Feng Dagang of 36Kr Interviews Wang Bin, Founder of BeyondSoft: Globalization, "Tian Ji's Horse Racing Strategy", and Breaking Through with AI
In the past two decades, within the trillion - plus market landscape of China's IT service industry full of opportunities, a fundamental paradox has always existed: the persistent pursuit of scale often comes at the cost of sacrificing value. The industry competition is extremely fragmented, often relying on the "human - wave tactic" accompanied by brutal price wars. Most enterprises choose to exchange profit margins for survival space.
Founded in 1995, BeyondSoft has witnessed the entire high - speed development cycle of the IT service industry and has now become an industry giant with over 30,000 employees. However, Wang Bin, the founder and chairman of BeyondSoft, admitted that the era of wild growth is coming to an end. Now, the rules of the game are being re - written. When generative AI is reshaping the software development industry with irresistible force and the efficiency revolution of "super individuals" is starting to dissolve the traditional human - wave tactic, the old paradox is no longer a strategic choice for enterprises but has become an imminent survival threat: Should an IT service company choose to continue to grow "big" or must it shift to becoming "strong"?
Recently, Feng Dagang, the CEO of 36Kr, had an in - depth conversation with Wang Bin, the founder and chairman of BeyondSoft. Facing new development opportunities and challenges, Wang Bin and BeyondSoft under his leadership already have their own answers. This pragmatic giant is making a high - difficulty turn under the dual variables of geopolitics and the AI revolution - they are trying to break the "scale trap" and shift from passively accepting orders to actively providing consulting services, so as to better adapt to the new era and go further.
The Scale and Cost of IT Service Companies
To understand BeyondSoft, we can go back to 1995. In the budding stage of China's software outsourcing industry, this company founded by several students and teachers won an order of great significance at that time - conducting localization testing for Microsoft's Windows 95. Wang Bin recalled that the team mastered core technologies such as Chinese character printing and Wubi encoding, which were scarce at that time, so they reaped the "technology dividend". Microsoft valued the team's technical capabilities and didn't mind that they were just a small startup at that time.
Winning the favor of the giant allowed BeyondSoft to develop rapidly and successfully seize the first wave of the dividends of technological globalization. However, it also brought a "soul - searching question" that runs through the company's development history: Is BeyondSoft a high - tech company or a service company? Wang Bin admitted that the company's current main source of income is still human - based services, but he defines the company as "an industry that uses high - tech to provide services".
This frank answer reveals the harsh reality behind the prosperity of the IT service industry: limited profit margins. Wang Bin has a clear understanding of this. He divides the players in the IT service industry into two types: one is product companies, like pharmaceutical companies, which will produce a "winner - takes - all" concentration effect, leaving only a few leading ones in the end; the other is technology service companies, more like a hospital or a doctor, relatively fragmented and needing to focus on customers in the long term. BeyondSoft's growth gene clearly belongs to the second type.
Then Wang Bin pointed out sharply that in China's IT service industry with meager profits, the situation is different overseas. The core reason is that Chinese large customers have extremely high customized requirements, and the internal teams of the clients are large and used to "breaking down tasks into small pieces". As a result, service providers as the contractors can only offer "a small piece of capabilities", leading to extremely low bargaining power for the contractors. This leads to the cycle he mentioned: to scale up, one must cover all mid - and low - end demands, and the largest demand lies in the low - end, ultimately resulting in the situation of "the lower - end it becomes, the larger it gets".
Feng Dagang asked if he liked this result. Wang Bin said bluntly that what he needs is not "low - end" but "scale". In his view, at a specific stage of development, the scale of a company is necessary because it can bring risk - resistance ability to the company, help improve management levels and perfect the organizational system. To some extent, this is BeyondSoft's survival philosophy. Scale is not the ultimate goal but a necessary means for the company to survive in the past "human - wave dividend" stage and the confidence for it to make strategic changes today.
From Passively Accepting Orders to Actively Providing Consulting
After recognizing the value and cost of scale, BeyondSoft began a pragmatic turn. In this interview, Wang Bin clarified the company's new positioning: "A global consulting, industry solution and digital - intelligent technology service provider". He further explained that in the new positioning, the attributes of "global" and "service provider" remain unchanged, and the real change lies in "digital - intelligent technology". This change is reflected in two core aspects: technically, it should shift from being in sync with customers in the past to trying to stay one step ahead of customers; in terms of the model, it should shift from passively accepting tender documents and competing in the "last - mile" execution to actively researching customers and bringing valuable suggestions.
Simply put, it is shifting from "providing manpower" to "providing suggestions" and from "delivering personnel" to "delivering value".
Some may ask why BeyondSoft chose to break through now. Wang Bin revealed that this turning point started two years ago. The company keenly noticed the changes in the external environment. It spent at least two years making internal changes while recruiting key talents and teams externally, steadily building its consulting capabilities. In fact, this timing is very precise. From an industry perspective, Chinese enterprises are undergoing large - scale digital transformation driven by both policies and investments, creating a huge demand for the combination of "technology + consulting".
Under the new strategy, BeyondSoft completed a benchmark case: the e - commerce platform of Singapore's Changi Airport. Wang Bin introduced that BeyondSoft provided "full - life - cycle" services from the earliest consultation and planning, to the middle - stage development, and then to the later - stage operation. He believes that as long as the customer continues to operate, the services and value will continue to increase. The significance of this case is self - evident. It is no longer traditional manpower outsourcing but "value delivery" led by BeyondSoft from start to finish, and this cooperation model is the prototype of BeyondSoft's future "pay - by - result" model.
