In recent months, the outbreak and spread of new pneumonia in Wuhan has brought a national disaster to numerous Chinese enterprises, which have been unable to start operations for a long time and have caused many offline businesses to close down. However, to switch our mind, when a challenge comes, it may also bring opportunity to those with preparation. We find that some new business needs can also emerge from the outbreak. Many traditional enterprises are thinking about transforming their business models and promoting iterative upgrading. The direction of business transformation is likely to be in more online-dominated areas such as IoT (Internet of things) and smart cities. Technologies like big data cloud computing and AI (artificial intelligence) will become an inevitable trend for enterprise self-saving.
Nowadays "cloud work" has a new extension based on its traditional sense. One of the crucial reasons behind is the changes conferred by live streaming to various industries. Under today's Internet content, everything can get clouded!
Below we will summarize those industries that are slowly starting their self-saving "cloud movement" under the epidemic break?
Under the boring national “home isolation task”, online shopping, reading, disco and other activities emerged in endlessly. On the other hand, many enterprises were forced to delay their back to work date. So that cloud teaching, cloud office, cloud distribution and other online working modes have replaced the traditional office mode. These bizarre online modes are nothing more than the collective self-saving of all businesses that have been frustrated by the epidemic especially for those small offline entities which faced big challenges and were forced to suspend. But nobody ever thought, the epidemic forced "clouds transformation” has unexpectedly became a new chasing “wind outlet” for Chinese enterprises.
No.1 Cloud Disco
On February 8th evening, I believe that many people were swiped on Dou Yin by Shanghai TAXX Bar "Online Disco" video.
Under the epidemic, entertainment venues such as bars and nightclubs were forced to suspend business and have not reopened until today. To save themselves, switching business to online has become the solution of many practitioners. Through live broadcasting, so-called "cloud disco", this special entertainment method which has appeared already in 2018 suddenly became the new popular at current. This online mode can not only provide venting channel for those netizens at home, but also provide businesses turnovers for the bar industry and considerable salaries for professional DJs. By statistics of Shanghai TAXX Bar, the total number of viewers exceeded 1.213 million and the total number of sound waves exceeded 19.316 million just after 5 hours live stream. The revenue of this very first “cloud disco show” reached to almost 2 million RMB!
No.2 Cloud Teaching
Just about 10 days after the virus breakout, many provinces and cities have successively extended school open dates. Teachers used online education platforms such as “Tencent Classroom” to launch live teaching called the “Cloud Classroom”. The traditional education institutions have almost realized simultaneously that, if there are no prevision of online education products, offline schools can no longer be sustainable in the future. Once again if we face another virus breakout, many small offline schools will not be able to afford the huge tuition fee return, rent payment, salaries and other sank costs. So that when we look back after years, maybe this epidemic forced “cloud transforming” process would become the watershed of online education development.
No.3 Cloud Fitness
After the Chinese Spring Festival, fitness institutions can always reach their revenue peak. However, due to the virus breakout, those businesses had to shuttle down and set their sights to the online. Thus the “cloud fitness” has formed and quickly became the new popular trend. On February 15th, the "Dou Yin Online Gym" was officially launched. The event lasted for 2 weeks in the form of a live broadcast. Private lessons were carried out by teachers over varies dimensions. You can book lessons from KOLs like Olympic champions and entertainment stars and fitness professionals. Or choose fitness professionals from authorities such as Keep Land, Moments and Daily Yoga.
On Feb 6th, the live broadcast from the fitness brand Super Orangutan contained simultaneously more than 180,000 audiences and the average cumulative viewing of Justin & Julie's single live broadcast was around 50,000rmb.
No.4 Cloud Restaurant
The catering industry must be one of the most impacted businesses after the virus breakout with no doubt. So that restaurants also found out many responding strategies to overcome this disaster. Thus the “live takeaway” service went into the view of catering companies and helped to sell food through cloud, to ease the pressure of restaurants due to the decreased population flow. Those restaurants have turned the back kitchen to a live broadcast room, allowing chefs to directly carry out products by live streaming.
