The Role of Information System Strategic Planning from the perspective of the growth of BaO supply Storage and Transportation

The Role of Information System Strategic Planning from the perspective of the growth of BaO supply Storage and Transportation

 

Bao supply storage and transportation is a logistics company in Guangzhou, its predecessor is a railway freight transport station in Guangzhou. When Liu Wu contracted the transshipment station in 1992, the scale of the transshipment station was small. However, due to Liu Wu's flexible operation, many contracted freight tasks can be completed in a timely manner, the transportation is good, and the warehouse is clean. At that time, he was the only service company in Guangzhou that could provide 24-hour freight warehousing. At that time, the enterprises separated warehousing and transportation, and the service quality was poor. The warehouses were dirty and messy. In this stark contrast, Liu Wu's cargo shipping was well received by the customers. As a result, Procter & Gamble, which entered the Chinese market in 1994, will also deliver its business to the small railway cargo transshipment station.

Since P & G became a customer of Liu Wu, the business environment of the railway freight transport station has changed dramatically. In the past few years, Guangzhou Bao Storage and Transportation Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Bao for", the same below). In summary, the changes in the business environment are manifested in three aspects:

(1) Increase in total business volume

The first business that P & G handed over to Bao was to ship four containers to Shanghai. In order to do a good job in this business, Liu Wu operates very carefully. After the containers are delivered to the train, Ma took the plane to Shanghai. On the one hand, he was able to inspect all links and get the goods, so as to ensure that there will be fewer problems in the future shipment, meet customer requirements. As a result, P & G was very satisfied with the first batch of businesses, so it began to provide more services to Bao, and even handed over all its railway freight businesses to Bao for storage and transportation.

However, although the first business was very effective, but because of the high cost, Bao supply did not make much money. Without a doubt, if we continue to do so, the customer will naturally welcome it, but it is not allowed in terms of economic benefits. In fact, from 1994 to 1995, Bao supplies nearly 0.3 million square meters of warehouses, and the daily transportation volume is very large, people in the Operations Department need to make great efforts every day to understand whether these goods must be delivered within the specified time, the time when the goods arrive at the destination, whether the damage rate is within the control scope, whether the goods are sent out in time, and what is the receipt status. The Operations Department registers a large notebook with a list, and calls the phone to ask if it has not received it. If it has been damaged, send a fax to investigate it. The degree of annoyance is hard to accomplish by humans alone. Therefore, if the business volume increases rapidly, it is an urgent problem to be resolved in the face of treasure.

(2) set up a branch

The Branch was established in 1994 due to rapid business development and is directly related to P & G. Despite the low price of railway transportation, railway transportation also has many disadvantages, such as many links and unreliable time, and some brutal operations during loading/unloading and transportation, P & G has repeatedly said: traditional Storage and Transportation companies make customers feel very troublesome. After the goods arrive, another supplier should be commissioned to pick up the goods with their own personnel, in addition, when there are problems such as short, broken, or not timely delivery of goods, it will often lead to a serious situation of mutual wrangling, baozhi immediately set up four subsidiaries in Chengdu, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, all of which operate in the same way and standard. After the goods carried by baodi arrive at the destination, it will still be received and unloaded by the specially trained baodi people. Procter & Gamble provides the "one-stop" service. In theory, information communication and coordination between the company and its subsidiaries should be convenient.

However, after the establishment of the branch, it also faced a problem-communication problem, that is, the communication between the company and the four branches was frequent. In order to ensure normal business development and low cost?

Bao supply's practice at the time was: in 1996, an internal network was established based on DOS platform connected by telephone lines, so that some information could be transmitted between companies nationwide. However, in actual operation, this communication method is efficient and cost-effective. For example, the company often fails to contact Chengdu computer due to a tight telephone line. In addition, the operation is complicated, the stability is poor, the cost of long-distance telephone is high, and there are "interfaces. Therefore, this poses a very serious problem to the future development of baozhi.

(3) Take into account the customer's business process

Since Procter & Gamble became a customer of bao, the company has continuously put forward many new requirements for bao, such as the aforementioned requirements for safe, accurate, timely, and reliable storage and transportation services. P & G not only requires Bao to meet their business requirements, but also pays close attention to the information generated in all links. For example, when the goods are shipped, the train used, the expected arrival time, the condition of the goods, and whether the goods have been accepted.

