Lens time: 2001July 16
Lens playback:
On July 3rd, a simple and compact "Middleware Seminar" became the most formal "Middleware Mobilization Conference" in Shanghai software industry in recent years. "You asked me where I was going, and I pointed to the direction of the sea." The direction of Shanghai Computer Open Systems Association, the organizer, is middleware.
"mobilization meeting"
Zhu Sanyuan also bluntly said that middleware is a double-edged sword. If the software enterprise itself lacks industry experience, profound business knowledge and market awareness, the middleware products developed may fail. However, if software companies are still satisfied with doing one project after another, they will never grow up. He believes that the most suitable way for domestic software enterprises to grow is to find the demand in the market, form a unique view of the enterprise in a certain industry field, and then consciously refine this popular professional demand into middleware.
In this way, when users want to see products quickly, enterprises only need to develop a small amount of content to meet their requirements. "This is the accumulation of money, and enterprises have to settle accounts." Zhu Sanyuan revealed that there are also experts in Beijing who are rushing to appeal.
Oligarch's Absence in Prince Competition
Bank of East Asia, Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Hua Teng are the unique "Troika" in this "Middleware Seminar".
BEA was dragged to China by HP on 1997. At that time, IBM launched middleware products in China's financial industry very early. In the competition with IBM, HP deeply realized that only "hardware+middleware+database" can compete with IBM's entire product line. After several years of development, Yong Yang, general manager of East and Central China of Bank of East Asia, told reporters that the middleware products of Bank of East Asia have been widely used in the domestic telecommunications industry, and enterprises and governments have also begun to adopt them in large quantities. BEA Intermediate has been adopted by Shanghai Transportation Card, Social Security Card, Baosteel and China Eastern Airlines.
Regarding the intention of domestic software companies to seize the middleware market, Yong Yang said: "In a sense, we respect and admire China software companies." But he doesn't think that domestic software companies must spend energy to make up this course. Because once set foot in the middleware field, enterprise positioning will jump to system software, and there are many high and strict standards for system software development. First, the capital investment is large and the return period is long; Second, middleware technology needs to obtain a large number of core underlying technical data. Middleware is not only an independent product, but also has deep communication and cooperation with many development tools such as operating systems and databases, which is difficult to do in China at present.
Editor's comment: meticulous work
Although the domestic middleware market is generally occupied by foreign software, and the middleware developed in China is also inferior, the overall middleware market is not saturated. The industry predicts that it is difficult to form a situation in which a few software companies monopolize the market in a short time due to the constantly updated demand in the application field.
Yong Yang believes that this is the strength of domestic software enterprises. First, the quality of domestic software developers is high; Secondly, the domestic application market has unique national conditions, and not all foreign software can be applied; Third, the comprehensive cost of domestic software development is low. In Yong Yang's view, these three advantages have unlimited money. Not only can we compete with foreign competitors in specific fields, but domestic software products can also travel overseas and earn money in overseas markets.
Xu Yi, technical consultant director of Oracle Bone Inscriptions Company's Shanghai office, believes that the opportunities faced by domestic software enterprises outweigh the challenges.
Core tips
Zhu Sanyuan unabashedly compared middleware to a double-edged sword. If software companies lack industry experience, profound business knowledge and market awareness, the middleware products developed may fail.
If a software enterprise is still satisfied with one project, it will never grow up.
Since the reform and opening up, China's enterprise informatization and ERP application have gone through 20 years of ups and downs. During this period, countless enterprises and manufacturers are struggling to explore how to take the road of enterprise informatization and ERP. Just like the socialist market economy with China characteristics, the road of enterprise informatization and ERP in China must also have China characteristics!
I. Overview of ERP's 20-year history in China
Twenty years is just a moment in history, but it is a big step in the development of ERP in China enterprises.
As early as eight or six years ago, most domestic enterprises didn't know what MRPⅱⅱ II II was and what ERP was, which was a stage of concept introduction. From about 1985 to 1990, many management experts and scholars, including entrepreneurs in China, began to study what the international advanced management mode is and how to help China enterprises improve their management competitiveness. During this period, some pilot enterprises of ERP application were born. From 1990 to 1999, more and more enterprises implemented ERP. During this period, world-renowned ERP manufacturers flooded into China market, and more enterprises tried or bought ERP products. However, an authoritative report says that the success rate of ERP in China enterprises is less than 30%, which has obviously dealt a great blow to enterprises in China, so that many enterprises are still afraid to launch ERP applications.
