2016年11月30日，首届中国服务贸易及创新发展峰会在湖北武汉举行。会上，中国商务部、湖北省、武汉市及十五个服务外包示范城市的相关负责人齐聚一堂，与来自美国、英国、俄罗斯、拉丁美洲、中欧、北欧以及东南亚国家的企业高管、机构负责人就全球服务贸易最新趋势及中国面临的新机会和新挑战进行了面对面的交流与讨论。本次峰会不仅在参会嘉宾层次、高管地位与专业深度上实现了国际顶尖，国内一流，更为国内企业透露出国际服务贸易市场的最新信息：

 

The first China Service Trades and Innovation Development Summit was held in Wuhan, Hubei Province on November 30, 2016. The officials from Chinese Dept. of Commerce, Hubei Province and the City of Wuhan plus 15 outsourcing base cities convened to share their experience and know-how in the industry alone with the executives from US, UK, Russia, Latin America, Middle Europe, North Europe and Southeastern Asia. This summit ranks largest in its kind in China 2016, highest in the attending official and international executive level, and also the latest of its messages and topics on the global trends and industry movements:

 

【1】发展服务贸易外包成为全球大多数发展中国家加速发展、经济转型升级、走出困境的首选战略。从十亿人口的大国印度到区区三百万人口的弹丸之地阿尔巴尼亚，都把经济转型、市场发展的赌注压在服务贸易发展这个突破口上。这意味着，中国的服务贸易行业不仅面临着自身如何扩大国际市场的挑战，还将面临越来越多与自身类似的新来者争夺已有市场份额的激烈竞争。

 

Developing a globally competitive industry of service trades and sourcing is a growth strategy of almost all developing countries from India, a 1.1 billion population country in southeastern Asia, to Albania, a 3 million people country in middle of Europe. This means China not only competes with the existed providers for the existed global market shares but also with many new comers for the existed markets. The competition is more intense than ever.

 

【2】服务贸易外包行业的起始离不开国家的支持，但是否能发展下去更需要企业自主创新发展。随着服务贸易市场竞争的日趋激烈及进入市场条件的逐步增高，大多数发展中国家都给予本国服务贸易企业各式各样的政策扶持与财务支持。但是，同样是政府支持下，各国产业发展的成果还是大不相同。服务贸易的发展更靠知识与创新，与国家政府及政策支持的力度并非直接的正向线性相关。业内的共识是，如果单靠政府的扶持，而企业作为市场主体没有发挥好主导作用与持续发展的能力，那也只能有短期效应，而无法获得长期效用。这个道理不仅在发展中国家成立，就在发达国家也如此。美国的光伏产业，便是最好的佐证。

 

Like China, most developing countries consider this industry as a key driver to their new economy; Like China, most of them provide various types of supports and/or incentives to the domestic and international companies operating there. With similar governmental supports, however, the results are different in different countries. Services and sourcing industries are closely related to knowledge and innovations, which are not linearly correlated with amounted of dollars and number of HR governments invest. Without central role of corporations developing key competency and technologies no government supports could develop a sustainable growth. This principle applies in both developing countries and developed nations. The rise and down of photovoltaic industry in USA is an example.

 

【3】服务贸易行业内的竞争力，也有“硬”“软”之别。“硬实力”包括技术能力、毕业生数、科研预算等，而“软实力”涵盖了管理、创新等。与我们的实体经济类似，中国服务贸易的软肋更多的是在“软实力”上。目前看来，“软实力”不上去，“硬实力”的继续投入就成了揠苗助长。“硬”“软”实力培养与发展的不匹配，不仅浪费了难得的资源，得不到预期的回报，更为致命的是会失去这个产业给予一个国家“弯道超车”的大好机会。

 

Same as manufacturing or product trades, there are “hard” and “soft” capabilities in service trades and sourcing businesses. The “hard” side includes technology skills, numbers of college graduates, R&D budgets, etc., while the “soft” side includes relationships, global management maturity, innovations, etc. It appears the “Soft” side is much weaker than the “Hard” side in China’s service trades and sourcing industry. If the imbalance persists, the continuous supports to the “hard” component will result in detrimental uneven growth of this important industry. Moreover, the imbalance between these two components could squanders the investments to either side, causing false growth projections and ruin valuable “short-cut” opportunities.

