Chapter 20 Chapter 6 Informatization and Intelligent Enterprise

Suning was the first among domestic retail companies to call out to be a "technology-based enterprise" and "smart retail".What kind of concept is a smart enterprise in Suning's definition? In fact, in the author's opinion, a smart enterprise should be an enterprise that can use resources most fully, agilely, flexibly and effectively.And this means that no matter how big the enterprise is, on the basis of information systems, smart enterprises can break through the limitations of manpower and expand their management boundaries further. The massive data accumulated by the original enterprise is also excavated from a "dead" thing to become "live" information and used to support decision-making.This means that "wisdom" is actually not only the wisdom of the underlying system, but should also be understood as the wisdom of the enterprise itself.

——Suning hopes to build itself into a smart enterprise, and a smart enterprise should be the most forward-looking enterprise that can use resources most fully, agilely, flexibly and effectively. Suning is the first retail enterprise in China to propose to be a "technology-based enterprise" and "smart retail".This concept was advocated by IBM and has become a new cooperation target under the mature cooperation system between the two parties in the past. But how should a smart enterprise be defined?What would this goal look like if it could be clearly seen?It is estimated that there is no perfect standard answer.Because like abstract words such as beauty and spirit, wisdom can also be regarded as an abstract word.Everyone's perception of wisdom may be different.

In my opinion, if we want to define a smart enterprise, the first point is: a smart enterprise should be the most forward-looking enterprise that can use resources in the most sufficient, agile, flexible and effective manner. At different stages of enterprise development, the definition and interpretation of smart enterprises are different.When the scale of the enterprise is still small, the use of resources is within the controllable range of manpower, and the efficient use of resources can be achieved by relying on excellent salesmen or excellent enterprise managers.Correspondingly, enterprises at this stage do not have the concept of "wisdom", and all their business behaviors can be defined as "smart", and enterprises rely on experience and intelligence to conquer the market.As for those management ideas that contain great wisdom, enterprises at this stage don't need them at all.

Looking back at Suning's 20-year development history, it has also grown from small to large.When he was still a small business, Zhang Jindong could even rely on the trick of "ordering in the off-season and paying in the off-season" to win the rapid development of the company.At that time, the company was still in the growth period. Zhang Jindong had to personally do many things. He needed to use his "smartness" to draw up advertising slogans, fight wits with big suppliers, and carry out the "out-of-season payment" campaign. Gambling", these are not wisdom.But "smartness" also has its own boundary effects. After passing the critical point, the effect will be greatly reduced.Smartness can make you accomplish one thing, but only wisdom can make you accomplish something!

In business, the tipping point at which "smart" no longer works so well is scale.As the enterprise grows bigger and bigger, when it reaches a certain scale, if it still relies on manpower to allocate resources, it will exceed the limit that people can bear.If an enterprise still hopes to achieve a full, agile, and flexible state, it needs to use information tools. Informatization can help enterprises solve the problem of efficient use of resources after doubling in size. It is the cornerstone of a smart enterprise, or the meaning of a smart enterprise. Suning established its own endogenous growth method very early.During the two years when Suning's chain expansion was carried out nationwide and the competition in China's home appliance retail industry was fierce, the problems that Suning's executives thought about the most were actually management issues.

In 2005, Suning was able to open a new store within 3 days. However, the expansion of the company's scale, especially the increase in internal management requirements after the company went public, made Suning's management team even more nervous. Because, how to build an efficient enterprise management system is the real problem facing Suning.Sun Weimin once said frankly: "We expect Suning's future development scale to expand by at least 5 to 8 times. However, we strongly feel that even if the number of stores increases slightly compared with the present, it will increase the difficulty of service and management."

Fortunately, Suning has found a way to solve the contradiction between rapid expansion and management, and has found a way to solve the contradiction between the doubling of scale and the inability to fully, agilely and flexibly mobilize resources.In terms of concept, it is to make light things lighter and heavy things heavier.However, in terms of methods and paths, informatization is the only way. Suning believes that in the future, enterprises will not be compared in size or assets, but in wisdom.If there is no wisdom, no matter how large the scale and how many assets are, they will eventually disappear because they cannot be controlled.Suning places all of its business processes, personnel management, capital management, and information management in an advanced information system, creating the basic conditions for it to become "smart".

