Management stepped into the "cloud" era

The global economic slowdown and the development of technology itself have spawned a new economic environment. In this economic environment, the original extensive growth is difficult to continue, in order to survive, enterprises must do everything possible to reduce costs, improve efficiency, rapid response to the market. For large groups of companies, the group has become more important than ever before, and global economic integration is already a big trend. Then, how can enterprises achieve the supply chain, business operations, such as global synergy and integration of control? The development of new technology has provided us with a novel solution path.

Now there are many new technologies, such as new materials, energy, biotechnology, including the next generation of information technology and so on. I think from it, the next generation of information technology is the focus of cloud computing. Cloud computing makes mobile Internet and IoT possible, and cloud computing is the foundation of mobile applications, the Internet, large data, the heart of a new generation of information technology, and a solution for enterprise's global integration. For the pharmaceutical industry, cloud computing is the final solution to the new health reform. Technological innovation is always accompanied by the change of management, at present we need to pay attention to how to make technological innovation landing. In terms of cloud computing, how to make cloud computing truly an operational, enterprise global integration solution through incremental management changes is something we should be concerned about.

The practice of cloud concept in national pharmacy

The implementation of new technologies such as large data, cloud computing, and Internet of things will not only require the support of theory and technology, but also the need for clear strategies and management and organization for new technologies. The traditional management organization and the new technology are not adapt, the aspect that does not cooperate needs to change. In the use of cloud computing concept for management changes, China Pharmaceutical Group National Pharmacy integration nationwide retail platform is a successful case for reference.

Many managers may have been plagued by problems such as the opening up of branch offices or chain stores, the growing number of businesses and the growing business, but management problems are becoming more and more troubling, and may even suddenly become the last straw in the enterprise. For example, information systems do not keep up, the branch has become an isolated island, which leads to inefficient, management costs increase, enterprises are difficult to quickly respond to the market. "Guo da Pharmacy" has been plagued by such problems.

"National Large Pharmacy" under the Chinese Medicine group, operating the Chinese medicine group's pharmaceutical retail business, around the country has nearly 2000 pharmacies. In the good development momentum, the size of the country's largest pharmacies continue to expand, the chain opened more and more, but also appeared the enterprise management gradually powerless signs. On the one hand, the original information system is unsustainable, can not keep up with the enterprise strategy and market demand. On the other hand, the branches of different regions adopt different information systems, so as to form a number of islands of information, it is difficult for the national headquarters to complete the data service integration and integrated operation management.

In this case, the refinement of enterprise management, the integration of the application is imminent. Based on the concept of cloud computing, the state-wide pharmacy has successfully built a national retail chain platform in recent years. Different from the previous ERP platform, the National pharmacy integrated Platform has "simple, standard front-end, centralized unified strong background service management system" characteristics. This powerful headquarters backstage, provides the management and the service for more than 2000 pharmacies, realizes the integrated operation Management idea. Based on the concept of cloud computing, the adoption of virtualization technology, national pharmacy ERP integrated hardware platform construction only used the traditional way of one-fourth of the cost. Moreover, the simplification of the foreground, concentration, standardize the background structure of the standardization of large pharmacies to achieve rapid expansion of the weapon, the original three months opened a branch, now three weeks can open a family.

The successful application of the integrated retail platform of National pharmacy marks the comprehensive success of the concept of the cloud computing from the planning, control, standard and hardware infrastructure, and the implementation of the management strategy of "integration, transformation, innovation and leapfrogging" of the "integrated, transformational, innovative and spanning".

Evolution from traditional It cloud

I was asked whether the group has been "cloud"? How can our own businesses "cloud"? To answer this question, you first need to understand: what is cloud computing to the enterprise?

What is cloud computing? My definition of cloud computing is "one or two, three, four or five":

The so-called one, refers to the cloud computing is "one" new IT resource delivery and usage patterns, through the network to the demand, dynamic and easy to expand the way to obtain the required resources (hardware, platform, software, services), the network of resources is called "cloud."

The so-called two, refers to the cloud computing from the "two" layer structure. Cloud computing can be divided into two levels of technology and services, which are comprised of cloud computing platform and cloud application services two systems. The former is mainly to achieve the integration of IT resources and dynamically scalable to the application developers, the latter is the resources provided by the cloud based on different requirements of the packaging for a variety of applications to provide to the end user.

The so-called three, refers to the cloud computing provides "three" forms of service. From a service and user experience perspective, cloud computing can be divided into infrastructure services (IaaS), development platforms as services (PaaS), and software applications as services (SaaS), and three service delivery models.

The so-called four, refers to the enterprise to achieve cloud computing has a "four" deployment configuration mode, that is, public cloud, private cloud, mixed cloud, community cloud. Community clouds can also be called industry clouds, that is, industry-centric, the supply chain of all industrial groups around the cloud sharing services, business activities.

The so-called five, refers to cloud computing should have five major features, the virtual resource pool, web-based access, on-demand self-service, fast, flexible, the use of cost can be measured.

From these five aspects above, we can see that cloud computing has strict requirements for enterprise management. The cloud is the pooling of resources to be provided to users as a whole, whether public or private. Therefore, this kind of centralization of resources will inevitably bring about the adjustment of company organization structure and business process, especially for some large enterprises. The most benefit of this is the platform management: to achieve the whole group of business processes unified, the whole group of data information centralized, to achieve business processes, data information, such as high aggregation in the cloud. Accordingly, a lot of management function can move up, reduce the level, improve the efficiency of management.

Therefore, the cloud service inevitably has the influence to the enterprise related organization structure and the work duty, causes the company management to flatten, the coordination. On the one hand, the traditional management style and organizational structure to apply to cloud computing enterprise management environment changes need a process, on the other hand, cloud computing technology is also a mature process of evolution. The internet has evolved over the years to form today's situation, Taobao is not the formation of a day. Therefore, after a long period of preparation and cloud evolution through strategic adjustment and organizational change, the company may enjoy the "cloud beauty" when the environment is ripe.

Back to the above many people asked the author of the question: "is not the cloud of the group?" The author's answer is: "Not now, but we are using the concept of cloud computing planning and continuous practice evolution." Based on the concept of cloud to carry out information construction, the competitiveness of our enterprises continue to improve. ”

Manage the Cloud Roadmap

Enterprises from the traditional it to the cloud, there is a gradual, linked, smooth transition process. Want to "Walk in the Clouds", the author suggested that enterprises should pay attention to several aspects.

First of all, to understand the principles of cloud computing, concepts. Second, we must pay attention to the technology mature landing suppliers. Third, to understand the actual state of their own enterprises, to carry out governance management model, enterprise structure changes. In addition, the enterprise will be the business component, the business component, the formation can deliver some service modules, these modules by the management aspect and the business aspect carries on the evolution. Some enterprises are relatively small, can be completed in a short time. But some enterprises are very large, there is a large data center, there are thousands of servers, hundreds of software systems, such enterprises to start the revolution is a painful process. But it should be seen that cloud computing to the final formation of services provided to enterprises, is a subversive service delivery model, can well help enterprises, for customers, for the staff to do a good service. At the same time, enterprises from the original decentralized operation towards integration and cooperation. Therefore, the cloud governance environment, in fact, is the management environment, so that the original dispersed islands, to integrate, so that enterprises reduce costs, improve efficiency, rapid response to the market, improve competitiveness. In the process of evolution of the cloud, the key is to save the cost and respond to the business quickly, but it is not done overnight.

We can generalize the essence of cloud computing to the word "six", namely: "Wisdom, resources, pattern". For Enterprise CIO, focus on how to use the wisdom of cloud computing, CIO wisdom to integrate the enterprise's IT resources, to form a service model, delivered to the enterprise employees, customers and suppliers to use. To the CEO, we should pay attention to how to integrate the enterprise's resources through the enterprise's wisdom, cloud computing wisdom and CEO's wisdom, based on the cloud computing platform to form a business model, delivery to enterprises and customers, suppliers, to provide them with services.

Taobao didn't get up overnight. 10 years ago, Ma Yun is still nameless, and few people know what Taobao is. But now even a lot of money can not replicate another Taobao. Without Ma's insight into the economic situation, business and industry, no distribution of logistics, but just to wait for the technology to mature, there will be no strong Taobao today. In the same way, new technologies are changing rapidly, and the business model must be accompanied by changes to the cloud, the operation of enterprises, organizational change. If enterprises rely only on hardware technology, but not in the culture, strategy, organizational change to prepare, cloud computing application will not produce the corresponding business value. Therefore, enterprises must think in all directions, in which the change of the manager's concept and role is very important. The enterprise only gradually prepares, and goes to the big trend to prepare, changes in the plan, the culture, the mechanism and the management way, will be possible to seize the opportunity when the technology matures.

Cloud computing for different industries, enterprises, the meaning of different people is not the same. For enterprise IT managers, it means how to leverage these cloud capabilities to integrate the entire group of IT resources together to form a service delivery to customers and employees to reduce the enterprise's it construction and operating costs. As a bridge between technology and Enterprise, the CIO of enterprise should think about how to implement the strategy of enterprise through technology, and use technology to guide the enterprise's strategy implementation. For the CEO, it means how to integrate the management, business and resources of the enterprise on this platform, form an innovative mode, deliver to the enterprise employee customer supplier, improve the efficiency of the enterprise, reduce the cost of the enterprise, quickly enter the market, make the enterprise more competitive. CIOs need to think about how technology will fall and how to implement it. The so-called wisdom of the city, the wisdom of the Earth, nothing more than based on cloud computing to carry out resource integration, the formation of models, providing services. Therefore, cloud computing is difficult to understand because it involves more than just a computational technology concept, but for different people, different enterprises, different industries, means different meanings.

What is the future of the enterprise

Technological advances have propelled commercial progress, and commercial progress in turn has facilitated technological development, which is an interaction. This interaction is accompanied by changes in the business model and management approach. Global economic integration is the largest integration after industrialization, the realization of globalization integration is to rely on "cloud", this is the general trend. The cloud changes not only the technology, but also profoundly changes the enterprise, the Society's present and the future, but also changes the people's survival way.

Future enterprises will be platform-type enterprises, the boundaries of the enterprise will disappear. With the acceleration of global economic integration, industry, enterprises and resources will continue to integrate, organize and manage the way also have to change continuously, enterprise gradually flattened, from the fragmented form of enterprise fragmented, into an integrated cooperation platform. The big group evolution becomes the community cloud or the platform cloud, the enterprise market management all through such a platform carries on, the enterprise internal Information exchange coordination, the process processing, the external customer service, forms one kind of service on the platform.

The future of the enterprise will be a self-healing ability of intelligent enterprises. Cloud computing, the ultimate trend of enterprise development is intelligent enterprise, intelligent management, all information must be spread through the cloud platform. The enterprise will optimize the business flow on this platform, realize self management, self repair and ego's growth, become the intelligent team. The management idea of the entrepreneur is implanted into the cloud computing, the decision of the enterprise is not to rely on the experienced authority expert to shoot the head, but relies on the data analysis, forms the intelligence, the intelligent decision-making.

As people approach the industrial electrification revolution of the 19th century, companies that refuse to accept will eventually be eliminated. In the face of cloud computing, companies have to think about how to embrace it. Cloud computing will revolutionize the traditional mode of business society, if enterprises in 5-10 years to build a platform for cloud computing, the formation of innovative models, the competitiveness of enterprises will continue to improve. Not only that, if China's large enterprises in the cloud computing platform to evolve, it will become China's economic prosperity and development of an important impetus.

(Responsible editor: Schpeppen)