Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. is a model of technological innovation of Tongrentang, a century-old shop. ERP and POS systems implemented in 2009 enabled Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. to take the step of intelligent management.
ERP starts the second pioneering journey
Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. is one of the top ten companies under Beijing Tongrentang (Group) Co., Ltd. and one of the three pillar companies of the group. Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. is a modern enterprise with high technology as the leading factor and all-round development. It develops, produces and sells Chinese patent medicines, ginseng tablets, nourishing and health foods, ordinary nutritious foods and other products.
Thanks to good research and development, market construction and pursuit of product quality, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. was incorporated in April 2003. It has only been more than six years now, and the turnover has increased from 320 million yuan to 3 billion yuan, with thousands of retail terminals. However, Yu Jun is facing great management pressure.
He said: "We have a good research and development team in product research and development, and we launch more than 30 new varieties every year. On the market side, we have established thousands of stores in different forms. It can be seen that there is no problem in our product development and market, and the biggest challenge is management. "
The reason for this conclusion is that in the past development process, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Company, like almost all traditional pharmaceutical companies in China, adopted a more traditional manual management method, but only applied a customized invoicing software with relatively simple functions that has been used for 9 years in daily management.
Although Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical has continuously improved its system, with the rapid development of enterprises, the system has been unable to support business development, and the accuracy of data has also been tested. Business departments urgently need a business platform that can provide accurate data. At the end of 2008, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical had more than 900 retail terminals. If the traditional manual operation is still adopted, it is difficult to control all these terminals well.
Talking about the health management of Tongrentang in the past, Yu Jun said: "We don't lack resources, but we can't integrate all kinds of data manually." Therefore, informatization has become an inevitable choice for Tongrentang health pharmaceutical industry.
Therefore, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Company designated 2009 as the year of basic management, hoping to establish an intelligent management system supported by talents and technology. Yu Jun regards the implementation and application of ERP system as an important measure for the second venture of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. to help enterprises realize efficient front-end and orderly back-end management. He pointed out: "To establish this system, it must be based on ERP. Only with this foundation can our grand plan be realized. Only when this plan is realized can our concept of operating in traditional industries with modern scientific and technological means be realized. "
Four measures to ensure the smooth online system.
In 2007, when Yu Ruixuan, the chief information officer, came to Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical, there were only five people in the IT department. "Our informatization basically starts from scratch." Yu Ruixuan said. From March to September, 2009, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. successfully launched ERP and POS systems in only half a year, including finance, distribution and manufacturing. The reason why this can be done mainly depends on the four effective strategies adopted by Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Industry in the system construction.
Strategy 1: choose software, sharpen the knife and don't mistake the woodcutter.
At the beginning of 2008, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. began to select ERP products from the perspectives of price, the matching degree between software and management, and the difficulty of implementation. They divide the current ERP products into three categories: products from international manufacturers, such as those from well-known domestic manufacturers such as SAP and Oracle, such as UFIDA and Kingdee; Products of domestic regional/industrial software manufacturers. In order to ensure that suitable ERP products can be selected, Yu Ruixuan leads the selection team to go out to see products and cases every month.
Although Yu Ruixuan once thought that Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical would eventually use ERP products from mature international manufacturers, considering that retail management was the most urgent demand of enterprises at that time, she hoped to choose a medium-sized domestic ERP product first to solve the urgent need quickly. Later, considering that if this method is adopted, IT may face the problem of type selection after one year, and both IT departments and business departments are under great pressure, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical finally decided to reach the goal in one step.
At the same time, considering that the retail terminals of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical are all self-owned stores, the demand for store management is high, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical decided to install the POS system at the same time as the ERP system.
In August, 2008, when an ERP product from an international manufacturer entered the selection group of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical, everyone thought that the product was in line with the actual situation of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical, especially after seeing the actual application of the product in cosmetics company Estee Lauder.
Strategy 2: Systematic implementation of borrowing ships to go to sea
Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. knows the truth of "three points for software and seven points for execution". It is worth mentioning that in the information center of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., all employees have no experience in ERP projects except one employee who has participated in ERP projects. Therefore, it is more important for them to choose an experienced implementation partner.
Because of this, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical chose IBM with rich implementation experience as its strategic partner. "They have a methodology, and I don't need to think too much." Yu Ruixuan believes that IBM's experience can make up for her lack of experience in ERP project implementation. At the same time, when Yu Ruixuan signed the contract, he particularly emphasized that Liu Yunxia, an experienced consultant, was the project manager of IBM.
Yu Ruixuan believes that this practice has been proved to be correct. During the preparation and implementation of the project, IBM not only brought advanced management concepts to Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical, but also helped them optimize their business processes. Yu Ruixuan revealed that in the process of implementing ERP, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Company reorganized more than 200 processes, and Liu Yunxia played a key role in this process.
Strategy 3: It is better to put off the system online than to rush it.
In August 2009, the system has been implemented. However, considering that the POS system is closely related to the sales of stores, once there is any problem in the system, it may directly affect the sales performance. Under the pressure of simulation test, Yu Ruixuan decided to postpone the launch.
At the same time, with the help of IBM, the project team robbed an information center service desk for 74 days before the system was officially launched, and made a drill before it was launched. The service desk matches the call center. In addition to the operators, the project support personnel also act as second-line personnel to assist the service desk in handling problems. For the problems that the second-line personnel can't solve, the internal consultants also act as the third-line experts in the call center to deal with them. With this service desk, once ERP users find any problems in the application process, they can solve them through the service desk at the first time. Relevant personnel will make a complete record of these problems for future business reference.
On September 1 day, 2009, after more than half a year's efforts, the ERP and POS systems of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical were finally officially launched. Yu Ruixuan, who was worried because he heard that many enterprises had endless problems when switching ERP online, visited the headquarters and pilot stores with IBM's implementation team. The result made her very satisfied: no financial problems, no business problems, and everything was calm.
