this glorious achievement is directly related to the layoffs in the production and research department.

In order to promote the migration of the WOS system, Weimob Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Huang Junwei said: "All previous customers must switch to the new system. As long as the migration is completed, they will "Everything will happen." The situation is indeed as Mr. Huang said at the WOS celebration banquet: "Since the first day I joined Weimeng, I have experienced large and small production and research battles, from dozens of people to hundreds to thousands of people. , the process was very tortuous and encountered many difficulties. ”

It is indeed a lot of difficulties, especially for the production and research employees involved in this battle: in order not to affect the normal operation of the existing system, every night. The migration process started around 11 o'clock, and everyone had to go to work at 10 o'clock the next morning at the latest. This repeated, and finally in May or June, the migration work was basically completed. However, at this time, layoffs came!

Before you can treat people like cattle and horses, you can draw the pie at will. After squeezing out the value, you will be cut without negotiation! The day when the migration is completed is not the day when the pie is cashed in, but the day when the pie is packed and left.

The most ridiculous thing is that the WoS migration department and the marketing cloud department (Enterprise WeChat, the old Queen will talk about this) are the most involved in Weimob's research and technology.

Of course, the production and research line is not the worst, there is also the wine and travel line.

The fire of layoffs first affected the hotel and hotel industry in May and June, with layoffs reaching more than 70%: smart hotels and smart tourism (a business line that has not been updated since its launch), PMSS hotel management Zhu Zhe of the system, when the hotel line was there, this system could be opened, but after the layoffs, it was no longer possible.

The department where layoffs are the most serious is the department, including Ke Lai Dian (which has not been updated for more than two years). The largest department is the catering department (which has not been updated for more than two years).

Weimob acquired Yazuo at the end of last year. The current general manager is called Mr. Bai. Before Mr. Bai took over, the catering department was called Smart Catering. After taking over, he served as the vice president of Weimob Smart Catering Department and transformed Smart Catering into Combined with Yazuo, the "three stores in one" product is launched. This product is a combination of Yazuo and smart catering. Mainly, Yazuo is responsible for offline cashiers, and smart catering is responsible for private small programs.

However, the performance did not improve after the acquisition. Instead, some of the big customers it had accumulated, such as Fengmao Kebab and Xiapu Xiapu, were lost. The main reason is that before the acquisition, customers were using Weimob’s online system and offline were using the merchant’s own system. After Weimob acquired Yazuo, after the combination, only members were connected, but orders and data were not connected. In the end, It would be better to just "break up", but Weimeng is keeping this matter very tightly under wraps. It is said that Mr. Bai, who is in charge of catering, was very angry.

Speaking of Mr. Bai, the general manager of Yazuo, it is also amazing. Before the acquisition, Yazuo itself had no layoffs, but it was only responsible for its own profits and losses. After the acquisition, Weimob and Yazuo itself laid off more than 85% of their employees. Everyone is spreading the news: "You have laid off people from your own company, and now you are here to fight Weimeng!"

But this time, President Bai, the sales staff of the catering department, has borne the brunt of the layoffs so far. 90%.

After the layoffs, catering, hotel, hotel and in-store services were directly grouped into new retail and e-commerce. The three business units were integrated together. Now new retail and e-commerce are the core of Weimob. Contributed 40-50% share of Weimob saas subscription. Of course, new retail and e-commerce are also cutting jobs, but they are not that serious.

2. Violent layoffs internally and fraudulent cooperation externally

Weimob’s own business system is: saas, agency operation, research and development and advertising four major business sectors, surrounding the four major businesses In terms of sectors, the most profitable is advertising, followed by saas and agency operations.

Let’s talk about agency operations first. Although saas is profitable (but not likes), the agency operation business is also profitable. Compared with saas, it can achieve 64% because the cost of agency operation is very low.

Why are agency operating costs low?

Because Weimob’s agency operation actually has very few self-operated service providers. They are basically companies established by the family relationships of Weimeng’s current executives, mainly distributed in Hefei, Suzhou and other areas around Shanghai. In cities like this, there are basically nepotistic agency operating companies. It is said that there is only one farthest service provider in Qingdao, and this is not a nepotistic company.

So, Weimeng is a real intermediary for operating service providers, taking a commission from it. For example, for the agency operation of public accounts, the quotation is 30,000-40,000 yuan a quarter. In the end, he can discount it to 70,000-80,000 yuan, but even with such a discount, Weimob still makes money, because the money is given to the nepotistic agency operation company. lower.

