Chapter 14 introduction

"I once said that Suning will become China's Wal-Mart. I will say it again today, that Suning will surpass Wal-Mart!" Wen Jiabao, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Premier of the State Council, said earnestly during a discussion meeting at the National Data Center of Suning Appliances, " We say that production determines circulation. If you don’t have products, there will be no circulation. But on the other hand, circulation also determines production, because circulation is connected to production at one end and consumption at the other end. It is a bridge between production and consumers, so it is very important. important."

In terms of market value alone, there is indeed a big gap between Suning Appliance (hereinafter referred to as Suning) with more than 100 billion yuan and Wal-Mart (hereinafter referred to as Wal-Mart) with more than 200 billion US dollars.If there is no realistic path, the message of "Beyond Wal-Mart" is more like a spiritual spur, or an ambition and dream like "Dare to reach the moon".But what if there is this realistic path? The story of the Tower of Babel is recorded in the Bible.The Tower of Babel, also known as the Tower of Babel, was a tower leading to heaven that people at that time hoped but failed to build.

However, the dream of human beings to easily access the vast space has not disappeared. In the late 1970s, science fiction writer Arthur Clarke described a story about building a space elevator on a tropical island.People and cargo can be easily transported to the space station by a cable that permanently connects the space station to the surface of the earth. After that, the ladder gradually moved closer from science fiction to reality.Although the sky ladder has to solve many technical problems, the breakthrough that makes scientists think that the sky ladder is likely to become a reality lies in the discovery of a suitable material: carbon nanotubes.On this basis, the research on ladders has made more progress.

Look at Suning again.Leading the industry in an all-round way, grabbing the beach in Hong Kong to go overseas, and acquiring Japanese counterparts to go abroad, Suning is increasingly showing a trend of accelerated development.Because of the construction of the best information management platform in the industry, the extremely impactful development prospects have been shown in front of Suning.The world's top 500 companies, China's distribution power, and Premier Wen's message "beyond Wal-Mart", all seem so exciting. But what we are more concerned about is that a private enterprise like Suning has reached its current height after only 20 years of development, and under the current trajectory, it can be foreseen that it will reach even higher heights in the future.Suning why?What is the driving force behind Suning's rapid development?

It can be said that the information management background is one of the most important forces behind Suning, and it is also the core driving force for Suning's development.With this management background, Suning was able to realize the coordinated operation of more than 300 cities across the country, thousands of front-end and back-end stores, logistics, after-sales and customer service terminals, and the integrated operation and management of more than 100,000 people; with this management background, Suning was able to Realize docking with upstream suppliers, and improve the efficiency of the entire supply chain through division of labor; relying on this management background, Suning can comprehensively upgrade and transform traditional simple, extensive, and manual business operations into modern, informational, and intelligent business operation.Relying on the information management platform, Suning is doing many things that the predecessors could not have imagined at all, or things that were conceived but could not be done.

Suning's informatization project is a process of building a "ladder".Through such a "ladder" that can be extended infinitely, Suning continues to reach higher heights.Just like the discovery of carbon nanotubes, as long as a solid enough information platform can be built, Suning's dream of "reaching the stars and the moon" will become possible. Looking at the history of Suning's informatization, we can see that Zhang Jindong, the chairman of Suning Appliances, was out of his persistent pursuit of modern management, and under the circumstances that all conditions were not fully met, he overcame many difficulties and realized Suning's informatization. .In the end, Suning built the systematic and comprehensive integrated organizational management system he expected.Various processes and systems of the enterprise can be built into the information system to operate and execute, which greatly breaks through the limitations of human ability, physical strength, and emotion in enterprise operations.

Suning keeps trying technological innovations. During the 20 years of enterprise development, Suning has always been at the "leader" of industry informatization.Why did Suning dare and be good at being the first to "eat crabs" in the process of development?This book hopes to provide a realistic reference for many enterprises that are still stuck in the misunderstanding and practical confusion of informationization by showing Suning's magnificent informatization construction process and the changes and qualitative leaps it has brought to enterprises in all aspects. A valuable revelation.

Is informatization an expedient measure to deal with competition, or a long-term strategy?How does it relate to the core competitiveness of the enterprise? What needs to be changed when business leaders make a decision to launch an informatization project?What kind of preparation do you make? In the end, should the information system adapt to the requirements of enterprise management, or use the information system to innovate the enterprise's operation and management model? How to prevent the situation that the information system is a system, but the enterprise management is still out of touch with the previous system and management?

Is informatization only a matter of the information management department?Is promotion to "top project" enough to guarantee success? Should the information system be implemented step by step, in small steps, or in one step? Is informatization once and for all?Why shouldn't the launch of the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system be seen as the end of a project, but as the beginning of another phase of the project? Why is it said that the information system is only basic wisdom, and enterprises must integrate their own wisdom into it to produce great power? What management problems can a well-functioning information system help enterprises solve?To what extent can the management boundary of the enterprise be extended?What impact will it have on corporate culture?

... If you are still confused by such questions, you may wish to take a look at the process of Suning's informatization construction.