Kingdee

Lianyungang: intensive and efficient, sharing and win-win

 

Customer Overview

 

 Lianyungang Port Group Co., Ltd. (abbreviation: "Lianyungang Port", stock code 601008) is the largest seaport in Jiangsu Province and one of the three main port areas among 25 major ports along China's coast, 12 regional main hub ports and the Yangtze River Delta port group. The main business of Lianyungang Port Group is divided into five major sectors, namely: terminal loading and unloading, modern logistics, port construction, port industry, and comprehensive services. The port throughput has maintained an average growth of 17% for many years, ranking first among Jiangsu ports, ninth among mainland ports, and 23rd among ports in the world for containers.

 

After decades of development, Lianyungang Port Group is currently facing a multi-level, multi-regional, multi-format, multi-mergers and acquisitions situation. How to achieve group-wide management integration and achieve digital transformation has become one of the urgent tasks. The group leaders also put forward specific goals and requirements for digital transformation and financial establishment at the group party group working meeting: abiding by the creed of “one company”, rapid market entry and response, and cost reduction.

 

With the intensification of business operation competition in the industry and the transformation of corporate management models, the original financial management mechanism of Lianyungang Port Group is facing considerable challenges in terms of financial systems, financial evaluation, risk and internal control, and value management. Through financial sharing The service model can ensure the balanced use of various resources and make the financial management operation of the entire group more efficient.

 

Business challenges

 

When it opened, Lianyungang Port was only a wooden trestle terminal in Laoyao Fishing Village. By June 1937, it already had a coal terminal and a general cargo terminal, which could berth six thousand-ton ships at the same time. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, due to years of disrepair and serious siltation in the port, the throughput of the pier once experienced a "cliff-like" decline, and by the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China, it was on the verge of being a "dead port". After the founding of New China, Lianyungang Port quickly resumed production, with an average annual increase of 11.37 million tons in the past 20 years. Nowadays, the comprehensive functions of Lianyungang Port are becoming increasingly perfect, with a channel level of 300,000 tons, which can handle and unload the world's largest bulk carriers and container ships of more than 14,000 TEU.

 

“Our deep-water channels, large-scale ships, professional terminals, equipment modernization, and port and shipping informatization are already in the mainstream of the world,” said Zhu Xiangyang, president of Lianyungang Port Holding Group. With the proposal of the “One Belt, One Road” cooperation initiative, Lianyungang Port has become a strategic fulcrum with its advantage as a land-sea intersection hub and has begun to move towards a broader world. Zhu Xiangyang concluded, “Externally, our development trend is good, and the group continues to In terms of growth and development, internally, we still have some hidden dangers.”

 

At present, Lianyungang Port Group is in a stage of rapid growth. While its original terminal business, logistics business, and port construction business continue to develop, in order to maintain competitive advantages, it is also constantly adjusting its business strategy, organizational structure, and management model to maximize the integration of the group. resources, reduce costs and improve efficiency. As the number of branch companies continues to increase, the internal business of each branch company has become more and more frequent. The revenue, cost, and expense recognition standards of each member unit are not unified, the financial system is not unified, and the problems of financial personnel have gradually become prominent. While increasing the span of financial management of group companies, it also greatly increases the difficulty. How to make good use of digitalization to adapt to the rapid development of enterprises has become a difficult problem facing Lianyungang Port.

 

Rapid expansion and difficult management and control:

 

There are as many as 150 member units in the group, about 10 of which are new companies established or integrated in the past two years. The financial management system is imperfect and the level of financial personnel is not high. It is very difficult to manage the group. Due to the lack of effective in-process control methods, business departments also experienced problems such as low participation in budget management, inaccurate data, and formality, which led to higher risks in the management of funds and expenses of the entire group.