Why is the success rate of ERP application in China enterprises so low? Is it the problem of the enterprise or the manufacturer? Indeed, a few China manufacturers completely copy foreign ERP software regardless of the current situation of China enterprises, some simply graft foreign software to China products, and more foreign manufacturers just translate software interfaces and sentences. This unrealistic and unscientific practice of a few manufacturers does bring great risks to the success rate of ERP application. However, in 1999, experts and scholars, governments, enterprises and manufacturers all over the country launched a big debate, and finally reached a conclusion: the management ideas of ERP products of most domestic manufacturers are not wrong, and their software is also very scientific. The main problem lies in the selection and implementation of strategies and methods.
Summarizing the exploration road of ERP application in China enterprises can be clearly summarized into three main ways, namely, pursuing foreign software, independent research and development, and choosing domestic software. Through systematic review, analysis and summary, we can feel the hard attempts and development of China enterprises to explore information construction with ERP application as the core.
Second, pursue foreign software.
ERP software originated from a set of advanced management theories developed abroad.
Due to the late start, there is no denying that there is a big gap between domestic software and foreign products in management ideas, industry characteristics and implementation experience. Twenty years ago, the pioneers of enterprise informatization in China introduced foreign software, mainly MRP and MRP ⅱ, with the idea of "learning". Frankly speaking, the design ideas of foreign software are not excellent, and the theoretical basis is not cutting-edge, but the realization often ends in failure. China enterprises more than 70% of the ERP application failure rate is mainly composed of this part, most of the failure factors are as follows:
Differences in management ideas. Professor Wang Dengfeng pointed out in the book "Differences in Personality Composition between China and Westerners" that the personality characteristics of westerners are mainly extroversion, justice and creativity, and the intimacy and alienation of interpersonal relationships can hardly affect the domination and obedience at work; People in China often decide whether to do a job or not according to the closeness of the relationship, which is a typical missing management closed loop. The latest scientific theory of behavior management also points out that foreign sophisticated, mechanical and complex management models are often difficult to suit enterprises in China, and the "people-oriented" management idea determines that ERP products that conform to China's enterprise management model should have the characteristics of simplicity, flexibility and clear flow.
The complexity of the function increases the difficulty of implementation. "Ferrari is good, but it is not suitable for China!" In fact, since the China market only accounts for a small part of the global market, almost no foreign ERP manufacturers set their core R&D department in China. Therefore, due to strategic considerations and cost factors, it is difficult for foreign manufacturers to tailor a set of ERP products that meet the actual needs for China enterprises. The actual needs of enterprises from China are rarely answered positively, and users have to suffer from discriminatory treatment under the beautiful pursuit of "introducing foreign advanced management concepts" for a long time and live a life of hiding their ears.
Prices and services need to be humanized. Due to the globalization strategy of foreign manufacturers, the service ability in China is inherently insufficient, one is that there are few service outlets, and the other is that there are few service personnel. The charging of software and services is also the focus of frequent disputes between foreign manufacturers and China enterprises. Not only because its high charging standard is seriously divorced from China's national conditions, but also because of the complexity of software, enterprises are bound to die on it for life. In the case of long-term failure to see benefits, they have to bear high service fees every year, which will surely make China enterprises miserable in the long run.
Ningbo Fidelity Electric Appliance Co., Ltd. is a listed company in China and the largest vacuum cleaner manufacturer in China. It once bought a set of foreign products, and after several years, it succeeded. It was very lucky. However, the application is very difficult and the annual service fee is too high. Finally decided to switch to Kingdee, because the enterprise's goal is to make management simpler, and Kingdee is more in line with its reality. With K/3ERP, the management efficiency is higher, and the logistics, capital flow and report forms are faster. In addition, BBK, one of the most famous home appliance manufacturers in China, tried to adopt foreign management mode, and then returned to the enterprise that chose Kingdee K/3ERP. The owner of Zhuhai Lizhi Foreign Firm said humorously: We replaced the Ferrari of SAP with the Jetta of Kingdee, because Kingdee is just like Jetta compared with large foreign products and complex and luxurious systems. They say that Jetta is easy to run among enterprises in China, because it is simple to operate and low in cost, and it is difficult for Ferrari to play its due role on the road in China.