In view of the above requirements of P & G, Bao supply strives to design business processes and development directions according to P & G's requirements. However, the Bao supply principle is based on a low level of business volume. As the business volume surges, many problems are facing immediately. If only one business is required by P & G, such as time, number of vehicles, arrival time, damage, and acceptance, Liu Wu can follow up and solve the problem in Shanghai, Chengdu, Beijing, and other places; however, if hundreds of businesses are being tracked at the same time, each business is obviously unable to keep up with each other. In about a year of cooperation between P & G and BaO for the company, P & G has always been quite satisfied, but with the increase in business volume, the supply of Bao has obviously declined. For example, if the arrival time is inaccurate, the damage rate increases, and the freight information cannot be timely reported, it even further affected the development of enterprises, so P & G terminated the contract with Bao supply's general agent of railway transportation. All of the above situations pose challenges to the Business Process of baozhi.

How will Bao supply solve the above problems? If we analyze the above problems from the perspective of the information system, we will find that the problem facing Bao is information management, that is, how to solve the information bottleneck problem. Because the original business volume is small, the transaction processing process can be complicated due to the large business volume, if you still use a manual method (using a notebook to record and call to ask ), even if it takes a lot of effort, it is difficult to accurately collect information such as the shipping time, vehicle number, estimated arrival time, actual arrival time, receipt time, and receipt status. Although baozhi has set up branches in Chengdu, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou to ensure that business processes are operated according to standards, this actually adds an intermediate level for information management, and then faced with communication problems between the headquarters. In addition, modern customers (such as P & G) have higher requirements than traditional customers. They require not only safe, accurate, and reliable storage and transportation services, but also timely and accurate freight information. In this case, the current information bottleneck of baozhi, namely, the management level and the status quo of Information Systems (IS), cannot monitor all storage and transportation links in real time, but also cannot meet the needs of customers.

While Bao supply is in a situation where it is unable to monitor all storage and transportation links in real time and the competition is fierce, Bao supply is unable to cope with problems such as "information bottleneck, internet applications have been recognized by people with lofty ideals in China. enterprise information systems and Internet Tang Yousan play a key role in solving this "information bottleneck" problem. If we analyze the current internal business environment, internal IS status quo, and external information system environment, it IS not difficult to find the following business and information system.

It should be said that the information system strategic plan of BaO for the time was not completely smooth. As the first operator of an enterprise, Liu Wu has already resolved the information bottleneck through the Internet. That is, he has published cargo information through the website, and all branches and customers across the country can have information. It can even be said that there is no network, and it is difficult for the treasure to develop further. However, the actual situation at the time was that some PCs had a DOS-based network, and the funds were limited. After several discussions with Liu Wu, Tang Yousan agreed that, in order to unify the enterprise's information system planning with the enterprise's goals, he must keep up with the international trend, it is necessary to establish a high level of enterprise information system Internet Network Information System. Considering the current situation and business status of the information system provided by baozhi, the hardware can save the cost, 486 of the resources are used first, compatible with machines, buy a new server, and then upgrade the original 486 server, other cabling activities are also done by internal staff of the company, with a total investment of about 0.1 million yuan and a software investment of 0.1 million yuan, which is handed over to Beijing's intime knight company. Through the intime news query and interview, we sorted out the basic business process of the supply.

"The customer sends a list, that is, a checklist, to fill in the goods variety, destination, quantity/weight, and so on, based on this table, contact the customer for the next day's transportation by train or car. If the number of items in this list is small, we will immediately distribute the goods from other customers for shipment. The next day, a car will be pulled to the railway station for installation, and some packaging should be added as required (for example, a wooden frame should be added for fear of water leakage or bumps ). After loading the car cover, the door should be locked, the seal should be closed, and the number of the seal should be written down to inform the receiver. After arriving at the destination, the Branch Office should go to the railway station to receive the information, pull the goods to the store for the local warehouse to check whether there is any loss, and then deliver the goods to the customer for acceptance. After the customer signs the order, the customer immediately delivers the order back to the branch of the goods originating from the company. The branch is reported to the company, and the company will pay for the goods.