“Many financial staff reported that as the number of subsidiaries of the group continues to increase, their workload has increased several times compared with before. The main problems arise from complex processes, untimely information transmission, and a large amount of duplication of work,” said the human resources director of the port group. Said that the demand for group financial personnel has always been very large, but there are often situations where people cannot be retained, which is not conducive to the cultivation of senior financial talents in the group. In addition, in terms of financial statements, accounting standards are inconsistent, and business parties among internal member units have different calibers, resulting in distortion of report data.

 

Information islands and information fragmentation:

 

Member units within the group have formed self-built business systems represented by terminal companies. There are as many as 3 to 4 types of terminal business systems alone. This has led to the fragmentation of information management and the lack of integrity and systematization. The functional modules of each system have little correlation with each other, and the phenomenon of information islands is serious. From the business front-end to the financial back-end, there are great problems in using the system.

 

Scarcity of talents restricts development:

 

The Port Group has a long history of development, inherited by the older generation and succeeded by the new generation. The Port Group has witnessed the growth and development of too many employees here, and they have formed deep friendships with each other. “We are all brothers and sisters inside and outside of work,” said an Old Port Group employee. But with the development of the group, Zhu Xiangyang found that there were fewer smiles on everyone's faces, and "everything was in a hurry" employees complained more than before, especially the financial department. As the business volume of financial personnel in member units increases, the workload has also greatly increased. Repeated and basic accounting work has become the main content of the work of these financial personnel. The main manifestation is that some mid-to-high-end talents have begun to lose, and there have been gaps in the business skills training of junior employees, making it more difficult to train financial personnel of member units and restricting the development of the entire group.

 

Solution

 

The construction goal of this project is to create an integrated business and financial management platform covering all companies in the group through the construction of the group's financial sharing center, and to achieve standardization, processization, intelligence, and transparency of business and financial management by introducing information technology. In order to achieve the goal of supporting the development of the group, improving management efficiency, preventing management risks, and reducing personnel costs. On the premise of fully embodying rationality, compliance, standardization and centralization, and combining the characteristics of Lianyungang Port Group, the Kingdee system will create a system from budgeting to reimbursement to accounting, from business front-end to financial group management and control, and then to Integrated group management and control system for centralized payment of financial companies.

 

Facing the digital age, technology is increasingly integrated with business and financial work. Zhu Xiangyang, President of Lianyungang Port Group, said, “Lianyungang Port will seize this major opportunity and give full play to the advantages of the free trade zone to cooperate with Kingdee. Join hands and strive to build the port area into a pioneer area for open economic development, a demonstration area for innovative development of the real economy and industrial transformation and upgrading, and write a new chapter for the port."

 

 

Tu Lianyungang Port Group Financial Sharing Application Blueprint

 

Group control and unified coding 

 

"We established a financial sharing center to allow financial personnel to work together, break down communication barriers, and centralize subsidiary processes to solve the problem of uneven busyness and duplication of work among financial personnel," said Liu Li, director of the Sharing Center of Lianyungang Port Group. said. In the process of informatization construction, Kingdee fully took into account the characteristics of the multi-business systems of each branch company of the port group, and implemented strong management and control at the group level, such as: basic data such as organizational structure, personnel, merchants, materials, and fee collection items. unified encoding. If unified coding is not possible, the coding will be compared through the data center to ensure smooth business and financial docking.

 

Business and financial integration, information sharing

 

 

Adhering to the guidelines of industry-finance integration and information sharing, Kingdee assisted Lianyungang Port Group in integrating the business systems of each branch company with the financial sharing system and the financial company payment system through the data middle platform (iPort). Realize that business personnel cost, income and other accounting business systems are initiated. After being passed to the financial system, the process is approved, vouchers and payment orders are automatically generated, and payment instructions are sent to the payment system of the financial company. After the financial company completes the payment, it will feedback the relevant information to the financial system, and then the financial system will feed it back to the business system to achieve the purpose of establishing a closed loop of information flow such as reimbursement, approval, payment, and write-off.

