Shuai Yuhuan, VP of DXY.cn: From 'Step-by-Step Strategy' to 'Step-by-Step Success'
Dingxiang Tong is a platform established by DXY to connect biomedical and pharmaceutical enterprises with users. In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Dingxiang Tong, we are launching the premium interview series “Think & Share+,” which aims to engage in dialogues with industry leaders, share innovative scientific and technological advancements, and explore advanced management practices, thereby sparking intellectual exchange and creating endless possibilities.
On this occasion, DXY Connect had the privilege of interviewing Shuai Yuhuan, Vice President of DXY and Head of the Hospital Business Division, who shared insights into DXY Connect’s development over the past decade and its expectations for the future.
Character Introduction
With 13 years of hands-on experience in the internet industry, established DXY’s first commercial operations department and successfully launched two major product platforms, “DXY Tong” and “DXY Talent.” Has provided internet marketing solutions and specialized human resources solutions to numerous well-known brands such as Roche, Merck, GE, and Siemens, as well as medical institutions including Shanghai International Medical Center, United Family Healthcare, and the First Hospital of China Medical University. Expertise lies in market planning and integrated marketing communications within the biopharmaceutical sector, with extensive research and proficiency in specialized human resources solutions.
May 16, 2008 is a date that Shuai Yuhuan, Vice President of DXY and Head of the Hospital Business Division, remembers vividly. Not only did she officially join DXY exactly one week later, but more importantly, it was on this day that Dingxiangtong was officially launched.
Shuai Yuhuan stated that, leveraging DXY’s millions of professional members, Dingxiangtong has progressed from a cautious, step-by-step approach at its inception to achieving steady success. While connecting biopharmaceutical companies with research and clinical users and establishing channels for the circulation of product and technical information, Dingxiangtong has already provided professional services to thousands of biopharmaceutical enterprises. In the next decade, Dingxiangtong will uphold the philosophy of “lightweight tools, heavy-weight services,” continuing to deliver comprehensive, data-driven solutions to its customers.
Dingxiangtong is the second commercial platform established by DXY, following DXY Talent. Shuai Yuhuan recalled that this direction was chosen because user demand for such a service was evident in the forums. Data showed that many forum posts focused on topics such as how to conduct experiments and where to purchase reagents and cell lines. Meanwhile, many suppliers of reagents and consumables lacked precise and effective marketing channels, resorting to posting advertisements on the DXY forums to reach their target customers. For a period, this practice even disrupted academic discussions on the forum.
In light of this, if a platform such as Dingxiang Tong could be built to connect the needs of both parties, it would not only address the issues faced by suppliers and demanders but also potentially pave the way for DXY’s commercialization efforts, generating a certain level of cash flow. In fact, there are already successful precedents in the market for this type of vertical e-commerce model, making the cost of trial and error relatively low when entering from this angle.
However, competitors had already gained a first-mover advantage in launching similar services. Moreover, while many customers acknowledged DXY’s academic positioning, they lacked confidence in the company’s commercialization efforts. Consequently, Shuai Yuhuan, who was appointed to lead the initiative, faced formidable challenges in building DXY Tong from the ground up and scaling it into a major success.
In an article on Shuai Yuhuan’s personal WeChat official account, it was stated: “For me, DXY Connect constituted my entire workload during the first two-plus years after I joined DXY. It was a completely unfamiliar yet highly sophisticated and cutting-edge field; a team built from scratch; my non-specialist background; managerial experience that was rudimentary at best; and the stark contrast in workplace culture—all of these served as both pressure and motivation. Together with my team, we honed our skills and grew through the challenges.”
To win customer recognition and support, Shuai Yuhuan decided to lead her team in adopting a “step-by-step” strategy, focusing on building and operating the website based on a gradual understanding of customer needs. In the first year, DXY.cn aimed to raise awareness of its platform among clients. To achieve this, the team systematically reached out to nearly all major life sciences companies in the Yangtze River Delta region. Hard work paid off: through in-depth communication with customers, DXY.cn uncovered substantial unmet needs and market opportunities.
It is worth noting that, leveraging the internet DNA inherent in DXY since its inception, Dingxiangtong enjoys a unique innate advantage in listening to and gathering customer feedback. For instance, within the DXY Forum, there is a section titled “Laboratory Construction and Procurement,” where operational staff can view customer opinions and suggestions in near real-time. This has significantly facilitated the improvement of the Dingxiangtong website and the optimization of its services.
Bolstered by subjective initiative and objective advantages, DXY Tongbian achieved a remarkable overtaking maneuver within just a few years. Its client base now encompasses nearly all multinational life sciences companies operating in China, alongside thousands of research service providers. Consequently, DXY Tongbian has become China’s premier and most professional biomedical business information platform, with its revenue experiencing rapid year-on-year growth, thereby serving as the primary “cash cow” for DXY during its early entrepreneurial stage.
Over the past decade, DXY Hub has maintained steady strategic direction alongside rapid business growth. According to Shuai Yuhuan, this is primarily attributable to its timely market entry. Since the turn of the new century, China’s R&D investment has grown at an annual rate of 20%, surpassing Japan in 2009 to become the world’s second-largest R&D spender after the United States. This surge in R&D funding has significantly boosted both the enthusiasm and the level of research activities. Concurrently, China’s scientific research services industry has developed in tandem. As a platform connecting researchers with scientific service providers, DXY Hub has indeed entered the market at an opportune moment.
