Cogobuy

Cogobuy is covered here in 6 connected parts: Cogobuy, Salesforce, Bertel O. Steen, Oracle Cloud HCM, Revenue management, Amazon (company).

Cogobuy

Cogobuy Group is a Chinese enterprise service platform. Following a major business restructuring in 2019, the group merged chip sales service on Cogobuy.com into Comtech, and merged R&D and IoT product financing and corporate services, previously under INGDAN.com AIoT business services platform, into IngDan, forming a new "Comtech + IngDan" dual business model. IngDan focus on developing proprietary products for different AIoT industries, including the Internet of Vehicles, smart homes, AI surveillance, etc.^[1]

1995–2012: Pre founding

Cogobuy was founded by Jeffrey Kang in February 2012. The founder had previous experience in the electronic component industry in China where, prior to founding Cogobuy, he owned and operated companies which had comparable service offerings. One such company was Comtech, founded in 1995, which has since become a subsidiary of Cogobuy and has continued its operations.^[1]

2012–2014: Early history

After being founded, Cogobuy acquired several entities previously owned by Viewtran (a company also founded by Jeffery Kang), which continued their operations in the trading of IC and other electronic components.^[1]

2014–present: Continued developments

In 2015, Cogobuy and its subsidiary IngDan (硬蛋) formed a strategic cooperation with Chinese technology company Lenovo to develop IoT and Smart Home devices. Prior to the partnership, Lenovo primarily purchased its IC components from Cogobuy.^[1]

E-Commerce Platform

Cogobuy's e-commerce platform, named Cogobuy.com, includes primarily a direct sales platform and an online marketplace. It serves electronic manufacturers, including small and medium-sized enterprises. The online marketplace, launched in 2013, enables third-party merchants sell their products to customers and pay Cogobuy commissions.^[1]

CRM Platform

Cogobuy provides a CRM service primary for Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises through its wholly owned subsidiary FOXSAAS.^[1]

Related: Salesforce · Bertel O. Steen · Oracle Cloud HCM

External references: ^[1][2][3]

Salesforce

Salesforce, Inc. is an American enterprise software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It is best known for customer relationship management software and related applications, which the corporation delivers through a software as a service subscription business model. It also provides software for sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, data analytics, artificial intelligence, agentic AI, and application development.^[4]

History

Salesforce was founded on March 8, 1999, by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, together with Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company. The first prototype of Salesforce was launched in November 1999.^[4]

Services

Salesforce offers several customer relationship management (CRM) services for enterprises and small businesses, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud,Commerce Cloud and Platform. Additional technologies include Slack.Salesforce also offers a free CRM for small teams of up to two people.^[4]

Artificial intelligence

Launched at Dreamforce in 2016, Salesforce Einstein was the company's first artificial intelligence product.^[4]

Salesforce Platform

Salesforce Platform (formerly known as Force.com) is a platform as a service (PaaS) on which developers build their own applications. These applications are hosted on Salesforce.com infrastructure.^[4]

AppExchange

Launched in 2005, the Salesforce AppExchange is an online app store that allows users to sell third-party applications and consulting services.^[4]

Trailhead

Launched in 2014, Trailhead is a free online learning platform with courses focused on Salesforce technologies.^[4]

Discontinued

Desk.com was a SaaS help desk and customer support product acquired by Salesforce for $50 million in 2011, and consolidated with other services into Service Cloud Essentials in March 2018.^[4]

2006–2019

In 2006, Salesforce acquired Sendia, a mobile web service firm, for $15 million and Kieden, an online advertising company. In 2007, Koral, a content management service, was acquired. In 2008, Salesforce acquired Instranet for $31.5 million.^[4]

2020–present

Slack Technologies was acquired for $27.7 billion in 2021. Salesforce also made smaller acquisitions between 2020 and 2021, including consulting firm Acumen Solutions for $570 million, CRM firm Vlocity for $1.33 billion, privacy compliance startup Phennecs for $16.5 million, and robotic process automation firm Servicetrace.^[4]

Related: Cogobuy · Bertel O. Steen · Oracle Cloud HCM

External references: ^[4][5][6]

Bertel O. Steen

Bertel O. Steen AS is one of Norway’s largest service and trading companies, and has its headquarters in Lørenskog municipality. At year-end 2011, the Group had 2,660 man-years and operating revenues of NOK 11.7 billion.^[7]