Of course, in actual operation, every cargo is different. Any change in any part of this standard process will be a process. For example, there is a batch number problem in the food warehousing process, considering that the shelf life should be "first-in-first-out", and for example, some goods must be separated during transportation and cannot be transported in the same batch.

Based on the analysis of the above-mentioned business process, baozhi has established an IS with an Internet network architecture, which breaks down the transportation system of goods into sites and issues for operations, the entire system consists of the order receiving module, shipping module, transportation process control module, transportation system management module, and query module. The system uses centralized data storage. Each branch has a limited validity period for data retention. The company's information center is responsible for data maintenance.

Based on the analysis of the above-mentioned business process, baozhi has established an IS with an Internet network architecture, which breaks down the transportation system of goods into sites and issues for operations, the entire system consists of the order receiving module, shipping module, transportation process control module, transportation system management module, and query module. The system uses centralized data storage. Each branch has a limited validity period for data retention. The company's information center is responsible for data maintenance.

It would be very difficult to evaluate the role and impact of the strategic planning of the Information System of xubao in detail and in detail. However, a brief analysis of the benefits can draw a convincing conclusion.

In terms of cost, although Bao made a lot of cost for early planning and development of information systems, for example, the hardware was very economical, and the investment in software quotations gradually increased, exceeding more than 2 million yuan, the headquarters has a computer and the managers have laptops. From the perspective of enterprise finance, this is the inevitable result of a virtuous circle. This is because the information system application of BaO for storage and transportation has gone through two phases from Internet architecture to report generation. From the perspective of computer processing and management decision-making, the cost investment is proved by the trust of the General Manager in Tang Yousan.

In terms of benefits, strategic planning of information systems has many benefits for enterprises. Benefits include tangible benefits and no-row benefits, which are cost-effective. For example, the cost of building an information system on an Internet/Intranet platform is lower than that of the original telephone and fax systems. Although the first phase of one-time investment (servers, PCs, wiring, etc.) may also be a lot, but the scale effect has an advantage. In addition, from the first four branches to 31 cities, baozhi has branches, and its customers have also been dedicated to providing services for Procter & Gamble. From the traditional perspective, the growth of business volume should involve a large number of personnel to cope with many management transactions. In fact, the information system, Bao for the head office business department, can be fully monitored with only 12 people. This was unimaginable in the past. Liu Wu said: "Without this information system, treasure does not do much at all. Now we have so many operations in the country that we can only rely on this system to monitor and manage them. Have the proposed requirements and standards been met? If the problem is not met, take a look at the computer and you will know what has happened here. You can take remedial measures immediately.

Tangible benefits are not only manifested in cost saving, but sometimes even directly reflected in the implementation of business indicators. For example, it took 15 days to enter Beijing. Now it takes 10 days. In terms of reliability, it would have been good to reach 90%, but now the railway operation has reached 95%, and the highway can even reach more than 99%.

The role and impact of strategic planning for information systems are often invisible. Bao has encountered a lot of resistance when providing new information, mainly for old qualified managers who do not understand computers or Internet computers, which will improve management efficiency, this led to resistance. Through the general manager's explanation of the planning intent and participation in computer knowledge, the quality of all employees in the enterprise is improved, which actually improves the overall quality of the enterprise.

The two benefits can be summarized as follows:

(1) Effectively organize cross-region businesses:

(2) Make full use of resources (including goods and information );

(3) Improve Customer Service level;

(4) Accelerate capital turnover and adopt an advanced one that is on average two days longer than the original settlement system;

(5) Reduces communication costs.

In the above five aspects, the most fundamental thing is to do a good job in customer service. From this perspective, for logistics enterprises, fleet and group are more important. Many famous foreign logistics companies do not have a fleet or a warehouse, but their annual traffic can be used. Many domestic transportation companies with strong carrying capabilities or storage and transportation companies with large spare positions lose the opportunity to cooperate with customers because they do not have a storage Information System, it can only be a cheap tool for logistics companies that have information systems but have no storage and transportation capabilities. Therefore, the establishment and development of customer service-oriented information systems can provide long-term strategic competition for enterprises.