This is the first way: to pursue foreign software. But what we know is that the lessons of failure are far more than the joy of success. We believe that foreign products are more suitable for large and super-large enterprises with complex management, standardized management, international characteristics and solid information foundation, while China's small and medium-sized enterprises, Jetta is more suitable for you.
Third, independent research and development.
Zhejiang Haitian Machinery Co., Ltd. is the largest production base of large and medium-sized injection molding machines in China, and its products are in an absolute monopoly position in the market. On the road of information exploration for many years, Haitian Machinery first faced the failure of introducing foreign software in an all-round way, and then ran aground again in its independent research and development efforts. However, informatization must be carried out. After repeated painful choices by business leaders, Kingdee's K/3 ERP was finally selected as the cornerstone of enterprise informatization, and achieved unexpected and unprecedented success. As the only case in Zhejiang Province where 863/CIMS plans to use mature commercial software instead of project development, the project finally got the highest score of 82.7 through expert acceptance evaluation in the fierce competition. What is particularly commendable is that enterprises have explored and constructed a "digital neural management system" with personalized characteristics that surpasses the world-class level by learning and applying a variety of advanced digital management ideas, processes and methods contained in K/3ERP.
In the past, Haitian Machinery was very talented, because it had an IT talent team no less than that of domestic medium-sized software enterprises, and gained rich experience in ERP application from the failure of selecting foreign software, so it decided to develop an ERP system that was completely suitable for enterprises' own needs. Because of the disadvantages brought by self-research, I finally embarked on the road of choosing commercial software products.
This also directly proves the second way: self-reliance and independent research and development.
In the early stage of MRP and MRPⅱ development in China, many large and super-large enterprises developed independently and made great achievements, which also promoted the rapid development of enterprise informatization. However, with the maturity of China's enterprise information market, the development speed of business software is rapid, and the complexity of ERP products determines that this is an oligopoly market.
With the continuous development and expansion of enterprises, the complexity of their management and the diversity of their information needs are not the same as in the past. For ERP, a super-complex system, independent research and development will bring serious consequences such as slow upgrade, high cost and inadaptability to the rapidly changing market economy and market competition demand. Advanced commercial software from large professional companies has many advantages, such as leading technology, comprehensive functions, low total cost of ownership, complete management mode and rich industry characteristics, and will surely become the first choice for enterprise ERP application.
Everything has two sides and has advantages under certain circumstances. However, facing the application field of ERP, the road of independent research and development has come to an end after 20 years of development. Judging from the overall market trend, this tendency has been very clearly revealed.
Fourth, choose domestic software.
Domestic ERP software is a backbone that grows rapidly with the rapid development of enterprise informatization in China in 1990s.
Domestic ERP vendors can be roughly divided into three categories:
First of all, traditional ERP vendors, such as Case, Lima and Qi Ming, were mostly born in colleges or research institutions and paid little attention to market operation. Kingdee's merger with Case and Lima's fission announced the decline of such old ERP manufacturers. Simple mode, foreign products, lack of commercial design and neglect of market and capital operation are the main reasons for its failure.
The other is financial software vendors represented by Kingdee and UFIDA. Thanks to the great success of the financial software market, such manufacturers have made remarkable achievements as soon as they entered the ERP market. Advanced technology, huge financial software users, dazzling market and capital operation, and being good at learning from foreign software products are all key factors to promote its success. Such manufacturers will surely become the mainstream and leading manufacturers in China ERP market.
There is also a category represented by Digital China, which is some leading manufacturers in the domestic IT industry. Because of the huge prospect of ERP market, they set up their own ERP software company through capital operation, acquisition or joint venture. Because of their aristocratic family background, their future is also quite promising.
The application benefit of domestic software is more in line with China's national conditions. While many of us blindly pursue foreign manufacturers, we often seriously ignore that the success of foreign products is also accompanied by the development of foreign enterprises step by step. China's enterprise informatization construction is still in the primary development stage. The obvious characteristics of this stage are: enterprises and manufacturers depend on each other, and enterprises implement information application step by step, which greatly reduces risks, improves success rate, and promotes enterprise management progress in stages and with emphasis; Through the practical application of a large number of enterprises, manufacturers constantly improve their products, widely disseminate successful experience and industry knowledge, promote product maturity, and in turn promote enterprise progress.
The price and service charge of domestic software are more reasonable. The nationwide service system, stable and continuous operation and rapid development ensure the long-term planning of ERP application. This kind of "service nervous system" like spider web is one of the main advantages that domestic manufacturers are different from foreign manufacturers.