By report, Tencent has developed the “Tencent Watch Live” which combined catering with live streaming and provide takeaway online platforms for restaurants all around China. By now, the "Chu Tianjiao Dining" in Fuyang, Anhui; the "Dinner Meeting" and "Youjia Sichuan Cuisine" in Shanghai have all cooperated with “Tencent Watch Live”, to provide live delivery service for local customers.
No.5 Cloud Shopping
Affected by the epidemic, most shopping malls have to suspend or shorten their business hours. Shopping malls and merchants are all actively exploring new marketing models to overcome this challenge. Large shopping malls used their APP malls, applets, and store communities to help stores to form online transformation and open the "cloud shopping" model. Through online and offline integration, the live broadcast service was launched and gradually promoted the recovery of production and operation of the on-site merchants, brought them customers and created turnovers. The Mini Program Mall can also integrate goods into new social scenes such as short videos and VR, to generate KOL and celerity effects and thus contribute dominance cycling. The "cloud shopping" strategy can compensate well for the shopping mall’s offline mode shortage, and possibly become another emerging business format arising from the epidemic.
No.6 Cloud Housing
This spring, real estate agents have all started the online selling mode: "Live Viewing", "Online Sales Office", "VR Viewing"……The online selling mode can help those companies to reach a higher brand reputation, obtain the database of potential clients and thus set foundations for offline contract conversion.
Thus, “Cloud Housing” emerged gradually.
Take the example of Country Garden's national direct-selling housing platform "Phoenix Cloud", customers can get information about projects on sale, construction area, apartment type, opening time, price range, surrounding facilities and so on. Recently, "Phoenix Cloud" also launched online payment function and facial recognition electronic subscription signing system.
No.7 Cloud Press Conference
Affected by the epidemic this year, while the public all believed that those major internet companies would not be able to launch press conferences for spring products, Xiaomi, who was in the epidemic center, made a "difficult decision" and shocked everyone at this time. Xiaomi decided to use the pure online live format to publish the newest press conferences for flagship phone Mi 10. Unexpectedly, Mi10 was selling so well and exceeded 200 million in just one minute after the sale has opened! Except for the attractiveness of Mi 10 itself, the success was also inseparable from the contribution of the cloud conference.
Xiaomi tasted the head soup and became the first brand to adopt a cloud conference. After that, Taobao also kept pacing with Xiaomi and announced through live that they will launch “cloud conference” mode too. Xiaomi's eye-catching result proved the feasibility of launching products through online conferences, and also opened the prelude for the company's "cloud launch" era.
No.8 Cloud Office
February 3 is the back to work date for many companies after the holiday. Under the press of epidemic, telecommuting has become the first choice. Cloud office systems such as Ding Talk, Flying Book, and Tencent Conference have become tools for the majority of business users to work from home. According to Ding Talk, the Alibaba online office platform’s statistics, tens of millions of companies and nearly 200 million people across the country have launched this "cloud office" model.
Although many companies still prefer the traditional PC office mode rather than “cloud office”, we believe that with the maturing of cloud computing system development as well as the core advantage of the “cloud office” itself, the era of cloud terminal office would come soon with all expectations.
No.9 Cloud Construction
So that for the construction industry, what self-saving methods or even unexpected welfare can the cloud and AI technology provide?
The process of construction sites would mostly be affected by the epidemic. Many construction firms delayed the date of return to work because of concerns about the worker's safety. However, the slowdown of the construction process may not be the eventual result under the current situation. So far, the biggest feature of AI technology is the big data-driven machine learning capabilities and autonomous systems. The construction process can also achieve long-distance remoting under the cloud monitoring system. The three AI system sets of [Cloud Monitoring; Cloud Management; Cloud Reporting] which are suitable for contributing smart construction site, can save back the construction companies from this virus outbreak.
