In the past 106, the development of UPS also experienced many setbacks. Economic crisis is an inevitable phenomenon in the economic cycle, especially in the context of globalization, the cycle of economic crisis is getting shorter and shorter, and after an economic crisis, its storm often attacks the whole world and is hard to escape. It is more obvious for UPS, because it will operate in more than 200 countries around the world. The network affected by the economic crisis should be all over the world. Nevertheless, in the face of previous crises, UPS successfully overcame them. UPS has gradually expanded its products and services from the initial parcel delivery to become the world's leading overall supply chain provider.
UPS's business development in China has also experienced highs and lows. At the beginning 1988 cooperated with large domestic companies to set up their own offices. In 2005, after China joined the WTO, the express delivery market began to officially open to the outside world. Foreign-funded enterprises entered China to fully carry out international express delivery business, and UPS also fully operated in China. In 2008, UPS became the logistics and express sponsor of Beijing Olympic Games, which made us proud. Subsequently, UPS made two major investments in China market, one was to start investing in the construction of Shanghai International Transit Center, and the other was to invest in the construction of Shenzhen Asia-Pacific Transit Center, both of which have been put into operation one after another. In addition, the business of Shanghai International Transit Center has covered major areas of China.
We are very proud of our past achievements. There are probably three key factors for UPS to get where it is today and succeed today: the first is corporate culture, the second is corporate execution, and the third is constant change.
The development of UPS can be described as "winning through change". In fact, change has four cores. The first is how to attract and cultivate a skilled and diversified team. At UPS, everyone has the same values and works hard for the same goal of the company. The second is to provide high value-added services, and we strive to develop into a solution leader. The third involves our corporate culture, that is, taking customers as the center, constantly paying attention to customer needs and providing customers with predictable and distinctive solutions. Fourth, we should advocate on a global scale and constantly pursue Excellence and innovation to speed up our reform process.
Specifically, UPS's strategy to deal with the crisis can be said that enterprises will have different strategies in different periods.
In the short term, it is mainly to save costs. In fact, all enterprises may have such a natural reaction when the crisis comes. However, even in a crisis, we should see the medium and long term. In the middle of the crisis, we should constantly adjust our business model and increase our turnover.
After World War II, in the early 1950s, American cars became popular, and American society entered the stage of suburbanization. Before that, UPS mainly delivered parcels to customers' homes for department stores, but when people have cars, they no longer need enterprises to deliver them, so UPS encountered a crisis. At that time, UPS thought of exploring new customers, and today's concept is to explore the B2B market. 1954, the expansion of UPS began to receive remarkable results and gained more than 600 wholesaler customers. By 1956, the business of B2B has been comparable to that of B2C.
In order to cope with the financial crisis, what UPS has done is to comprehensively optimize its operation network. We found that when the crisis came, customers' needs were diversified, and the demand for high-end services generally dropped significantly, because everyone had to cope with the pressure of cost and often lowered the requirements for time limit. What we have done in this period is to strengthen our service. And in the long run, we should stick to the original investment plan and invest in building a global transportation network. In addition, UPS insists on developing and applying the most advanced IT technology. Through such investment and optimization, we can ensure our ability to cope with the crisis in the future, thus maintaining long-term development.
IT technology plays an important role in the development of express delivery enterprises, and UPS has always attached importance to the investment in IT technology. The inquiry network of UPS has covered 104 countries, and it can receive1850,000 online inquiries about the location of parcels every working day, thus improving the supply chain management capability.
In May, 20001,UPS announced its cooperation with Alibaba, a famous e-commerce company in China, and formally formed a strategic alliance with AliExpress, an online wholesale e-commerce platform under Alibaba. UPS will become the preferred logistics provider of AliExpress worldwide. AliExpress buyers and sellers can enjoy the main benefits brought by online freight management and online tracking, including printing UPS freight labels and asking UPS to pick up the goods at home. The benefits are obvious and can greatly improve the customer experience. The rapid development of e-commerce in China has brought more development space for express delivery.