During the "Eleventh" holiday in 2009, the operation of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical was very gratifying, and its turnover reached the amount of the Spring Festival that year. However, this state makes the staff of the project team very nervous, and they are all worried about whether the system can pass the challenge of such a large business volume. Finally, the system successfully passed this application peak.
"We put forward the practice of operation and maintenance in advance and made a prepared battle." Referring to the reason why the system went online smoothly, Yu Ruixuan said.
Strategy 4: Personnel training and actual combat training
Although Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical fully relies on the strength of partners in the process of system implementation, it does not rely entirely on IBM. "We are also building a team while implementing it." Yu Ruixuan said.
At the beginning of the project implementation, the strength of Tongrentang Health Medicine Information Center was relatively weak. In order to ensure the smooth implementation of the system, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. made full use of resources outside the information center, mobilized ERP and POS projects internally, and set up a progress supervision team composed of department heads. At the same time, they also regard employees' support for the project as one of the performance appraisal indicators.
Before the system goes online, the training of end users is a very important task for Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Project Team. The working mode of many business departments of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. has changed from no system support to relying on the system, and it is difficult for many employees to change their original working habits to adapt to this change. Facing this problem, the most effective way for the project team is to strengthen training. They first train the key users of 18 one-on-one, and then train the end users of the department after these key users return to work.
"These key users have become the third echelon of our corporate talents and are our backbone." Yu Ruixuan revealed. It is worth mentioning that not only many key users become the backbone of the business department, but also some key users are absorbed as members of the information center and become an important supplement to the original information center with weak talents.
At this point, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Information Center has grown from 5 people to 52 people today. Yu Ruixuan said that Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical also needs to train internal consultants, because the company is in a period of rapid expansion, and they should be prepared for rapid system replication after the establishment of new stores.
Take the first step towards intelligent management
When interviewed by reporters, ERP and POS systems have been running smoothly in Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Industry for two and a half months. Yu Ruixuan believes that the successful launch of ERP marks that Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical has taken the first step towards the strategic goal of intelligent management system, which is a useful exploration for the informatization construction of Chinese medicine industry.
First of all, the system helps Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical realize the integration of information flow, logistics, capital flow and data flow, and realizes the integration of finance and business. Secondly, it helped Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical to eliminate the information island and realize the unified allocation of resources; Finally, the system has promoted the transformation of the business model of Tongrentang health pharmaceutical industry, from the previous fixed production by sales to the current fixed production by sales.
He Qiong, chief financial officer of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Company, believes that the financial department will benefit most from the ERP system. This is mainly reflected in three aspects. First, ERP helps the financial management of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical to change from accounting to management. She analyzed that Tongrentang's health medicine business has developed rapidly. If we still use the original manual work, the workload is unimaginable. Now that the ERP system automatically processes data, financial personnel no longer need to bury their heads in recording data, but pay attention to the accuracy and effectiveness of the data. Second, financial management is more in-depth, because the business of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical includes production, logistics, various sales terminals, e-commerce and so on. And financial work should be changed from single-dimensional analysis records to multi-dimensional analysis, from thick-line management to detailed management, which is impossible for manual work. ERP gives the financial department a good financial accounting tool, which makes the financial work more detailed and diversified. Thirdly, the integration of financial business is realized, so that all data can be integrated and enjoyed, and the level of financial management is improved.
Connecting ERP system with POS system makes the store management of Tongrentang Health Medicine Marketing Department more efficient and controllable. The key users of the marketing department said: "We can see the sales and inventory data of each sales terminal in real time from the system. If they are found to be out of stock, we will remind them to replenish in time. If we find that the sales volume of a certain product is particularly low or even zero, we will discuss with the person in charge of the store what the reason is and discuss the corresponding countermeasures. " In the past, the store faxed the manual statistical data to the marketing department once a week, but these data may be different from the actual data, and the staff of the marketing department often went to the store to check the data.
The work of the purchasing department has also been greatly improved. Relevant personnel can directly import the material demand plan from the ERP system, generate purchase orders according to the inventory situation, and each product will display its optional suppliers.
Yu Jun believes that ERP is the basis of Tongrentang health medicine planning, and the successful launch of ERP ensures the realization of enterprise strategic planning. He commented: "Now every figure we have is accurate, financial management is vertical, and thousands of retail stores are controllable. Our experience tells brothers in the same industry that the traditional pharmaceutical industry can also realize information management. "
Looking forward to sailing again
The information center service desk will not only escort the launch of ERP and POS system of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., but also help the information center to provide unified and standardized services for end users after the system is launched. Yu Ruixuan revealed that after the system went online, the service desk also received application problems from the front line. Fortunately, these problems are all about operation, use and demand, and there are no fundamental big problems.
Up to now, the information center service desk has received more than 1000 questions, but the frequency of receiving questions is getting smaller and smaller, and the proportion of demand is increasing. Yu Ruixuan pointed out that it is the rest period of the ERP project of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., and the information center is sorting out these problems and summarizing them to the top management, which will follow up the problems and help the management sublimate. They will also start to solve these problems when the second phase of ERP project is started.
Perfecting ERP system is only a part of the informatization construction of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical Industry in the next five years. In the planning of the information sharing center, they also integrated the mail system, unified communication, workflow and approval process into a unified collaborative office system to realize paperless intelligent office within the enterprise. At the same time, in order to make better use of the data provided by ERP system, they will also implement BI (Business Intelligence) system for management.
At the same time, a new data center is planned and deployed in the new office building of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical in Yizhuang Development Zone, Beijing. This has relieved the worries for the future information construction of Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical.