Taoxianda'S Dilemma On The Wine Table

After the outbreak of the alleged infringement of female employees, Alibaba announced the preliminary internal investigation results and handling decisions in the early morning of August 9: Li Yonghe, the president of the city's retail business group, and Xu Kun, HRG (personnel specialist), resigned. Tong Wenhong, Alibaba's chief human resources officer, recorded demerits. The suspected male employees were dismissed and never employed, Whether there are illegal acts, the police are investigating and collecting evidence.

Zhang Yong, chairman and CEO of Alibaba's board of directors and CEO, believed in the internal letter that Li Yonghe, as the president of the business group, was far from sensitive, attached importance to and invested in this matter, and did not take the initiative. At the same time, Xu Kun did not play a key role in HRG decision-making, so he should take the leadership responsibility.

This punishment is not unimportant, but it comes a little late. In June 2018, Li Yonghe joined Alibaba as assistant Zhang Yong. In November 2018, Alibaba Group announced the establishment of tmall supermarket business group, integrating the original tmall supermarket and taoxianda business. Li Yonghe served as the president of tmall supermarket business group. In mid April 2020, the tmall supermarket business group will be upgraded to the same city retail business group, and the new retail business belonging to Ali local life service company will be gradually integrated into the business group.

Judging from Li Yonghe's resume in Ali, he is really an important general under Zhang Yong. On July 2 this year, Ali combined the geographic location-based services of hungry Mo, Gao de and Feizhu into a life service plate. Li Yonghe succeeded Wang Lei as the president of the local life business group.

It is only more than a month before the adjustment. Li Yonghe's resignation may add variables to the business progress of taoxianda and local life.

Taoxianda under pressure

"It's hard to understand. According to my understanding of Li Yonghe's character, he is a man of flesh and blood, and has an account of everything. This has happened for so many days. It is true to wait for the police investigation results to come out. However, within the business group, the responsible persons at all levels should show their attitude. It is very likely that Li Yonghe thought HR would handle it at that time, so he ignored it. " A person familiar with the matter told the 21st century economic reporter that xiaoyaozi and people from other departments did not know, but Li Yonghe was not an indifferent person. Finally, in this situation, Li Yong and HR leaders really have to bear important responsibilities.

According to the description of the female employee, she and Wang belong to Alibaba taoxianda business department. On the day when she complained to the company's superior, Mr. Gan, the direct leader of Wang, had a private chat with her and directly said, "it's all business problems. I have to travel frequently, and I knew that there would be problems. Do you think if you don't drink, can we talk about the business between Jinan Hualian and some northern merchants? "

The nature of the incident needs to be investigated by the police, and the fuse is triggered by the so-called "drinking business". As the undisputed head platform of the e-commerce industry, the question of the outside world is why Alibaba's online business falls into this strange circle?

As a matter of fact, taoxianda business, where the person concerned is, is still not firmly established within Alibaba.

It is understood that taoxianda is a platform under Alibaba's intra city retail business group to realize the settlement of local supermarkets and the one hour home shopping of consumers. It was launched in May 2017. From the perspective of business positioning, offline supermarket is exactly the b-end that taoxianda needs to expand and expand. Qixinbao information shows that Jinan Hualian brand belongs to Jinan Hualian Supermarket Co., Ltd., which has dozens of chain brand supermarkets.

"Taoxianda's business now belongs to the same city retail track, which is very similar to the early Jingdong home model. However, Jingdong got through the resources of Wal Mart and Yonghui very early, so its development is relatively fast. When taoxianda started to make efforts, Jingdong home had already stood on the front line and expanded to the whole category and the sinking market. " A local retail industry personage told the 21st century economic reporter that in the face of meituan flash buying and Jingdong home competition, taoxianda's influence and discourse power are not enough. However, this incident in Alibaba is mainly caused by the bad behavior of several male employees involved, which is not a common phenomenon in the industry.

Take Carrefour China as an example. Before the cooperation between Carrefour and taoxianda was reached in April this year, Carrefour's home business has established four major e-commerce sales channels, which are Carrefour app app, Suning app Carrefour channel, meituan takeaway app Carrefour channel, and EMAR app Carrefour channel. In the case of a large number of channels to choose, offline supermarket has become a hot topic for platform competition. Taking the head supermarket means that there are traffic, users and SKU.

After the incident, Zhang Mou, an employee of Hualian Supermarket in Jinan, denied the allegation of Ali's female employees in an interview with the media. "There must be a cuddling process in the middle of normal drinking at the wine table." he denied that after the female employee was drunk, he helped her to other private rooms for 20 minutes. But his unilateral statement needs to be investigated by the police.

Retail in the same city is tested

For the above events, Zhang Yong believes that Li Yonghe "did not take the initiative", so he needs to take the blame and resign. According to 21st century economic report, Li Yonghe joined Jingdong in May 2011 and successively served as the general director of storage department and regional director of North China branch of Jingdong Mall. He also served as senior vice president of operation system of Jingdong Mall in December 2014, fully responsible for the management of operation system.

In July this year, Ali just announced a new organizational structure adjustment. One is taoxianda and the new retail business of local life. Li Yonghe is responsible for and reports to Yu Yongfu; The other is the business and related teams of tmall supermarket. The business is merged with the import and export business group of tmall to establish a new "tmall supermarket and import and export business group". Liu Peng is the president and reports to Zhang Yong.

Intra city retail is one of the No.1 projects that Zhang Yong focuses on. From the consumption frequency and habits of users, the evolution direction of new services must be faster, closer and closer. This will undoubtedly be more dependent on the performance of instant delivery. At present, the company has more than 3 million riders and 3.5 million cooperative businesses. The distribution service basically covers the whole country.

According to the analysis of industry insiders, since Li Yonghe took charge of the retail business in the same city, he is fully platform oriented, and is also responsible for the integration of offline stores such as RT mart, Sanjiang shopping and Xinhua capital. Despite the challenges of external meituan and Jingdong home, there is cross and competition between the retail business in the city and a series of businesses such as tmall supermarket, HEMA Xiansheng and community group buying.

Under the internal and external troubles, Li Yonghe's management style also has problems. "Yueer and Forrest Gump told me that they had reported to Lao Ding (Li Yonghe) and Ding Dong at BG level. I pulled them into the group with a description of the incident, and AI te them. Both of them have not read back."

It was Li Yonghe and HR leaders who failed to deal with it in a timely manner, which triggered criticism from the outside world and caused dissatisfaction among many Alibaba employees“ For local life, it is not easy to encounter another twists and turns. Whether it is the management system or the HR without empathy, they are not formed overnight. They have an unshirkable responsibility. " A person familiar with the situation also expressed his regret for the 21st century economic reporter.

For Li Yonghe's resignation, further arrangements for the city's retail business group, the company's relevant personnel did not disclose more. Zhang Yong said that Ali is the Ali of all Ali people. The reason for the pain is love. It is the humiliation of all Ali people to have such a thing“ We have to reshape, we have to change. Change has to start with everyone, but first of all, it has to start with the leader, starting with me. "

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