 

"The Financial Sharing Center allows financial personnel to work together, breaks down communication barriers, centralizes subsidiary processes, and solves the problem of uneven busy schedules and repetitive work among financial personnel," said Liu Li, director of the Group Sharing Center. "In the past, financial staff's desks were always filled with endless financial statements, tireless phone rings, and the office lights were brightly lit at night. Now with the help of the EAS fund management system, the workload of financial staff has been greatly reduced. It is greatly reduced and the energy can be focused on other more important things," said Liu Li, director of the group's sharing center.

 

Budget first, business standards

 

After the system is launched, due to the strong budget management and control model, each branch company is required to fill in reports on a monthly basis, including a group budget set including income and expenditure budget tables and capital plans. Business execution is directly linked to the budget, and the original post-event analysis has been transformed into ex-ante control. This has changed the formality of the group's budget management by each branch company, and greatly improved the accuracy of the group's budget data. The financial budget approval staff said, "Now the group's financial estimation is no longer a problem. With the help of the system, the budget flow of the project can be viewed in real time, and problems can be adjusted in a timely manner."

 

On the other hand, the entire group has unified the recording process, review process and accounting standards for various accounting matters. From the unification of systems to the unification of accounts, the group's financial management has truly been unified. Liu Li, director of the group's sharing center, said: "The sharing center has achieved multiple standardized unifications during the construction process. These unification processes have promoted the standardization of the company's management system and information data, created a standardized corporate management environment, and accelerated the group's standardization process. , which allows the group to better conduct business management and control financial risks during operation."

 

Technological innovation and efficient operation

 

This system introduces an imaging system. When the billing receipt is approved at each link, the approver can access the imaging data at any time to provide a basis for the review. Developed and deployed a mobile accounting and approval system, and integrated it with the existing OA system of the port group. On the one hand, business personnel can apply for expenses, business trips and other matters according to business needs anytime and anywhere through mobile phones, which improves timeliness and convenience. On the other hand, real reviewers can conduct timely reviews through mobile phones, and the mobile terminal also provides image viewing functions.

 

Regarding the application of the new system, Liu Li added: "The more significant change is the evaluation of our financial work by other departments. In the past, we often heard employees complain that our processes were not processed in a timely manner and the expense approval was slow. In fact, we were also very embarrassed at the time. , after all, each paper document is filled in manually, and it is very inconvenient to check the data. After the review is completed, it is signed by the leader, and in the end, the actual funds are allocated. Each link takes a long time to process." Now, through analysis of each unit Business scenarios, formulating voucher conversion rules covering the entire business, can achieve 100% automatic generation of vouchers, greatly improving accounting efficiency, and changing the past situation where financial personnel worked overtime at the end of the month. With the help of the Kingdee expense reimbursement system, the expense reimbursement process has been reduced from the previous 2 weeks to 3 days, and the online review and approval time for contracts and other documents has been reduced to 2 days. Liu Li said: "Now, our work has been recognized by our colleagues. Everyone's satisfaction and recognition of us is the motivation for our work."

 

Project value

 

Support management decisions and support group development

 

After the establishment of the Port Group's Financial Sharing Center, on the one hand, through the large-scale, institutionalized, and process-based processing of basic business, the energy of financial personnel can be released from a large number of repeated basic accounting businesses. The transformation of the functions of the company's financial department from back-end processing and post-event recording to multi-level strategic support functions, and the transformation from value protection to value creation, can provide the company with powerful analysis and decision-making services, as well as rich decision-making information, and promote the company's core business development and enhance the company's comprehensive competitiveness.

 

On the other hand, the company's management accounting can be integrated with the financial shared service center and make full use of the historical data provided by the financial shared service center for support when making decisions, thereby building a decision support system. The Financial Shared Service Center will become the company's financial data center, promoting the company's effective use of management accounting and enhancing the company's value creation capabilities. Promote the development of core businesses, thereby supporting the development strategy of the group company.

