On the last morning of our business tour, we visited Alibaba, the biggest online transaction platform provider of China.
The company welcomed our visit with a presentation, which comprised the company’s history, view, mission, value & culture and the information of its subsidiary companies such as Taobao, Alipay, Yahoo China, Ali Soft, Alimama etc. After the basic introduction and the communication in terms of the corporation, Laura, a staff member of Alibaba guided us on a tour of the central transaction monitoring system and different working sectors of the company. In the monitoring system room, all of us were attracted by the advanced business monitoring equipment, from which we could watch all the transactions happened in the real time, as well as the transaction locations and the online amounts. Subsequently, we visited its open working sectors, including finance, design, technology development, marketing and sales etc. During our tour, it was interesting that we found some typical features within the IT industry. First of all, similar with most IT companies, all departments and staff in Alibaba assemble and work in an open plan office, which is convenient for staff to communicate rapidly. Some senior managers’ offices are located at the corners of the level, such as its CEO Zhe Wei, who was the CEO of B&Q China prior to joining in Alibaba in 2006. Apart from this, most employees in Alibaba look really young and full of energy, which was confirmed by Laura’s introduction, the average age of Alibaba in the last year was only 26.
As one of the most passionate corporations in China, it took less than 10 years for Alibaba to go from a zero base to being a great organization in China. At present, Alibaba has dominated China online business market and become the biggest small and medium enterprise in the online marketplace, but they aim to be one of the world’s top 3 business sites. However, the depreciation of U.S dollar and the imbalance of global trade will continue to bring uncertainty to the world economy in coming years. Meanwhile, its biggest competitor EBay is always looking for new opportunities to counterattack in the China market. All these factors will probably affect its transaction size and leading marketing status. This may account for Alibaba’s recent decision to invest $2 billion within the coming 5 years in Taobao, its primary B2B and B2C website.