Car import, retail, financing

Import of Mercedes-Benz, smart®, Peugeot and Kia. The Group's importer contract for Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge was terminated on 31 May 2011. Daihatsu has also decided to withdraw from Europe, although Bertel O.^[7]

Agriculture

Comprises the company A-K maskiner AS which both imports and retails agricultural machines. The company has 51 retail outlets, of which 31 are wholly owned. The company's core business area is the sale of tractors and related agricultural equipment.^[7]

Real Estate

Comprises Bertel O. Steen Eiendom AS with subsidiaries, which manages a substantial property portfolio covering approx. 150,000 m2 of property connected with the car industry and other business segments.^[7]

Industry and Security

Comprises Bertel O. Steen Industri AS with subsidiaries, which represent supply of marine engines, supply of security equipment and military supplies, respectively involved in: the sale and service of propulsion engines and generator sets, mainly for maritime vessels; the supply of security products and technical systems for the professional security market; products and specialised vehicles principally for the Norwegian Armed Forces and police force. Furthermore, Bertel O.^[7]

Related: Cogobuy · Salesforce · Oracle Cloud HCM

External references: ^[7][8][9]

Oracle Cloud HCM

Oracle Cloud Human Capital Management (Oracle Cloud HCM) is a cloud-based HCM software application suite for global HR, talent, and workforce management released by Oracle Corporation in 2011.^[10]

History

Oracle Cloud HCM is a full-stack suite of native cloud-based applications for recruiting and talent workforce management. The SaaS offering is designed to provide support in one platform for employees and organizations during an employee's entire career, from hiring to career development to retiring. It can be accessed on and used across multiple devices, and was released as a module of Oracle Fusion applications in October 2011.^[10]

Talent and workforce management

Companies can use Cloud HCM workforce modeling and prediction tools to predict possible hiring and reorganization needs. There are: a benefits portal that allows employees to sign up for their own benefits, a talent management tool that supports talent acquisition (recruiting) and retention, and learning modules that allow individuals to create and share different classes. Cloud HCM also offers LinkedIn Talent Solutions tie-ins and My Brand tools to support employee collaboration and help employees find career development opportunities.^[10]

Human resources (HR)

The Oracle Human Resources module within Oracle HCM includes some of the following capabilities:^[10]

Related: Cogobuy · Salesforce · Bertel O. Steen

External references: ^[10][11][12]

Revenue management

Revenue management (RM) is a discipline that aims to maximize profit primarily by adjusting pricing and managing occupancy. The strategy is used in hotel management, selling event tickets and airfare, retail promotions, software licensing, and other industries. It is seen by some as synonymous with yield management.^[13]

Overview

Businesses face important decisions regarding what to sell, when to sell, to whom to sell, and for how much. Revenue management uses data-driven tactics and strategy to answer these questions in order to increase revenue. The discipline of revenue management (RM) is also known as Yield Management (YM), and is a cross-disciplinary field.^[13]

History

Before the emergence of revenue management, BOAC (now British Airways) experimented with differentiated fare products by offering capacity-controlled "Earlybird" discounts to stimulate demand for seats that would otherwise fly empty. Taking it a step further, Robert Crandall, former chairman and CEO of American Airlines (AA), pioneered a practice he called yield management, which focused primarily on maximizing revenue through analytics-based inventory control. Under Crandall's leadership, American continued to invest in yield management's forecasting, inventory control and overbooking capabilities.^[13]

Levers

Whereas yield management involves specific actions to generate yield through perishable inventory management, revenue management encompasses a wide range of opportunities to increase revenue. A company can utilize these different categories like a series of levers in the sense that all are usually available, but only one or two may drive revenue in a given situation. The primary levers are:^[13]

Pricing

This category of revenue management involves redefining pricing strategy and developing disciplined pricing tactics. The key objective of a pricing strategy is anticipating the value created for customers and then setting specific prices to capture that value. A company may decide to price against their competitors or even their own products, but the most value comes from pricing strategies that closely follow market conditions and demand, especially at a segment level.^[13]