Progress of construction is the most vulnerable to the outbreak, with many construction companies delaying their return to work because of concerns about the safety of their workers. But postponing construction is not necessarily the result of the current situation. At present, the most significant feature of artificial intelligence is the machine learning capability and autonomous system driven by big data. Construction can also be operated remotely through artificial intelligence monitoring system. It applies to the deployment of the three AI systems of "cloud inspection, cloud management and cloud notification" on the smart construction site, so that construction enterprises can recover from the epidemic.
And even after the outbreak is over, for long run perspective, the AI systems could also bring plenty of benefits to the construction industry.
On the one hand, it is well known that a large number of jobs in the construction industry belong to high-risk occupations. According to statistics, in the first half of 2018, there were 1,732 production safety accidents and 1,752 deaths cases in the construction site, the quantity amount of construction accidents has reached ranking no.1 of mining business accidents for 9 years continuously.
Most construction projects have special personnel to troubleshoot hidden dangers, but human detection cannot be 100% reliable, some safety problems are still inevitably being avoided, if AI monitoring technology can be applied in the construction industry, it can solve many safety problems.
On the other hand, except for the safety issue, robots can work 24 hours a day in some repetitive operations coordinated by the AI system without any rest, as well as not being affected by harsh construction conditions under extreme heat and winter conditions. The high quality, reliable and precise features of AI can effectively avoid any external mistakes. The intervention of AI can simultaneously replace many jobs and also largely improve construction efficiency.
viAct.ai devote to contributing smart construction sites for years. As the first and largest Hong Kong SaaS cloud computer vision platform specialized in the construction industry, our solution of AI + autonomous detection system can build the one-stop service of combining [Cloud Monitoring; Cloud Management; Cloud Reporting]. The auto real site monitoring and management process does not need workers to go down to the construction site and allows long-distance remoting mode of real-time deployment and management activities from the site area.
So how long will it last still, before the AI technology fully spreads to the construction industry?
"Smart Construction " is a familiar but also unfamiliar term in the industry. Many people think that smart construction site sounds very fancy, but in fact, it is just a concept of integrating cloud system and data analytics, so that to help to deploy to the construction site, the best solution through AI technology. If BIM is building technology 2.0, then the AI cloud should be the building technology 3.0. However, so far, there are seldom companies that can play the AI cloud technology so well, and it will still take time to fully realize artificial intelligence.
The attitude of construction companies can largely determine the duration of AI technology universal in the construction industry. It also determines which companies will occupy the commanding heights of business and technology first. Therefore, we must understand first that the introduction of smart site management systems and investment in intelligent hardware are not face-saving events, but to better optimize and manage the project. It may not take long for a concept to come out from introduction to popularization. The construction company that firstly tastes the benefit of AI is bound to be the leader. We will shortly know who the winner is after the transition.
In conclusion, opportunities are always reserved for people with ideas and preparations. In the future’s business, two leveled differentiation is inevitable, just as 《Bible and Matthew》 said in the phrase: " Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him." The head companies will get ready after this cold winter, and those who lacked back are more likely to face a more severe winter. Therefore, the epidemic period could be an opportunity for business to think deeply about the future.
The epidemic will accelerate Chinese companies' march towards more advanced modern manufacturing. Especially for those companies relying heavily on manual labor will abandon some “chicken rib” products that are tasteless, focus on advantages, retain core capabilities, upgrade manufacturing equipment and transform to the more modern manufacturing. To carefully analyze those various self-rescue activities, some certain companies showed outstanding performances. We can see that on the one hand, our nation has infinite creative wisdom, and also, on the other hand, the digital transition towards cloud computing will become the inevitable development trend for traditional enterprises.
Everything can be "clouded", and it will eventually become the new popular in the future.
Finally, I hope that all of our companies can persist to the end and successfully overcome this difficulty.
When it comes to the next spring, it will be another flowering season