Informatization is endless

Chinese enterprises have been applying information management for nearly 30 years. Shenyang Machine Tool Factory, which introduced the MRP system in 1981, was the earliest attempt at information management in China. After 30 years of spreading, what kind of situation will the sparks of fire in the Chinese market become? What is the awareness and level of Chinese enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, in the application of informatization? With such a question, "CEConline" magazine and website conducted a survey for corporate readers and users in July 2010, and received 1,365 responses in 9 days.

Through these replies, we can see that informatization management has become the strategic choice of most enterprises, and improving operation and management capabilities is the main appeal point and source of their application of informatization. At the same time, these data also Tell us that the application of informatization is by no means a staged behavior, but a continuous optimization process of "there is no best but better". Moreover, with the continuous improvement of IT technology and third-party consulting service capabilities, the process of informatization application and its continuous optimization has become easier and easier.

60% of enterprises' informatization management has risen to a strategic level

Informatization application used to be the behavior of each business department of the enterprise. However, this survey shows that the majority of enterprises have recognized the strategic significance of informatization management. , 24.6% of enterprises have already deployed and implemented informatization strategies, 11.4% of enterprises are preparing to implement them, another 25.5% of enterprises are planning to formulate relevant strategies, and only 38.5% of enterprises have no such plans (see Table 1)

Table 1: Has the company deployed an IT strategy?

Improving operational management capabilities has become the source of informatization for more than half of the enterprises

In the era of weak awareness of informatization, informatization in enterprises generally lacks internal motivation. In this survey, however, 57.7% of enterprises are motivated by their own management needs (see Table 2). Table 3 tells us that business management is facing challenges, unreasonable business processes and the resulting low work efficiency have become the most challenging, accounting for 25.3%, and it is impossible to quickly develop differentiated products to respond to the market ( 22.1%) and the inability to capture potential customers accurately and quickly (21.2%) are the other two major challenges. The reason why it is difficult to effectively develop differentiated innovative products is due to the long product development cycle, the lack of a complete innovation system, and the disconnect between product development and the market, and other issues related to the operation management process (see bar chart 4). Obviously, if these problems are not solved, the long-term viability of the enterprise will hardly be guaranteed. Therefore, these survival pain points constitute the driving force for enterprises to apply informatization to improve their operation and management capabilities.

Table 2: Incentives for enterprises to carry out informatization construction? (multiple choices)

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Informatization is a process of continuous optimization

A few years ago, the demands of enterprises for informatization were not clear. However, this survey presents the specific requirements of enterprises. Figure 5 shows that strengthening centralized management and control is the largest demand for informatization by enterprises, accounting for 38.9%, followed by optimizing business processes, accounting for 36.6%. In addition, improving work efficiency (33.2%), rationally allocating resources (28.8%), and quickly adapting to the market (28.5%) are also prominent needs of enterprises for informatization.

Demand dictates application. As can be seen from Figure 6, the office automation system, which can optimize processes and improve efficiency, has been used by 42.1% of enterprises, and the financial system used to strengthen centralized control has also been used by 42% of enterprises.

Not only that, from Figure 7, we can also see that product inventory management (16%), procurement management (15.6%) and financial management (13.3%) are still the focus of enterprise applications in the next step. This shows that companies are already optimizing their informatization in some areas.

Table 5: What are the company's expectations for core informatization projects? (multiple choices)

Help enterprises quickly discover market opportunities

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Table 6: The information projects that the company has implemented so far include? (multiple choices)

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Table 7: Does the company plan to implement the following informatization projects in the next year?

Office Automation

The maturity of technology and services makes the cost of informatization application lower and lower

With the development of informatization application, the capabilities of IT technology and third-party service providers are also improved. Therefore, unlike those who tried to develop and implement projects by themselves in the early years, enterprises now rely more on outsourcing for the implementation of informatization. In our survey, 34.9% of enterprises purchased mature software products, while 22.1% of enterprises outsourced projects to third-party service providers. See Table 8. The 86.5% satisfaction rate in Table 9 shows the maturity of third-party resources.

Table 8: How do enterprises implement core informatization projects?

Table 9: How satisfied are the enterprises with the implemented informatization projects?

After 30 years of informatization, it is becoming an effective means for Chinese enterprises to improve their management. As Chinese companies continue to grow and develop, their informatization strategies are also adjusting accordingly. This adjustment will be doomed to never-ending.