 

【4】服务贸易发展需要立足区域优势，从细分行业或领域实现突破。服务贸易及服务外包是一个极其广泛，而又极具知识性、专业性的经济领域。意欲在这个领域中从供应商角度实现突破的发展中国家，很少是全能型的。从成功的案例看，无论国家，还是企业，都是立足于本区域最佳竞争优势，从一两个细分行业着手，实现市场快速突破。菲律宾近几年以发展Call Center为核心进而引领整个BPO业务发展就是一个很好的例子。

 

Service trades and sourcing envelops a wide range of verticals in financial, technology, logistics and global managements. It’s hardly practical for any developing country to become strong in multiple verticals in short period of development. It’s more than likely that a successful country builds its presence and values propositions from a couple of specific professional areas where their strengths are optimally integrated. The voice-centric BPO verticals in Philippine is a great example of this breakthrough strategy. It’s impractical to become an all-around player simply because of size of country, HR and investments.

 

【5】具有高层次国际经验和行业领军级人才是服务贸易发展必不可少的核心。服务贸易发展不好的国家与地区，从表象上看，最大软肋是被国际买家认可与接受的市场营销手段与渠道，但从本质上看，还是缺乏能够对接买家思维，具有市场、技术、经济与管理的国际化高级人才。这个问题解决的好，小国也会成为服务贸易的大国；解决的不好，瓶颈依旧，还是外强中干。高级人才的问题，政府能起一定作用，但关键还是当地企业的老总们是否有真正的大志向和大胸怀来接纳那些可能会威胁他们地位的大人物。

 

A small number of executives with truly and successfully global market expertise and industry leading knowledge are crucial to develop trade services and sourcing industry. Majority of countries or companies consider their global marketing and sales as their weakest links in the business. What is needed, in fact, is a selected group of senior executives who are well established in international markets, technologies, economics and corporate managements. This group of high caliber HR could make geographically small countries big players, and vice versa. Governments can do little helping companies to attract and retain the elites on board. The key element allowing irreplaceable executives to produce irreplaceable results lies on the leadership of the CEOs of individual companies.

 

【6】创新是服务贸易发展的根本生命线。创新不再是服务贸易中可有可无的元素，也不是能够简单用价格替代的元素，而必须是全面提倡并深入进服务贸易每一步发展的生命线。本届峰会可以说是中国服务贸易对国际市场奏响了必须“坚持创新发展”理念的最强音。

 

Innovation is the life line to develop service trades and sourcing industry. Innovation is no longer an important factor, but indispensable element. The importance of innovation precedes those of costs, prices and deliveries. This summit reiterates the nonpareil significance of innovations in China’s service trades and sourcing development - the reason China’s ITO is still struggling after almost fifteen year development, and also the tunnel China’s sourcing industries have to go through before reach a truly global level.

 

【7】最新科技创新对服务贸易行业的影响都属于Disruption级别的，尤以人工智能（Artificial Intelligence）最重。在服务外包的三个传统类别中，ITO受到的影响最大，KPO次之，BPO最后。最近，印度的ITO行业嚷嚷着“狼来了”，近百万程序员失业，这绝非戏言。一个简单直接的比喻，阿尔法狗AlphaGo都能让几乎全部的职业围棋手失业了。

 

Some new technologies are disruptors to service trades and sourcing. Among them, AI(artificial intelligence) could be game changer. In terms of impact scale, ITO will be largest, KPO next, and BPO the least for the time being. It’s not a joke when some Indian executives warn of the scenarios where a million of Indian developers might lose their jobs because of AI. As an illustration: over 95% of professional Chinese chess players could be unemployed now because of AlphaGo.

 

【8】国际服务贸易投资并购需要专业咨询机构的支持。毋容置疑，并购与兼并是中国企业国际化最便捷、最有效、最直接的战略与方法之一。这个事实不能因为目前部分对中国投资安全性的担心、对中国投资人的反感事件而被忽略，甚至歪曲。在国际市场上的兼并与并购，中国企业需要国际化的、专业的、有经验的，同时被同行尊重的中介机构来指导。这个费用不能省，更不能打折扣。但是不是给了最高价，就能得到最高标准与适合投资企业发展的服务，还不能完全下定论，目前看来，全球兼并与并购业务中，最为缺乏与紧俏的是那些熟知中国市场的本土高级咨询企业。

 

Investment such as M&A remains highly effective, expedient and quick for Chinese companies to go global yet maintain control of own financial and HR footprints. This is a fact that can’t be ignored or twisted because of some bad cases of Chinese investments and security worries. The importance of hiring investment advisory teams with global standard, professional experience and technology expertise can’t be overstated, especially for Chinese investors who are still amateur in international investment marketplace. Language barrier is something investors have to overcome, but there are better ways or not so smart ways. Hiring domestic advisory firms who ranks highest inside China with extensive global network is the #1 advice Chinese corporate investors should accept. The expenses having the professional firms as their representatives could be thought of education investments - quality is more important than prices.