On the road of exploring smart enterprises, what will Suning eventually look like?Sun Weimin once said in an interview with the media that when a company grows bigger, the room for improvement will also increase.There is no end to the exploration of smart enterprises, but the most direct and realistic purpose is to dig deeper into the value of various data, improve disordered and inefficient processes, and maximize enterprise resources through the combination of information technology and business experience. business value, while providing customers with a better shopping experience. ——The system allows Suning to truly solve the problems of "big but not strong" and "big but inefficient" that many large companies may face.Suning's management and control of enterprises can be "meticulous" and "pervasive".

One of the management problems of large enterprises is that the larger the enterprise, the more difficult it is to manage.The development of home appliance chain retail needs to rely on scale advantages.Without the advantage of scale, the value of the chain will no longer exist.However, along with the advantages of scale, there are often management difficulties. It is often said that the scale and management difficulty of tens of billions of companies and hundreds of billions of companies is not a simple summation.Suning has gradually developed from a small company back then to a large enterprise group with sales expected to reach 150 billion yuan in 2010. If the management method is wrong, it will easily become a mess, let alone continue to develop.This is very similar to a phenomenon in physics - the heavier the object, the greater the centrifugal force when it rotates at a high speed, and the easier it is to fall apart.

It's hard to imagine that if Suning hadn't spent a large part of its energy building its own information system, exercising its "internal strength" and consolidating the foundation of its century-old enterprise and century-old brand during its rapid development, would Suning still be able to Has it developed to such a scale, can it still have a bright development prospect under the determined path?Perhaps, without system support, Suning will soon encounter development bottlenecks. However, these are all hypotheses. What Suning presents to people is an enviable and healthy system.Relying on this advanced information management platform, Suning can organically coordinate all parts of the enterprise organization and realize the integration of many corporate functions such as human resources, organization and performance, finance, supply chain, logistics, customer service, and chain development. Comprehensive management.This kind of management is more fine-grained, and can even be accurate to each node.

