Baidu iProcurement: Leading the next generation B2B market and taking the lead in applying generative AI technology

In the Internet industry, B2B is a "living fossil" level track. Because players are too low-key, B2B always gives people a "quiet" feeling. However, a short video I saw on Moments a few days ago made me realize that the ancient B2B industry is undergoing drastic changes.

In this TVC with the theme of "B2B × Generative AI", I saw the new possibilities that generative AI brings to B2B: a large number of products released by merchants can be used with the one-click product intelligent generation tool "AIGC". The business model of the entire wholesale store has undergone drastic changes as a result; when companies have purchasing needs, they can directly describe their needs to the "intelligent question and answer robot" to get the most suitable products; merchants can even "hire" "digital human anchors" 24/7 Live streaming of goods all year round...

This sci-fi style short film was released by Baidu's B2B industry overall solution and enterprise one-stop procurement platform "Ai Purchasing", starring real actors and digital anchors. The combination of "real actors and digital people" is a metaphor for the B2B blueprint described by iProcurement: when B2B is combined with generative artificial intelligence, the traditional corporate procurement field will usher in an unprecedented technological revolution

B2B is one of the oldest Internet industries. It has appeared in the early Internet era at the end of the last century. It is the origin of the e-commerce industry. As the name suggests, the core value of the B2B (Business to Business) platform is to connect the two "Bs", namely customers with purchasing needs and merchants providing product sales

Initially, B2B was presented in the form of a portal website, classifying products on different pages, allowing customers to select products according to categories. However, search engines subsequently became the main way for people to obtain information and services. A large number of B2B search demands related to corporate procurement and merchant sales appeared in search engines such as Baidu, which accelerated the integration of B2B and search engines.

Four years ago, Baidu integrated relevant B2B technical capabilities and product services and launched Aigou, a one-stop procurement and sales platform for enterprises. With search and AI genes, Aigouou has transformed the traditional B2B "portal" model. Relying on Baidu's precise search capabilities, AI technology and huge traffic potential, it provides demand-oriented services to a large number of precise users, becoming both accurate and convenient. A new generation of B2B platform.

It should be said that the B2B industry has been constantly evolving for more than 20 years to better meet the needs of enterprises on both sides of the procurement and sales ends. According to third-party estimates, the scale of my country's B2B industry will reach 15 trillion yuan in 2022. This is a vast market, and companies have extremely complex needs. Because of this, the pain points of the two "B's" of the B2B industry still exist.

One is that the connection efficiency is still not high enough. It is time-consuming and labor-intensive for customers to find products that suit them among a large number of products. For sellers, it is like looking for a needle in a haystack to obtain precise customers in the market, and the cost for this remains high.

The second is that operating costs are still a bit high. Under the decentralization trend of "multi-platform", merchants are faced with more platforms and more stores to operate. In order to achieve successful sales, merchants need to invest more manpower in store operations, including product maintenance, marketing, customer service, data analysis, etc. There is a strong demand for cost reduction and efficiency improvement in every link.

The third one is that the business model is somewhat outdated. B2B platforms in the portal era are mainly responsible for providing "information", while B2B platforms in the search era gradually have value such as matching transactions. Nowadays, enterprise operations are being impacted by new models such as live streaming, D2C, and C2M. It is imperative for enterprises to accelerate digitalization and embrace new models.

The video TVC released by AiProcurement allows the B2B industry to see the dawn of a new round of revolution. Large models have ushered in the AI ​​era. Artificial intelligence will become a productive force in all walks of life, and the corresponding production relations, organizational relations, and business models will also undergo drastic changes. With the support of generative AI, the B2B industry has also reached a moment of being completely reshaped.

Baidu iProcurement was launched four years ago and has helped more than 350,000 companies achieve business growth. As a platform originating from search engines, Baidu iProcurement has strong artificial intelligence genes, and has integrated natural language processing technology, B2B knowledge graph and other technologies into its business to provide more accurate and convenient docking services for both purchasers and sellers.

In 2023, large models exploded and quickly formed a consensus around the world. A new round of generative AI revolution is in full swing, and AI applications have officially entered the stage of industrialized mass production. Baidu has entered the large-scale model industry as early as 2019 and launched the Wenxin large-scale model for the industry. With accumulated efforts, Baidu announced the Wenxin Yiyan invitation test plan in March this year, and Wenxin Yiyan took the lead in opening it to the whole society in August. In October, Baidu released the more powerful Wenxin Large Model 4.0 at the World Congress.

Backed by Baidu, Aigouou is extremely talented in the application of generative AI. It has also become the first player in the B2B industry to explore generative AI. As early as the second Baidu iProcurement Digital Intelligence Conference in June this year, iProcurement introduced generative AI to significantly upgrade its products and services, and opened up on-site experience. In August, Aiguou officially launched the "Intelligent Product Generation Tool". As described in the TVC, merchants can use the "Intelligent Product Generation Tool" to easily perform daily operation and maintenance work such as creating store details pages, and this capability has been verified by the market. : Henan Liugong Graphite Co., Ltd. discovered when participating in internal testing that the application of generative AI can directly save the company 5-6 labor costs.

"Product Intelligence Generation Tool" is just the starting point of B2B × generative AI. The B2B blueprint described in the "science fiction film" by Baidu iProcurement is now becoming a reality.