The "Tian Ji Horse - Racing" - Style Overseas Expansion Strategy
Upgrading consulting services is BeyondSoft's internal value reshaping, while globalization is the external path for BeyondSoft to break through the situation.
Wang Bin specifically corrected the term "going overseas" in the interview because he prefers to use "globalization". Globalization is in BeyondSoft's genes. For example, the order in 1995 was essentially helping multinational companies enter the domestic market. Wang Bin regards the company as a link in the internationalization process. Now what they need to do is to use this mature supply chain and compliance system for serving multinational companies to help Chinese enterprises "go global" in return.
However, in the overseas market today, BeyondSoft has to face Indian IT giants like Infosys. How to compete? Wang Bin's strategy is the "Tian Ji horse - racing" strategy. He analyzed that Indian giants are like "top - tier horses", with annual sales revenues reaching tens of billions of dollars and huge growth pressure, so they must focus on large customers in the European and American markets. BeyondSoft, on the other hand, chooses to "deploy heavy troops" and use its "top - tier horses" to target "mid - tier horse" markets such as Southeast Asia and the Belt and Road regions. This strategy is quite wise because Southeast Asia is not only a hot area for global AI and digital transformation but also a key destination for Chinese enterprises going overseas. The demand of these enterprises for local consulting and risk - control services is surging.
Wang Bin explained that the market volume in Southeast Asia is not large enough to attract the full attention of Indian giants, which must stick to the main battlefields in developed countries. However, the Southeast Asian market is an extremely important market opportunity for BeyondSoft and a strategic area for their first - step overseas expansion. More importantly, BeyondSoft is not fighting alone. They have established ecological cooperation with domestic large companies such as Alibaba and Huawei and are "going global together".
Of course, geopolitical risks are also issues that enterprises cannot avoid. For example, some countries have introduced data localization laws, which may require enterprises to deal with them skillfully. Regarding this, Wang Bin shared his insight: "I think, for our industry, even de - globalization is an opportunity." He explained that when each country emphasizes data sovereignty, they no longer blindly trust a single solution but need to establish their own systems, which brings new demands for service providers like BeyondSoft.
Organizational Evolution of a 30,000 - Person Company in the AI Era
Now, BeyondSoft has clearly defined two major strategic shifts: consulting upgrade and globalization. To smoothly achieve the company's new goals, Wang Bin believes that AI capabilities will be the technological foundation and efficiency weapon to achieve all this. And the changes brought about by AI ultimately fall on the evolution of "people".
In the interview, Feng Dagang used the characters in The Legend of the Condor Heroes to metaphorize the types of talents the company needs. Guo Jing, who is steady, down - to - earth and hard - working, represents the engineer culture that BeyondSoft has accumulated over 30 years and is good at executing definite tasks. Huang Rong, who is smart, flexible, quick - witted and good at trial - and - error, represents the innovative talents needed in the AI era. When asked which one he preferred, Wang Bin's choice was very frank: "I used to prefer Guo Jing, but now I think Huang Rong is better."
Using this metaphor, Wang Bin pointed out the most core organizational challenge that BeyondSoft is facing at present: "We have too many Guo Jings and too few Huang Rongs." He believes that the future strategy is to let "Guo Jings defend the city and let Huang Rongs innovate". Wang Bin is extremely optimistic about AI. He believes that as long as there are changes, there are opportunities, and the opportunities brought by AI may even be "greater than those of the Internet". As for who will be replaced by AI? His view is clear: AI will only replace those who "don't know how to use it well".
A practical problem is that AI talents often come with annual salaries in the hundreds of millions, which are very costly. How can BeyondSoft find and retain "Huang Rongs"? Wang Bin believes that "good AI talents are not expensive" because AI is magnifying the value of "super individuals" unprecedentedly. The output of a top - notch talent may increase from "equivalent to 10 people" in the past to "equivalent to 100 people" now. For such top - notch talents, Wang Bin believes that the key lies in discovery rather than cultivation. He emphasized that these talents have inherent potential and abilities, and the company just needs to discover them and provide suitable opportunities, and "they can grow on their own".
BeyondSoft has been in business for 30 years, growing almost in tandem with China's IT service industry. From the ups and downs of this industry, Wang Bin's understanding has also been constantly updated: to run a business, "first of all, it is necessary to ensure survival", and it is very important to have a long - term presence; secondly, in terms of organizational structure, it is necessary to maintain a certain degree of flexibility and learn to use the ecosystem and investment to make up for internal innovation shortcomings.
At the end of the interview, Feng Dagang asked Wang Bin why he didn't enjoy life like other successful founders but still fought on the front - line full of challenges. Wang Bin's answer returned to a simple belief. He admitted that he still has a belief. This belief has two aspects: one is to create more jobs; the other is to help enterprises that want to go international so that they can "avoid detours" overseas and achieve success.
When asked if BeyondSoft can become a great company, Wang Bin didn't make grand statements. His answer is a typical one from a pragmatic person who has weathered the cycles: "If we believe that this thing will surely happen in the long run, then I don't care if it happens tomorrow or two years later."