It can be said that the system allows Suning to truly solve the problem of "big but not strong" that many large companies may face.Suning's management and control of enterprises can be "meticulous" and "pervasive".In the ring-shaped office on the 50th floor of Suning headquarters, Zhang Jindong can sit in the office very leisurely, but he knows everything about the company's operating conditions. From Zhang Jindong's work status, we can clearly see the huge changes brought about by informatization.When Zhang Jindong started a business and was rapidly expanding and developing, he often had a phone call within two or three minutes when he was talking with people. The conversation was often interrupted, and there were endless things he needed to deal with. However, with the gradual improvement of the system, many businesses and processes of the enterprise are all in the system and operate according to the rules set by the system.Zhang Jindong's workload is much less.At least, in many interviews and conversations, the author did not see Zhang Jindong answer a phone call.However, when it comes to enterprises, Zhang Jindong can still be as familiar as when he personally experienced them back then.Zhang Jindong is not only aware of the company's general development direction and strategic planning, but also has a clear understanding of some details. Why is Zhang Jindong able to escape from the daily tedious affairs, but at the same time he is so familiar with the operation of the enterprise?The reason for this is that Suning has moved all business affairs of the enterprise from offline to online, solidifying what can be solidified with processes and systems, and for those emergencies, there is a special handling mechanism.The system makes the operation of the enterprise more unified, transparent and standardized, so it is not particularly difficult to understand Suning. In the management of large enterprises, the balance between management range and management level has also been resolved through informatization.From the previous hierarchical management to the current professional service, Suning has realized the transformation from "physical centralization and logical decentralization" to "physical centralization and logical centralization", realizing the real centralization. Because of the continuous concentration, the functions of the headquarters have become larger, and its organizational "body" has also continued to expand.It turned out that Suning performed some headquarters functions not only at Suning Appliance Building on Huaihai Road in Nanjing, but also at Suning Galaxy International Plaza on Shanxi Road in Nanjing. However, if it continues to be dispersed like this, it will no longer be able to meet the needs of Suning's development. In Nanjing Xuzhuang Software Park, Suning is building its own "smart headquarters" in full swing.When Suning celebrates its 20th birthday in 2010, Suning will move into the new headquarters of Xuzhuang Software Park.It is understood that since Xuzhuang Software Base was formally established in 2001, it has absorbed nearly 100 companies including Oracle, Intel, and Microsoft.Judging from the industry composition of these enterprises, Suning's ambition to transform into a high-tech enterprise is obvious. In the 20th anniversary of Suning’s founding, which is a link between the past and the future, how will Suning plan and choose to develop its own development path in the future?Every ten years at a node, Suning has passed a critical node. When it reaches such a critical time node, how will Suning plan itself?Zhang Jindong said: "Suning already has a clear strategy for the next ten years. The general direction of this strategy is to transform into a technology-based enterprise." In an interview with the media, Ren Jun said that for the new ten-year strategy, Suning has made a lot of preparations in the early stage.First of all, it is to rebuild the architecture for the next ten years of development, but not to rebuild the application and system.In view of the huge amount of data, scattered business, and frequent transactions in the retail industry, the network architecture, data structure, and application architecture must not only support a wide range of applications, but also ensure the reliability, security, availability, and scalability of transactions. , especially system-level security.Many systems will involve ERP, customer (member) analysis, website, internal management, etc. According to the management characteristics of centralized enterprise information structure, the structure must be reasonable and safe. Secondly, it is to strive to realize the operation of "wisdom".There are still many cases of passive acquisition in the current system, and Suning will gradually change to active push.In addition, whether the correlation, trend, and particularity of a large amount of data can be used by relevant departments and personnel requires vigorous development of business intelligence. Third, to further strengthen the technical capabilities of the background, the most important thing is the problem of logistics (in 2015, Suning will complete the construction of 60 new logistics bases).In the past, only large appliances could provide door-to-door delivery. After vigorously developing B2C, it will involve the delivery of small appliances.When the stores are extended to counties and towns, the route of logistics and distribution will be extended, and the corresponding technology will also need to be improved, so that the logistics time and cost can reach the best state.Aiming at the characteristics of many varieties of small items, small size and light weight, Suning Nanjing Logistics Distribution Center will launch the first fully automatic logistics warehouse at the end of December 2010, and will gradually replicate it to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other core areas as soon as possible. city. Finally, what is focused on improving is the model of shared services.In order to ensure the steady development of the enterprise, the continuous support of the management model, and the realization of business decentralization without decentralization of management, the headquarters' sharing