 

In addition, when the group acquires new companies or establishes new subsidiaries, since such a standardized and institutionalized financial business management platform has been established, the group can quickly provide financial management support to these newly added companies, so that these companies can Quickly entering into operations greatly improves efficiency and quality.

 

Reduce operating costs and improve operating efficiency

 

By establishing a financial shared service center, the Port Group has greatly improved its processing capabilities for business documents and vouchers. The Financial Shared Service Center currently has 40 direct business personnel. The average number of documents and vouchers processed daily exceeds 1,500. More than 40 documents and vouchers are processed per person per day. Before the establishment of the Financial Shared Service Center, the workload saturation of financial personnel in each unit varied, and some even had a very small workload, but they still had to provide services for each company position and personnel.

 

After concentrating resources and business in the shared service center, one person can handle the business of the same position in several companies, thus achieving a significant reduction in financial personnel while maintaining the same business volume. The number of personnel directly engaged in the preparation of financial vouchers across the group has dropped from more than 200 to less than 50 at present. After the implementation of shared services, business operations have been refined and standardized, and some operations have been greatly simplified, which has reduced the skills and other requirements for certain positions.

 

By standardizing and process-based management of business processes and rules, redundant coordination and repetitive, non-value-added operations are eliminated. Under the effect of economies of scale, work efficiency is greatly improved and management costs are indirectly reduced. The daily operating activities of each business unit can also be centrally supervised in the business process, allowing the group to quickly discover problems in business operations, which to a large extent reduces the supervision costs of previous decentralized accounting.

 

Improve the level of financial management

 

The establishment of the Port Group's Financial Sharing Center accelerates the standardization process of the group's internal management. The Financial Shared Service Center integrates activities and resources that were originally scattered in different business units to standardize the group's business processes and unify and integrate various management data. It provides a platform and lays the foundation for the unification of group management and control.

 

Before the implementation of shared services, the business that was originally dispersed and handled by each organization should be standardized, including the unification of business processes, management systems, and data standards. In the process of process integration and unification, the operating details of each position should be synchronously clarified. , ensuring that the business operations are all standard actions in the hands of any person, and the standardization of operations improves work efficiency. The group's management experience in process management, business standardization and other aspects can also provide reference for other areas of the group and also provide reference for the standardized management of other sharing centers.

 

Digital transformation value

 

Digital drive, management improvement

 

Establish globally shared master data on organizations, personnel, customers, suppliers, bank accounts, income types, expense types, goods, etc., to streamline management processes, improve data availability, standardize group financial management and control, improve financial risk prevention, and drive enterprises Strategic Decision.

 

Connect employees and activate internal innovation

 

Achieve unified business and financial integration of business approval, revenue recognition, payment budget control, financial accounting, etc., ensure the consistency and efficiency of financial and business information, promote the professional division of labor of financial personnel, release potential, enhance financial value creation, and achieve Financial Transformation. With the help of the Kingdee expense reimbursement system, the expense reimbursement process has been reduced from the previous 2 weeks to 3 days, and the online review and approval time for contracts and other documents has been reduced to 2 days.

 

Digital operations enable the entire group to reduce costs and increase efficiency

 

Through centralized payment and reasonable scheduling, the efficiency of the group's use of funds has been improved and the cost of capital occupation has been reduced. Through automation and process drive, the number of financial accounting personnel has been reduced from more than 200 to 41, reducing manpower consumption and labor costs. The centralized accounting and professional division of labor model effectively reduces the cost of processing financial personnel vouchers by 30%. Real-time financial data sharing is realized between branches, and the group's fund allocation is intelligent, improving the group's fund utilization rate.

 

Empower smart ports and set industry benchmarks 

 

Through the construction of smart management informatization, we will lay a solid foundation, promote newly established companies to quickly enter the group management system, reduce the enterprise running-in period, and empower the overall strategic goal of smart ports in the future. As the largest seaport in Jiangsu Province and the largest state-owned enterprise in Lianyungang City, Set a new benchmark for the transformation of state-owned enterprises and the digital development of the port industry.