Keywords: securities broker system implementation strategy
Since 200 1, China's securities industry has vigorously promoted the foreign popular securities broker system in an attempt to improve the service quality for customers in the domestic market. However, since the implementation of the system, major securities companies have suffered heavy losses. Dapeng Securities, which first introduced this system, went bankrupt instead of improving its performance. How can this system, which is very mature in foreign securities markets, be implemented in China?
1 domestic factors affecting and restricting the implementation of the securities broker system
Since 200 1, China's securities firms have made unremitting exploration and efforts in promoting the broker system. However, due to various reasons for a long time, there are still many factors that affect and restrict the development of the broker system. Stripping the surface of the incident, the failure of the professional broker marketing model must have a deeper reason.
1. 1 The strategic plan is not clear.
Throughout the development of China's securities firms, most of them take the sales department as the forefront of brokerage business. Both the initial gift-giving and the later brokerage system were initiated by business departments, and the corresponding departments at headquarters began to "plan" after forming a certain scale, which generally lacked systematic planning.
Technology-led business is the development form of securities brokerage business for many years. Between the application of information technology and business development, brokers are more led by technology, and strategic planning is out of the question. In terms of network technology and communication technology, every technological innovation will be first concerned by the securities industry. As long as it is feasible to expand the system and facilitate trading, brokers will apply it at any cost and quickly popularize it. With the intensification of competition, more and more technological innovations bring fewer and fewer customers, high operating costs, increased liquidity of customers (especially core customers), and the marginal benefits of technology investment are getting worse and worse. The ultimate blind dependence of brokers on technology is their enthusiasm for call centers. Because the call center is connected with the original telephone commission trading system of securities companies to a certain extent, it is quickly recognized by securities companies and technology suppliers. From a purely technical point of view, the domestic call center system is no different from foreign countries, but there are fatal defects in practical application. The core of call-center lies in the professional information consultation provided by its human agents to customers, and behind it is a research and development team composed of investment and financial experts. Domestic brokers simply don't have this ability. Although there are intelligent responses and human agents, they can only provide customers with rough stock reviews. Because of policy reasons, even stock reviews can't provide positive words. Due to the lack of service content, the call centers of domestic securities companies are in trouble.
In addition, although many brokers will take the establishment of marketing system and promotion of broker system as their "strategic transformation" plans, we should realize that these two are only important components of sales channels in all aspects of the marketing process, and they cannot change the current situation that China brokers do not have professional skills, core products and personalized differentiated services in the securities industry. This state is like a TV production enterprise can't make TV, even if there are perfect sales channels and excellent TV programs, what's the use?
In the process of marketing transformation, brokers have invested a lot of manpower and material resources, but few brokers have really positioned themselves in the market, so there has been a scene in which brokers all over the country say "transformation" in unison. The resources of brokers are limited, but the needs of customers are endless. Therefore, through market segmentation, selecting the target market, looking for market opportunities on the basis of market segmentation, and formulating and implementing marketing strategies according to their own advantages are important ways for brokers to effectively use resources to develop their core competitiveness.
1.2 organizational structure defects
The existing organizational structure of securities companies mostly adopts the business division system, and the business division divided by business units is the independent profit center. Due to the conflict of interests between customers in different departments, the "firewall" between departments ensures the fairness of operation and effectively avoids the spread of risks between different departments, but it also causes the separation of the three main businesses of brokers. Due to the influence of policies, the products of securities brokerage business are single, the scope of innovation is small, the business form is solidified, and it relies entirely on the monopoly advantage of trading channels to maintain its operation. However, the separation of underwriting business and proprietary business makes it difficult for brokers to form products with core competitiveness.
In addition, the mode of giving priority to functional lines and product lines, supplemented by regional lines, will inevitably lead to problems of product segmentation, functional segmentation and regional segmentation. Because the interests of departments at all levels are relatively independent, managers measure the performance of each department by profit, which easily makes each department selfish and ignores the long-term overall interests, thus affecting the implementation of various programs. In order to coordinate this contradiction, we have to set up more middle management levels and middle management personnel, such as management headquarters, which not only increases the management cost, but also expands the middle management level of securities firms and damages the operating efficiency of institutions.
Judging from the governance system of securities firms, the regional governance headquarters system under the business division system is a mixed internal organizational structure system. On the one hand, the organizational structure of securities companies adopts the governance system of business division system, with different businesses as the division standard and "vertical" governance; On the other hand, the establishment of regional governance headquarters adopts "horizontal" governance. In practice, there are some problems in this mixed system. In addition, in the process of transformation, brokers rigidly separate the marketing system of the business department from the operation guarantee system, which makes the previous work overlap and causes many problems.
1.3 short-term goal-oriented evaluation method
Because brokerage income is the main source of income for securities firms, the assessment of the business department is mostly measured by profit indicators, and the over-emphasis on short-term profits makes it difficult for the business department to focus on long-term development. Marketing is a long and arduous process, and the construction of marketing system cannot be achieved overnight. However, there is an obvious lack of rigorous positioning and demonstration when the brokers build their marketing model, and there is an irreconcilable contradiction between long-term return and short-term assessment.