system capabilities must become stronger and stronger, and it is necessary to provide services for all stores and all employees across the country, such as unified procurement, unified financial accounting management, Unified human resources services, etc.In this way, the enterprise can expand rapidly, the risk is reduced, the operating efficiency of the enterprise is improved, and the process is clearer, more transparent and simpler. To complete the above informatization strategies, the most important "hardware" is the smart headquarters.Regarding the smart headquarters, Suning has many plans. First of all, Suning will have a concept store model of nearly 20,000 square meters in the new headquarters.There, Suning will fully cooperate with suppliers using information technology.Suning will comprehensively study customers' shopping habits and patterns in future stores, as well as information-based services and support provided by Suning, and replicate these studies in physical stores. Secondly, Suning will set up a B2C research and development team.The new headquarters can provide an environment for implementing B2C, become the core base of B2C, and support B2C to become the new key business strategy of the enterprise in the future.Among them, the customer demand analysis personnel and background support personnel will work in the headquarters. Third, Suning will establish several laboratories with strategic partners to form an experimental base.For example, we have established laboratories with well-known IT companies such as IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft to conduct research on new technical fields; we have established product laboratories with manufacturers such as Samsung and LG.If these two aspects of research are combined, Suning will make breakthroughs in supply chain technology, logistics technology, and consumer sales process technology, including services. Finally, there will be an area for the "smart home" in the new headquarters.World Expo and other hotspots talk about smart cities, while Suning refers to families.Suning will simulate the environment of a family in this area, including lighting, air conditioning, water, door locks, etc., and at the same time think about what kind of life mode the family will have in the future. In Suning, there is a dedicated information group responsible for collecting information and feeding it back to Zhang Jindong.The information group belongs to the brand department. According to Min Juanqing, the manager of the brand planning department, in the early stage of the company's development, the rapid expansion of sales was the guide, and the brand positioning was more about promotion.The early brand department was the news department, then it was changed to the brand planning department, and then it was divided into two, into the brand planning department and the brand promotion department. In 2010, Suning built a large brand department and divided the department into three groups: brand planning department, brand promotion department, and information department.The functions of the brand planning department include group strategic planning, group business planning and group regional management.The content of the planning includes internal and external. Internally, it is necessary to consider regional differences and ensure uniformity; externally, it is responsible for external reception.The brand promotion department is divided into three groups, which are mainly responsible for planning activities such as TV, magazines, events, and celebrity endorsements.The function of the information department is to collect all kinds of information and information, including information on competitors, suppliers, banks, the government, etc., and finally feed back to Zhang Jindong in the form of a one-sentence news. Because of such an information feedback mechanism, Zhang Jindong can grasp the information of the external competitive environment and the internal information of the enterprise in real time. In addition, a lot of knowledge and information in Suning are solidified in the system, and knowledge and information closely related to Suning's daily operation and development are solidified and locked by the system.Suning's information system built a good structure at the beginning, and it has been continuously optimized in the later development.Some of this optimization is carried out according to the judgment of the information center based on information technology and marketing trends, but most of them are proposed by each business department for the convenience of their own work, and this is a process of knowledge construction. In the past, knowledge and information were scattered in the minds of individual employees, but now they are displayed in the system and shared.When the system is continuously optimized and continues to grow intelligently, Suning will establish a higher threshold.This threshold means that the benefits of informatization are obvious, but building an effective system like Suning cannot be achieved overnight, and even in the process of system development, divergences may occur due to differences in concepts. Perceive, perceive the world like God.The information platform allows Suning headquarters to "connect the world with one click", realizing the perception of almost everything in the enterprise. ——From data to information to decision-making, Suning turned the originally "dead" data into active information, and saw business opportunities and the basis for strategizing from behind the information. After years of development, Suning has accumulated a massive and huge database.For retail enterprises, such a database is a valuable asset.If used properly, it can improve and support operations well.However, database marketing has been shouted as a slogan by the domestic business community for many years, but the ability to grasp, mine, and comprehensively analyze data has not been greatly improved.Without effective analysis tools, it is tantamount to facing a big gold mine but not knowing how to start. Suning pays more and more attention to the mining of databases. Through the use of business information accumulated in the course of many years of operation, Suning