Choosing domestic software is more in line with the law of leap-forward development. "Informatization drives industrialization". After China's entry into WTO, it is impossible for China enterprises to carry out information construction step by step if they want to catch up with the international advanced level. Realizing leap-forward development is the best choice to enhance its management competitiveness.
The decisive factor of leap-forward development is information technology and management, which is the most active factor. The present situation of Chinese enterprises determines that it is impossible for enterprises to reach the designated position in one step, and it is also impossible to follow the old rules. They should choose domestic software that suits their own situation, make overall and long-term plans, and follow the scientific laws of enterprise information construction from basic management to ERP to e-commerce and collaborative commerce. In the stage of basic informatization and ERP, we can consider and apply some advanced systems and operation modes that meet the actual needs, such as CRM, e-commerce, etc., and finally transition to overall informatization or CMIS. This is the basic principle of leap-forward development.
China Silian Group is one of the 53 key enterprises supported by the State Council and the largest production base of automatic instruments in China. Starting with financial software, the application gradually covers cost accounting, procurement, sales, warehousing, group settlement center, etc. From 2000 to 2002, they developed step by step. In the end, there are 23 enterprises in the whole group, and 270 sites are managed by K/3ERP system. Let's take a look at its achievements: through the comparison before and after the implementation of the system, it is found that the procurement cost has decreased by 2 percentage points compared with 2000, and the inventory funds have also decreased, which has accelerated the whole capital turnover; With the increase of sales revenue, the group's accounts receivable also decreased by more than 20 million yuan, the capital efficiency was greatly improved, and the interest alone saved more than 5 million yuan; During the implementation of the whole system, they adopted budget management and financial control, which reduced the financial expenses of the whole group by 8 percentage points.
Many enterprises, including Galaxy Securities, China Construction Bank, Delong Group, SAIC, FAW Group, etc. Under the pressure of competitive environment, we chose to cooperate closely with domestic software manufacturers like Kingdee to explore how to push enterprise informatization to a climax step by step.
In a word, the ERP road of China enterprises should be "learning, inheriting, exploring and innovating". This is an experience that has been comprehensively tested and constantly summarized in practice. It is completely in line with the theoretical guidance of methodology and inherits the classic model of "imitation, doubt, negation and innovation" in methodology. This is training from government, academia and innovation after more than 20 years.
Five, the secret of Kingdee K/3ERP success
As a well-known supplier of enterprise information solutions in China, what laws does Kingdee ERP follow to achieve success, and what are the places worth learning and learning from?
At present, in the domestic ERP system, Kingdee K/3ERP brand coverage has ranked first in the country, which fully shows that Kingdee K/3ERP is the software brand with the largest number of users in China, which is a remarkable achievement, but for this honor, Kingdee has experienced a difficult process of "learning, inheriting, exploring and innovating" for several years.
(A) One of the secrets: carefully study the specific needs of enterprises in China.
Learn from foreign ERP software ideas and carefully study domestic enterprises. 1996 After Kingdee achieved unprecedented success in the field of financial software, 1997 began to plan and develop MRPⅱII II and ERP products. At that time, Kingdee had copied some things from foreign software, even simple grafting, just like some famous software manufacturers now. After two years of painful lessons of VMRP product research and development failure, we finally chose a scientific and pragmatic road, closely combining advanced western management concepts with the current situation of domestic enterprises, and integrating them into product design.
Kingdee trusts customers and respects the management reality of enterprises, instead of telling customers what to do and blindly letting them adapt to products. TCL has a famous saying "Speed impacts scale". A few years ago, TCL was just a multi-billion-dollar liquidity enterprise. How can we defeat Changhong, a blue-chip enterprise with more than 654.38 billion liquidity, and compete with it? Management experts summed up the phrase "speed affects scale", that is to say, to make the capital turnover speed of enterprises fast enough, if the capital turnover speed of enterprises can be ten times faster, 10 times 10 is10, so as to compete with Changhong. Therefore, when planning and building its enterprise information system, TCL put forward a very clear goal, that is, "speed affects scale", and how to establish an enterprise competitiveness with distribution as the core, so that the group headquarters can know the logistics situation at the back for the first time and assist high-level decision-making.