When making purchases, customers usually need to ask merchants many questions. When a merchant's customer service pressure is high, customers may need to queue up and wait for a reply. However, by leveraging intelligent Q&A robots to learn based on industry and enterprise-related knowledge bases, merchants can quickly and accurately answer customer questions. Once the B2B platform applies intelligent question and answer robots, it will not only greatly improve the consulting experience of purchasing customers, but also help merchants significantly reduce customer service labor costs. At the same time, merchants can also explore customer needs from the Q&A process, obtain merchant clues, and ultimately convert them into orders

"Digital Human Anchor" allows companies to quickly embrace the trend of live streaming with low cost and low threshold. Exploring live-streaming to bring goods requires a lot of investment in manpower and capital, and it also requires a large trial-and-error cost. Therefore, many companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, can only look at the trend of live-streaming to bring goods and "sigh in despair." With the blessing of digital anchors who love purchasing, companies can quickly customize their own anchors. In addition to allowing them to display products more vividly and three-dimensionally, they can also livestream and bring goods non-stop without worrying about the anchor "flying solo".

The underlying core technologies of "Intelligent Product Generation Tool", "Intelligent Question and Answer Robot" and "Digital Human Anchor" are all generative artificial intelligence. Compared with deep learning-driven artificial intelligence technologies such as NLP and knowledge graphs, generative artificial intelligence requires artificial intelligence to create content from scratch. These contents can not only be used in entertainment scenarios such as chatting, writing poems, couplets, and drawings, but can also be used in production scenarios such as B2B e-commerce, helping companies in information acquisition, marketing, material design, short film production, live streaming, etc. Achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement in all aspects of operation

In consumer-oriented e-commerce industries such as B2C and C2C, "intelligent product generation" and "digital human anchors" have begun to be applied. Today, Baidu iProcurement is the first to implement generative AI in the B2B industry, which means new possibilities for the implementation of generative AI and the upgrade of the B2B industry.

In the sci-fi-style TV commercial of iPurchase, we see a group of generative AI warriors charging into battle. Among them, only the "Digital Human Anchor" is still in the development and planning stage, and other services have been launched. Compared with the products that have been or are about to be launched, I think the more important significance of this TV advertisement is that it opens up a new imagination space of B2B × generative AI: not only AiProcurement itself is changing, but also the platform of the B2B industry and the relationship between procurement and sales. It’s time for enterprises to pay attention to large model technology

With the rise of large-scale models, generative artificial intelligence is rapidly being applied to all walks of life. Compared with deep learning, generative artificial intelligence and the large-scale model technology behind it have a higher level of intelligence, not only with perception capabilities, but also with powerful cognitive capabilities. Based on this, generative artificial intelligence has a wider application field and is of greater help to human learning, life and work

As a key link in commodity circulation, trade has irreplaceable value in the economy. In procurement and sales trade, B2B has become infrastructure. Looking forward to the future, in addition to digital marketing services such as intelligent product generation, digital human anchors, intelligent Q&A customer service, etc., generative AI will achieve more comprehensive, broader and deeper applications in the B2B industry

In recent years, the "D2C (Direct To Consumer)" model has emerged in the trade industry, and new retail species such as SHEIN have emerged. In this model, the supply chain bypasses traditional retail channels and conducts transactions directly with consumers. At the same time, the supply chain fully applies big data to gain insight into and even predict consumer demand, using new forms such as small orders, quick response, and agile and flexible supply chains. To manufacture products and obtain markets. Based on its unique business model, SHEIN has grown quietly under the eyes of ToC e-commerce giants. In terms of valuation, it has become the fourth largest unlisted company in the world and has become a "super unicorn."

The B2B industry needs to upgrade its business model and make good use of new technologies. With the widespread application of generative artificial intelligence in the B2B industry, the platform can explore new trade models in B2B D2C, and at the same time make more in-depth use of artificial intelligence technology to improve the efficiency of product insight, intelligent marketing, intelligent customer service, anti-fraud and other work

In fact, whether it is generative AI or deep learning, their essence is technical tools that provide services to humans. These technologies themselves not only have direct effects such as reducing costs and improving efficiency, but can also promote changes in business models. For example, Internet technology has given rise to new business models such as e-commerce, OTA, food delivery, sharing economy, mobile payment, and smart hardware. Because of this, companies not only need to embrace generative AI technology as a tool, but also need to update their cognition, embrace AIGC thinking, and apply generative AI technology to all aspects of operations. I think this is the deep meaning of Aiguang’s sci-fi style TVC: it not only shows the achievements of Aipou in B2B × generative AI technology, but also opens a broad future window for the B2B industry, allowing many Enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, have seen the future development direction and can take corresponding actions

In June of this year, iPurchase released new products reconstructed with generative AI at the Second Digital Intelligence Conference, taking the lead in introducing generative AI into the traditional B2B industry. The release of this TVC short film is the best proof that iProcurement is continuing to reshape the B2B business model - a new generation of B2B platform is about to emerge. Relying on Baidu Wenxin's far-leading large model and generative AI technology, as well as its years of deep cultivation in the B2B industry scene, it seems inevitable that Aiguang will become a "leader" from the "pioneer" of B2B × generative AI.

Source: Lei Technology

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