1.4 "Broker system" lacks operability.
The broker system is mostly established by a project team composed of a group of personnel from the broker headquarters. Its biggest drawback is that it is easy to become a designer's project in the design stage, regardless of the actual situation of the sales department as the final executor, making the project divorced from reality. At present, the reality is that the broker system established by referring to the domestic insurance broker system and foreign securities broker system can not be implemented at all under the condition that the sales department is extremely short of marketing managers and management experience.
2 the corresponding strategies to solve the problem
2. 1 strategic marketing planning
(1) Market research. First of all, brokers must conduct market research, systematically and purposefully collect all kinds of information related to their business activities, and analyze them with scientific methods to help them truly understand the market. At present, the most urgent need for securities companies is to conduct market research in the following three aspects. Customer research: basic information of customers, such as trading habits, service needs, economic conditions, trading motives, etc. Service process investigation: investigate the service quality in each business process to improve various services in the marketing process. Market demand research: from the customer's point of view, understand the real needs of customers.
(2) Market segmentation and target market selection. In fact, brokers have been trying to accurately locate their own markets, hoping to form their own operating characteristics through market and customer segmentation. No matter how the market is positioned, it is necessary to subdivide the market and customers, and make clear what kind of customers and where the company's profits come from. Judging from the development mode of foreign brokerage business, according to the market positioning of profit sources, brokers can adopt the following methods: ① expanding the basic amount. Earn profits at a lower fee level and only provide customers with the most basic services. This basic quantity includes customer volume, capital volume and transaction volume; ② Highly specialized. Choose high-quality customer groups, provide different professional services according to different needs of customers, charge different service fees and earn higher profits. These needs include professional consultation at different levels, professional investment and financial advisors, etc. ③ Only provide trading channels. Do not provide any other value-added services except trading channels, attract many small and medium-sized customers at extremely low prices and earn ultra-low profits. Network brokerage companies belong to this type.
2.2 Adjust the organizational structure
The innovation of organizational structure of securities companies should include changing profit model, optimizing profit structure, exploring new profit sources, controlling costs and improving governance level. In the construction of broker system, establishing a marketing system independent of the original business network is the best solution.
National securities firms should consider dividing the domestic market into several regions according to a certain geographical location and establishing a sales manager system at the regional level. The regional manager is responsible for cooperating with the original sales department to carry out product sales, innovative business promotion, regional investment banking and financial consultation, so as to realize the two platform functions of the sales department: marketing, service and comprehensive business development. Establish a smooth service process between research institutes, brokerage headquarters, business departments and customers, as well as a multi-channel consultation product delivery process.
2.3 Balanced Scorecard
Performance evaluation has an immeasurable impact on the implementation of the new system. In the practice of securities firms' transformation, it is precisely because of the short-term profit as the assessment goal that it hinders its implementation. The performance appraisal of most securities firms is still in the stage of "quantitative appraisal and target appraisal", and the core idea of the balanced scorecard is to show the strategic trajectory of the organization through the causal relationship between the four indicators of finance, customers, internal business processes and learning and growth, and realize performance appraisal-performance improvement and strategy implementation-strategy revision. Each indicator in the balanced scorecard is a link in a series of causal relationships, through which the goals of relevant departments are linked with the strategy of the organization; On the one hand, "driving relationship" means that all indicators of the scorecard must represent the double meanings of performance results and performance drivers; on the other hand, the scorecard itself must be a performance appraisal system with double indicators of performance results and performance drivers. The reason why this method is called "balanced" scorecard is because it not only makes the status of performance appraisal rise to the strategic level of the organization through the complementary "balance" of financial and non-financial assessment means, but also seeks "balance" between quantitative evaluation and qualitative evaluation, between objective evaluation and subjective evaluation, between index feedforward guidance and feedback control, between short-term growth and long-term development of the organization, and between the expectations of various stakeholders of the organization.
2.4 the implementation of the broker system
With the development of the market, brokers will become the absolute protagonists in the brokerage sales network. Whoever grasps the sales channels will have the future. No matter how the market develops, customers are always the foundation for the survival and development of brokers, and brokers are the guarantee of customer sources. The position of brokers in securities firms must be affirmed, and the construction of broker team must become the focus of securities firms' work. In the broker system, the broker is the basis of the pyramid. Only when the foundation is solid can the pyramid be built.
The era of direct operation of customers by the sales department will soon pass. As an existing profit center, the securities business department will inevitably undergo transformation, especially with the integration of China's securities market with the international market, system innovation is inevitable. Therefore, all securities firms should strengthen the consciousness of "change" and "crisis", form "customer orientation", "process orientation" and "teamwork", and complete their own system innovation with advanced and feasible strategies.
refer to
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3 Cui Yong. Governance of securities brokerage business [M]. Beijing: Corporate Governance Press, 200 1
4 Khan cattle. A must-read manual for new brokers [M]. Beijing: China Textile Publishing House, 2003