 

【9】银行、金融服务、保险（Banking，Financial Services and Insurance）行业仍旧是服务贸易及外包的最大使用者。此外，健康卫生与医疗系统、零售业也将会显著地成为大型外包项目的购买行业，来自美国、欧洲的中小型企业将会是服务贸易买家最大的潜在群体。

 

Companies in banking, financial services and insurance - BFSI- remain largest of the service and sourcing buyers. Health cares, medical systems and retails are the industries more buyers come from. The SMBs from US and EU will be the fastest growing group of buyers.

 

【10】服务贸易领域仍旧缺乏专业化程度较高的卖家协会。买家依然处在服务贸易及外包市场的主导地位，以帮助买家为目的的卖家协会将会大量出现，但能在业界真正发挥影响力作用的专业协会并不多。目前，印度的NASSCOM是这个行业的旗帜。但NASSCOM的成功模式基本不能够复制，毕竟做到NASSCOM需要的环境和前提也非常多。

 

Few professional organizations representing the interests of providers in service trades and sourcing business are globally recognized, among the many created past decade. Buyers maintain on the driver seats while new tokens of buyer-providers relationships such as share-holders or partners are tossed around. NASSCOM of India might be the only exception. It’s hardly possible to copy NASSCOM other countries or regions, as its model, preconditions or ecosystem are barely operative elsewhere.

 

【11】服务贸易及外包深受国际政治以及国家政治的影响。目前受全球弃国际化思潮的严重影响，有可能彻底更改国际服务贸易发展格局。在这种思潮影响下，整个行业可能会重新洗牌，政治敏感度和地区稳定性将成为评估供应商的必选因素。因此，鼎韬基于全球市场提出的多维度、定量化评估供应商选择的MVSS体系成了买家感兴趣的新热点。

 

In no time of industry history international relations and geopolitics could affect global services and sourcing in such a fundamental way like present time. Entire ecosystem could be changed. Security, stability and reliability become the dominant factors that buyers evaluate existed relationships and potential new providers. Don’t get it wrong, these new priorities are new to many decision makers. The MVSS System (Multi-dimensional Vendor Selection System) developed by Devott is a methodology both buyers and providers want to explore as the system is one of few including the three most urgent components of analytics. Buyers need to develop their own or use the MVSS to assess the disruption depth scientifically and systematically.

 

【12】安全性是买家选择供应商的核心关注因素。服务贸易交易中的安全性，在美国大选中希拉里，俄罗斯邮件门的集中催化下，成了国际买家的最大关注点和首要评估要素。安全性要么成为服务供应商资质中最大的软肋，要么就是供应商的最大卖点。新兴供应商不在这个资质上得到买家的基本认可，很难在技术、交付、价格、质量上打动买家的尝试欲望。

 

Nowadays information security is the most important factor of providers’ qualifications due to latest series of email hacking and data leaking incidents worldwide. The Email-gate occurred in 2016 US president campaign prompt US governments and corporations look at this qualification of any service providers carefully before anything else. Security capability is either weakest link or strong sell of global providers in 2017. It is also the great time for providers to invest on hardware and software needed to improve security system because buyers are more cooperating, even chipping in the efforts they don’t lose their own jobs. If a provider doesn’t get a pass on this, buyers becomes highly nervous, doubtful even if the provider ranks atop in technologies, deliveries, costs and quality.

 

鼎韬会展的宗旨就是引入全球服务贸易最权威的专家，与国内政府、园区、企业的决策人一道，深入探讨市场最新趋势、最新技术创新、提出发展战略与合作的最新领域。

 

The primary objective of Devott events is to provide high level platform where decision makers from public offices to private companies, from domestic corporations to global enterprises to discuss latest industry trends, cooperation opportunities and growth strategies.

 

【以上内容为鼎韬咨询原创，仅代表鼎韬咨询观点，版权及最终解释权归鼎韬咨询所有，如需转载及引用请注明来源及作者。本观点与阐述属研究，咨询部门个人或者项目看法，未必与鼎韬的整体战略，定位与观点一致。】