But the contract was signed by Weimob (the customer also thought that he was signing by Weimob). It is said that Weimob’s direct sales department will send an evaluation email every time it signs a contract with an agent operation department. If the evaluation If the customer mentions in the email which service provider they want to pick up, the boss of the value-added operations department will be very angry, because this is not a personal matter.

3. The order fraud incident caused a fire in the backyard again

Effective on November 1, 2022, the document "Weimeng Smart Business Group Refund Rules" was issued, explaining that if direct sales If the department applies for an order refund, the rank and boss will be traced, and accountability will begin.

The reason why this document was released starts with the fraudulent order incident a few months ago.

This incident mainly occurred in the direct selling department. In order to get promoted, the middle-level leaders of the direct selling department allowed themselves to participate in fraudulent orders. Sometimes they would make 100,000-200,000 yuan, mainly at the end of each month. Performance, and then

After swiping it, you can refund it in the middle of the next month (a bug of Weimob). At the beginning, you only need to explain the reason. For example, if the customer is not satisfied with the function, then you can Full refund, no liability.

But later, the refund figure was too large, and the senior management noticed it, so they issued this document.

Why are orders fraudulent?

In order to cross ranks between the second and third levels, every level below has the same idea. Because they have been promoted for a long time, and the frontline has been upgraded, they can get 2-3 thousand more per month. Yuan, middle-level management can be more. A top-down act.

The most serious cases of fraudulent orders are Enterprise WeChat and Enterprise WeChat Assistant, and they are all updated with the latest Enterprise WeChat version. This business is also highly valued within the company. Weimeng has specially set up an Enterprise WeChat business. The department has also launched a welfare policy. If the performance indicators are met, the performance will be calculated as 1.5 times. For example, the highest version of Enterprise WeChat is 98,000, and 1.5 times is 140,000-150,000.

Driven by profit, fraud orders come. But in fact, if you exclude the data on fraudulent orders, the number of actual sales of the highest version of WeChat in the entire group is very small!

After the release of this document, it caused a lot of commotion, and many employees were aggrieved, so Those who want refunds in November can only continue to communicate with the company, and finally reach an agreement that any issues arising after November will be held accountable. This means that it will not be so easy to get a refund starting in December. The deeper meaning is that what happened before November has become an established reality. Indeed, many people have been promoted as a result.

And having said that, the company can’t investigate even if it wants to, because since Weimeng entered the mini program market in 2017, there has been a red line: Weimob does not accept cash. Even if customers give cash, Weimob will Alliance insiders cannot make payments. This time, Weimob's executives gave money to someone who had resigned from Weimob and asked the person who had resigned to make the payment. Therefore, it cannot be proven that this order was placed by someone within Weimob.

4. Weimob is a pure capital company, not a technology company

Unlike Youzan, it is a product-centered company, and the entire mini program and e-commerce system It's very perfect. But the overall commercialization is not particularly good, so we are also laying off employees.

For example, the grand WOS system that the story tells has a lot of bugs. To promote this system, we only put a lot of effort into the store decoration level. For example, we made many tools into the form of components, which looks more flexible. However, the user experience is very poor, for example, the systems are not compatible and interoperable.

It's just a matter of rushing to get it on the shelves. The idea of ??this system was proposed by the top management. It is claimed to be more open and functional. The most incompatible point is that it is aimed at external service providers such as ERP systems. It is incompatible. After buying it, there are still two systems, which are not very compatible as publicly stated.

Customer feedback after migration: Some functions will be deleted. I heard that in the direct sales department, there was a client who was engaged in cross-border e-commerce. After the migration, the store decoration and establishment function was removed, making the page seen by c-store users a mess. There are also issues such as material loss after migration.

The products that Weimob focuses on can tell stories in the capital market. The WOS system launched also allows buyers in the secondary market to tell stories, and they can tell them very beautifully. After all, there is currently no such product on the market.

In addition, Weimob’s direct sales department is a company that sells products only.

In fact, Weimob's unsteadiness can also be seen from its determination in price: the most core Weimob SaaS solution, the direct sales department can get a minimum of 30% off, and the enterprise WeChat assistant can get a minimum of 30% off.

Lao Wang feels that from the perspective of a businessman, Weimeng is actually on the right track.

However: Weimeng is a company that buys products for the sake of buying products. The boss is a good storyteller. For people outside the city, Weimeng will feel that Weimeng is very glamorous. Chatting with the direct sales department, Weimob is the only company in China whose software business is listed on the Hong Kong Main Board. Customers think it is very powerful when they hear it, but internally, both the production and research and marketing departments are very chaotic and full of chaos.