has built a path from data to information to decision-making, and has carried out various applications in the enterprise to build its own BI (Business Intelligence, business intelligence) system. Suning believes that whether it is the internal performance management of the enterprise, or the deep mining of customers, the realization of membership marketing, and even the marketing management of the whole life cycle, behind it is actually a process of data mining.If the data is not mined according to certain rules, the data will always be "dead" and will not become useful information for the enterprise, let alone support decision-making. A BI system consists of three different layers.The basic one is BW (Business Warehouse, Data Warehouse), whose role is to extract the scattered data in the main system and perform some basic integration.These integrations include comparison, analysis, quarter-on-quarter, year-over-year, and more.In BW, it is mostly a summary of some basic analysis models. Afterwards, the BW data will be displayed through the BI system.At this stage, the system will split the collected data into new dimensions, analyze the extracted data, and make reports.Through these reports, we can see some information, for example, what is the highest-selling product in Nanjing, what is its sales trend within a year, what happened in the previous year, and how the entire market performed.When there is a clear concept, data can play a role in helping decision-making. By analyzing the data selected from the data warehouse in multiple dimensions, it is possible to obtain various information to help enterprises conduct operations, decision-making, and even performance appraisal.For example, if an enterprise wants to know whether a supplier is a high-quality supplier when purchasing, it can analyze it through the dimensions of purchase, order fulfillment rate, and delivery timeliness.In terms of sales, you can conduct sales analysis of product lines, sales analysis of sales regions, regional brand analysis, category analysis, regional product line analysis, and so on.The dimensions of analysis are easy to find. The goals of collecting and mining data are different, and the dimensions established are also different.If products and customers are used as dimensions, the goal is database marketing and precision marketing; while for internal management, indicators are established for different positions, departments, and people, and analyzed and quantified through the balanced scorecard, the goal is performance manage. Beginning in 2010, Suning will enter the stage of in-depth customer mining.Today, Suning already has 30 million members. After five years of implementation of the all-member system, the data is more universal and worth exploring.If there is no such a process of accumulating customers, there are not so many customers and customer behaviors recorded in the system, even if the data mining analysis is carried out, the results will be one-sided. Suning's data mining targets include store customers and B2C customers.Moreover, the mining of B2C customers may be more detailed.Because the result seen in the store is only whether the customer bought or not, but in the B2C system, we can see more about what the customer clicked on, what he bought in the end, which page he stayed on for a long time, etc. There will be more to dig. On this basis, Suning can conduct precise marketing.The current marketing is broadcast marketing, which is similar to the preaching model, such as making a big advertisement once a week.To seize the widest range of consumer groups, in fact, more of them are mass consumer groups, with low prices, promotions, and many store contacts. These advantages will still exist in the next stage, but Suning can also use some resources to target them. analysis for more precise marketing. "For example, during the air-conditioning season, we will have different plans for what kind of customer groups we are looking for, what kind of advertisements we do, what to do during the mobile phone season, what to do before students start school, and what to do after the holidays," Ren Jun said. Behind the massive amount of information is a wider operating space and marketing techniques, and Suning will have a deeper understanding of customers. In fact, in 2009, Suning had already started trying precision marketing based on the database.By extracting some high-end customers on the basis of membership cards and upgrading them to SVIP members through model analysis, Suning will regularly recommend products he may need to him and provide him with some other value-added services.There are many similar attempts. On the basis of a rich customer database, Suning can do many things and innovate many methods in operation. On the basis of the database, Suning is still imagining the life cycle management of consumers, thinking ahead of consumers, planning in advance, guiding and adapting to consumers' needs, improving performance and improving services. For example, a customer who buys a new house divides his home appliance consumption into three stages: the first stage may be to buy air conditioners, range hoods, and stoves, which are home appliances that match the decoration; the second stage may be to buy TVs, refrigerators, Washing machine; the third stage may be to buy some things that need to be added after moving in, such as small appliances. In this way, the possible information behind it can be analyzed based on the consumption data.If a customer buys an air conditioner, range hood, and stove all at once, and his address is still a newly opened real estate, the system will analyze that he may have to buy a washing machine, refrigerator, and color TV in three months.On the basis of such conclusions, Suning can make a decision on whether to carry out targeted marketing on it, so as to actively recommend small household appliances and digital products to it. From passive to active, the management of the whole life cycle envisaged by Suning is rich and colorful.For consumers, this is a deeper care.Even, this time span can be longer. For example, Suning envisages that, starting from teenagers, customers bought mobile phones and left customer