Secondly, as DXY’s initial foray into commercialization, Dingxiangtong was entrusted with the expectation of generating revenue for the company, and thus received full support from the corporate level in terms of both talent and technology. Regarding Dingxiangtong, Li Tiantian, founder of DXY, once stated that it is more important than anything else to establish teams and processes through some simple business operations, enabling employees to earn income first and ensuring the company’s survival. With this revenue-generating capability in place, the mindset shifts significantly, laying a solid foundation for future commercialization efforts.
In response, Shuai Yuhuan stated that in addition to corporate support, Dingxiangtong also boasts an excellent team, particularly a group of “veterans” who have been deeply engaged in this business line since the platform’s inception. Their extensive experience in market and project operations serves as a crucial guarantee for driving the business toward success.
Finally, the product and user databases that DXY has been committed to building have increasingly become a key component of its competitive advantage. According to Shuai Yuhuan, DXY’s product database contains over 40 million entries and continues to grow at a rapid pace. This vast amount of data not only facilitates price inquiries and purchases for users but also creates highly favorable conditions for clients conducting marketing campaigns on the DXY platform.
Furthermore, against the backdrop of DXY’s strategic transformation into a data-driven “new” internet company, its database built on user information and behavioral data serves as a powerful tool for efficiently and precisely connecting clients with users. Once fully leveraged, this database will significantly strengthen the competitive moat of Dingxiangtong.
As China’s R&D budget accelerates and biopharmaceutical companies expand their research and development activities, the scientific research services industry still has significant room for growth. This means that Dingxiangtong’s “Step-by-Step to Success” strategy, which aims to connect clients with users, continues to hold broad prospects.
Shuai Yuhuan stated that, after years of in-depth observation of industry clients, it has been found that research service companies in the life sciences sector often share many common issues in product promotion. These include traditional and monolithic promotional models, a lack of targeted channels and methods, and an absence of user feedback mechanisms. In terms of brand building, many companies suffer from unclear or inconsistent brand positioning, insufficient exploration of corporate characteristics and advantages, and a lack of comprehensive brand-building strategies. Regarding user engagement, due to the absence of internet-native capabilities, these companies lack effective platforms for user acquisition, as well as tools for connecting with users and facilitating interactive communication, resulting in weak systematic capabilities for user mining, nurturing, and conversion. In terms of industry exchange, there is a shortage of corresponding platforms and exemplary forces driving industry progress, along with limited avenues for learning about new operational models.
“These customer pain points are precisely the areas DXY.cn is committed to addressing,” she said. To this end, DXY.cn has formulated its “Step-by-Step to Success” strategy, centered on the principle of “lightweight tools, heavy-duty services,” grounded in data-driven approaches, and aimed at delivering comprehensive solutions.
Shuai Yuhuan introduced that on the Dingxiangtong platform, there are tens of thousands of corporate clients. Although their products vary and their storefronts take different forms, these merchants share consistent demands for infrastructure, such as store management systems and data analytics systems. Therefore, Dingxiangtong is committed to strengthening this infrastructure, aiming to integrate all stages from marketing to sales through a unified system and leverage mobile tools to achieve “one-click completion.”
“Service-intensive” refers to the evolution from promoting individual products to providing comprehensive solutions. In the past, DXY Tong primarily offered simple online dissemination services, tailoring different packages to meet clients’ varying communication needs. However, as the market and tools evolve, so do clients’ expectations of DXY Tong. Often, clients require more than just brand exposure and online dissemination; they also need services such as strategic consulting, data analysis, and even the formulation of subsequent communication strategies.
Shuai Yuhuan stated that, to meet customers’ service needs, Dingxiangtong now offers comprehensive solutions encompassing WeChat development and operations, mobile platform operations, customized services, product evaluation services, mobile storefronts, enterprise e-commerce services, advertising and brand promotion, and data support services.
It is worth specifically noting that D-chat, developed by DXY on WeChat—the nation’s ubiquitous super-app—stands out as the most professional WeChat marketing tool in the biopharmaceutical sector. This third-party WeChat operations platform enables enterprises to rapidly implement basic functionalities such as customized menu bars, keyword management, and personalized user segmentation, along with diverse interactive features including conference registration and check-in, surveys, lucky draws, and member loyalty point campaigns. Furthermore, leveraging DXY’s technical expertise and its partnership with Tencent, the platform provides additional operational support, such as WeChat store inquiries, experiment lookups, and content licensing.
While providing customers with comprehensive solutions centered on “lightweight tools, heavy-duty services,” DXY.cn is also committed to enhancing the skill sets of marketing professionals in the scientific research sector at the source. Since 2013, DXY.cn has established E-College and has successively conducted offline E-marketing training courses and salons, sharing and exploring with marketing professionals in the scientific research field how to achieve business success through data-driven E-marketing strategies. In 2017, DXY.cn launched the D-chat WeChat sharing salon, aiming to address customer pain points, rediscover the value of WeChat, and identify effective solutions.
In the future, DXY has an ambitious vision: to establish an alliance for the domestic life sciences industry at a time when Chinese brands are rising and increasingly replacing imported products. DXY is committed to advocating for enterprises that drive industry development and continuously deepen their efforts to enable Chinese scientists to conduct research more efficiently, thereby contributing to the upgrading of China’s scientific research services industry in the new normal.
Shuai Yuhuan finally emphasized that the 10th anniversary marks a developmental milestone for DXY.cn, but more importantly, it represents a new starting point. She expressed her hope that in the next decade, DXY.cn will advance with greater steadiness, empowering Chinese research professionals and enterprises to achieve step-by-step success, and becoming a platform trusted by all scientific researchers in China.