Inventory

When focused on controlling inventory, revenue management is mainly concerned with how best to price or allocate capacity. First, a company can discount products in order to increase volume. By lowering prices on products, a company can overcome weak demand and gain market share, which ultimately increases revenue.^[13]

Marketing

Price promotions allow companies to sell higher volumes by temporarily decreasing the price of their products. Revenue management techniques measure customer responsiveness to promotions in order to strike a balance between volume growth and profitability. An effective promotion helps maximize revenue when there is uncertainty about the distribution of customer willingness to pay.^[13]

Channels

Revenue management through channels involves strategically driving revenue through different distribution channels. Different channels may represent customers with different price sensitivities. For example, customers who shop online are usually more price sensitive than customers who shop in a physical store.^[13]

Data collection

The revenue management process begins with data collection. Relevant data is paramount to a revenue management system's capability to provide accurate, actionable information. A system must collect and store historical data for inventory, prices, demand, and other causal factors.^[13]

Segmentation

After collecting the relevant data, market segmentation is the key to market-based pricing and revenue maximization. Airlines, for example, employed this tactic in differentiating between price-sensitive leisure customers and price-insensitive business customers. Leisure customers tend to book earlier and are flexible about when they fly and are willing to sit in coach seats to save more money for their destination, whereas business customers tend to book closer to departure and are typically less price sensitive.^[13]

Related: Cogobuy · Salesforce · Bertel O. Steen

External references: ^[13][14][15]

Amazon (company)

Amazon.com, Inc. (doing business as Amazon) is an American multinational conglomerate engaged in e-commerce, retail, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, entertainment, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, the company started as an online book marketplace that gradually expanded to include virtually all consumer products as well as many other categories, positioned as "The Everything Store".^[16]

1994–2010

On July 5, 1994, Amazon was founded as "Cadabra" by Jeff Bezos, after he relocated from New York City to Bellevue, Washington, to operate an online bookstore. Bezos chose Seattle for its abundance of technical talent from Microsoft and the University of Washington, as well as its smaller population and the proximity to a major book distribution warehouse in Roseburg, Oregon. Seattle beat out Portland, Oregon and Boulder, Colorado.^[16]

2011–2020

On October 18, 2011, Amazon.com announced a partnership with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Sandman, and Watchmen. The partnership caused booksellers such as Barnes & Noble to remove these titles from its shelves.^[16]

2021–present

On July 5, 2021, Bezos moved from CEO to executive board chair. Former AWS CEO Andy Jassy replaced him as CEO. In January 2023, Amazon cut over 18,000 jobs, primarily in consumer retail and its human resources division in an attempt to cut costs.^[16]

Amazon.com

Amazon.com sells products in many categories, including media (books, movies, music, and software), apparel, baby products, consumer electronics, beauty products, gourmet food, groceries, health and personal care products, industrial and scientific supplies, kitchen items, jewelry, watches, lawn and garden items, musical instruments, sporting goods, tools, automotive items, toys and games, and farm supplies and consulting services. Amazon websites are country-specific (for example, amazon.com for the US and amazon.co.uk for UK) though some offer international shipping.^[16]

Services

Amazon services include its digital assistant Alexa, Amazon Music, and Prime Video for music and videos respectively, the Amazon Appstore for Android apps. Audible provides audiobooks for purchase and listening.^[16]

Hardware

Amazon offers the Kindle line of electronic paper e-readers, Fire and Fire HD color LCD tablets.^[16]

Subsidiaries

Amazon owns over 100 subsidiaries, including Amazon Web Services, Audible, Diapers.com, Goodreads, IMDb, Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics), One Medical, Shopbop, Teachstreet, Twitch, Zappos, and Zoox.^[16]

Headquarters

Amazon's global headquarters occupy more than 40 buildings spread across Seattle's adjacent South Lake Union, Denny Triangle, and Downtown neighborhoods. The first 14 buildings Amazon occupied in South Lake Union were purchased for $1.16 billion in 2016. The company was previously headquartered in rented space within the Pacific Medical Center, from 1998 to 2011.^[16]

Other major campuses

Amazon's European headquarters are in Luxembourg's capital, Luxembourg. Its UK headquarters are at Principal Place, Shoreditch, London.^[16]

Related: Cogobuy · Salesforce · Bertel O. Steen

External references: ^[16][17][18]