information. Will they plan to move to a new house after five years? Will they plan to get married after six years? He is going to have a baby, and later, will his child go to school... Suning can carry out targeted marketing and proactive sales services.This idea is a very important marketing direction for Suning in the future, that is, intelligent analysis from the perspective of customers. ——Suning clearly realizes that what the system provides is only tool value, and wisdom must not be created by the system, but by people, and it is a reflection of people's management thinking.But the system provides the possibility to make this kind of management thinking more intelligent, making it faster and faster. Intelligent management includes database, which will eventually involve the application and analysis of database. Take logistics distribution as an example.In Nanjing, if 5,000 units of goods need to be delivered a day, the order will be divided into the system according to the regional standards. After the area is determined, it will be decided which goods can be loaded on a vehicle.Because some program standards have been built into the system in advance, such as the length, width and height of the order goods, the loading rate of the vehicle, the height limit of the vehicle, etc., and whether to send the farthest one first and then send it back, or send it all the way first Come back empty, rules like that. Through the above-mentioned relevant rules in advance, and continuous research and optimization, it only takes 3 seconds to determine the loading link in the distribution.And this data used to be 3 to 4 hours.That is to say, the dispatching time has been saved from hours to seconds.Moreover, after a year-on-year test, Suning found a more reasonable delivery route.In the past, 5,000 units of goods may need to travel 2,000 kilometers to be delivered after being dispatched. Now, after system calculations, it can basically save 30% of the mileage on average.Integrating Suning's relevant rules on the basis of the system has brought about savings in personnel, distance, cost, etc., and the efficiency has also been greatly improved. Intelligent optimization is also reflected in performance management.Every week, the general managers of Suning's branches will hold a regular business meeting.On the system, you can clearly see the sales growth of different stores and different products in the previous week, as well as the input of resources such as gross profit and promotional advertisements.Through the analysis of these data, it is possible to predict the business status of the next week or the next month, and carry out pre-regulation accordingly, so as to control possible future business risks and prevent problems before they happen. In the system, performance appraisal has also become easier, and more importantly, it has become scientific and standardized.For example, in the process of assessing the bosses of Suning's various branches, in the past, there may have been a certain or two indicators, which resulted in incorrect orientation or even an imbalance.However, in performance management, by defining multiple indicators, such as inventory turnover, failure rate, gross profit, etc., and then framing them with each other, the operating ability and performance of the general manager of the branch can be clearly defined. They gain a clearer understanding of business conditions, ultimately improving their work and making the right decisions. For example, a branch company may have high sales, but it uses a lot of resources to obtain it, resulting in lower gross profit.In this case, if you only look at one indicator, his sales must have been completed.However, if the gross profit margin is not satisfactory, the monthly assessment still cannot pass the comprehensive score.In this way, the general manager of the branch will analyze the reasons for the increase in sales and the decrease in gross profit. When he knows that too many resources have been used, he will adjust the direction in the next month's operation.For another example, it is also possible that the sales of a branch company have increased, but there are many unsalable goods. It may be that there is a problem in stocking, which can also be corrected quickly in the next month. In short, through a series of related indicators, the system can clearly tell the enterprise what problems have occurred in the operation and what adjustments need to be made. The above list is only a part of Suning's wisdom and intelligence.In fact, when you have an information system and a complete and huge amount of data, the specific operation is just a matter of preference.Select the data source, and then superimpose the model, you can draw information and conclusions to help thinking and decision-making. Here we can clearly see that there are two aspects of wisdom: one is Suning’s unique rules formulated through analysis and research, and Suning puts them in the computer’s analysis system; the other is the computer system itself. , it represents the wisdom of computer system researchers, the wisdom of tools, but because it has become a general commodity, anyone can buy it. Only the combination of these two aspects of wisdom can become a real business intelligence that can be used.Moreover, Suning's wisdom plays a central role in it.Suning first laid the foundation for intelligence through informatization, and then integrated its own business intelligence into the system to improve its ability to analyze and develop strategies, businesses, and products in an all-round way through informatization. Suning has built its own business intelligence on the basis of established information architecture and data integrity, and has distributed it to all aspects of business operations. In the future, Suning will become more intelligent.However, Suning clearly understands that what the system provides is only tool value, and wisdom must not be created by the system, but by people, and it is a reflection of people's management ideas.But the system provides the possibility to make this kind of management thinking more intelligent, making it faster and faster. Relying on the system, Suning has become clear-eyed and clear-eyed.