In several years' cooperation with Kingdee, TCL finally ascended the throne of China's black household appliances industry from 1 1 to the fifth and then to the second, 200 1. TCL's distribution network and distribution network information are so smooth that other domestic manufacturers who are engaged in distribution and attach great importance to customer channel construction have followed TCL's experience. For example, some super-large enterprises such as Konka, Kelon, Gree, Bird, Star Freezer and Xiangle are cooperating with Kingdee to build their own rapid response capabilities.
(2) The second secret: follow the scientific theory of long-term planning and overall solution.
Kingdee once said that "ERP should be removed from the altar" and advised the industry not to speculate on various theories of ERP, nor to complain that the management level of enterprises in China is too low to use ERP. It is important to regard ERP as a phased application of the dynamic development of enterprise informatization. With this guiding ideology, it will help China enterprises to plan their informatization journey from a more comprehensive and scientific perspective. From a long-term and overall perspective, we should help the overall planning of the enterprise from the comprehensive factors such as enterprise scale, application level, industry characteristics, business scope, software technology and implementation methods.
Kingdee believes that most domestic enterprises should start with basic management, then establish ERP system to help enterprises optimize resource allocation, third, carry out some cooperation among enterprises, and finally realize e-commerce among enterprises on the Internet. This is the high-level theory of "overall solution" that Kingdee has been pushing to enterprises. It helps China enterprises how to use modern management techniques and methods to enhance their management competitiveness in the Internet era with a developing and dynamic vision, so that ERP can really help enterprises.
Why did Kingdee succeed? We think it's because Kingdee is deeply studying the specific problems of enterprises in China and the key problems of enterprises in China.
(3) Secret 3: Explore ERP implementation methods that are in line with national conditions.
The implementation method is one of the most important determinants of ERP success. The implementation methods abroad are large, comprehensive, refined and deep. Any process reengineering or enterprise reorganization is good, but it is often a powerful medicine. Many specific problems and people-oriented management habits of Chinese enterprises determine that the implementation of ERP still needs a method similar to traditional Chinese medicine.
Kingdee can now provide enterprises with an overall solution with industry characteristics, which consists of a series of application solutions, including knowledge management, financial management, ERP, HR, value management, BI, CRM, SCM, application server and so on. In view of the present situation of the enterprise, Kingdee invented a set of six-step implementation method called "Golden Finger" when implementing ERP, and established a scientific "blue chain" service management system to provide customers with a series of simple and efficient standardized service processes including pre-diagnosis, consultation, training and implementation. Each service corresponds to a set of processes and methods, providing many tools to help enterprises succeed.
(d) Secret 4: Create value-oriented customers.
When talking about Kingdee's corporate culture, Xu, president of Kingdee, once said, "We should create valuable customers, not just pursue the number of customers". Kingdee has always followed such a principle, and then learned from the essence of foreign ERP software, combined with the reality of China, explored in learning, digested in exploration and developed in digestion, and developed ERP software with China characteristics.
After many enterprises apply ERP, how to continuously improve the application level and level is a problem that manufacturers are actively considering and exploring. Kingdee believes that a single Kingdee manufacturer can't sum up all the essence of management ideas, so it has launched the "Oriental Pearl Plan", hoping that such a successful reengineering plan will enable more China enterprises to share in the process of information construction. The purpose of "Oriental Pearl Project" is to "create value-oriented customers and promote the process of enterprise informatization construction in China", aiming at sharing success with customers and exploring the road to success. Through the selection of outstanding representatives of information enterprises on 100 for many times, and with the help of organizations like "Pearl Club", we will build a communication bridge between users and Kingdee, users in the same industry and even individuals. We will continue to optimize management, work with enterprises to enhance the application value of management, establish practical industry management mode and application scheme, and promote the overall informatization level of China. "Oriental Pearl Project" and "Pearl Club" are the continuation of Kingdee's ultimate business philosophy of "helping customers succeed", and are also solemn commitments made to promote the informatization process of enterprises in China.
Kingdee's success in ERP has many factors, such as market and capital operation. As Mr. Zhang Keqin, vice president of Shanghai Jinjiang Group Finance Company and chairman of Kingdee East China Pearl Club, said, "Even though there are many factors for Kingdee's success, it can be summed up in one sentence, that is,' Help customers succeed'. This is their philosophy and the purpose of our user club. Kingdee has helped many of our customers on the road to success. As our users, we should also strive to help Kingdee become a giant in the software industry in China and even the world through our practical actions! "