#科技之巅 #
Text/Wang Xinxi
Huawei's entry into ERP has sparked heated discussions in the industry.
According to Huawei's official announcement: in April this year, Huawei's ERP will swear to make its own management system metaERP software completely using its own operating system, database, compiler and language.
Huawei's layout of ERP, but also to the entire industry shock, from a longer-term perspective, Huawei from internal use to open to external, or an inevitable trend, Ren Zhengfei also said that the future will become an important force in the domestic market high-end ERP market.
Why is Huawei entering ERP?
Speaking of ERP, it started as a business invoicing system, a set of software for managing daily business activities, and it started in manufacturing.
In the manufacturing industry, after many enterprises receive orders, they need to enter the system through ERP, and the operation department has to start calculating how long it takes to execute this order, is there inventory, no inventory to arrange production, and how much needs to be produced? Do I need to prepare materials? How long is the preparation cycle? How many processes are there? How many equipment crew resources are required? Which raw materials arrive and which processes can be carried out at what time? Finally, when the order is expected to be completed and sent to the customer.
At present, ERP has developed into all walks of life, and now its functions and values and application scope are expanding, not only an enterprise invoicing and inventory system. Under the wave of digital transformation of domestic enterprises, a number of excellent ERP enterprises have also emerged in the mainland, including Yonyou, Inspur, Kingdee and so on.
From the current point of view, Yonyou, Inspur and Kingdee mainly occupy the low-end market of ERP. The high-end market is mainly SAP and Oracle. In 2021, in the field of high-end ERP software in mainland China, SAP and Oracle accounted for 53% of the market.
The technical level and product capabilities of domestic high-end ERP software are still far from those of overseas giants. Some domestic enterprises will use domestic ERP software in the early stage, but after developing to a certain scale, because domestic software is difficult to support the business needs of enterprises, domestic enterprises will replace domestic ERP software with overseas software.
This is the case with Huawei, and in terms of the current competitive landscape, the fundamental purpose of Huawei entering the market is to survive, first of all, to meet Huawei's own use.
IN THE PAST, HUAWEI FIRST BOUGHT ORACLE APOCALYPSE, AND LATER USED SAP. However, due to well-known reasons, we can only retreat to the second place, cooperate with domestic Yonyou ERP, start to cloud ERP, and launch HUAWEI CLOUD-based ERP software.
However, during the use process, Yonyou software gradually could not adapt to Huawei's requirements, and Huawei finally launched meta ERP.
From Huawei's development history, we can know that when domestic high-end ERP software cannot meet its needs, it begins to do it itself. This in itself is also the law of the market. Any industry will experience a period from development dividends to maturity, from low-end to high-end, from low-level to high-tech models. Generally speaking, the later the stage, the more adequate the market competition will be.
High-end ERP is basically the world of SAP and Oracle.
From the perspective of development history, Kingdee and Yonyou were both doing financial software at the beginning, and when they were small and big, they bought other modules from financial software by the way, domestic enterprises, in the early stage, generally used Kingdee UF, and when Kingdee UF could not be satisfied when it expired, it was transferred to SAP and Oracle like Huawei.
But Yonyou has been imitating SAP and Oracle in the past to do high-end, but high-end ERP relies not only on code and functions, but also on the need for global complexity of the company to use feedback data to grow, because Yonyou Kingdee lacks the use of data and management model optimization of companies with strong complexity, it is difficult to do SAP like that, can cover most of the top 500 customers, has a huge multinational company industry can continue to optimize data and management models, continue to improve competitiveness, therefore, Yonyou Kingdee's system is also difficult to meet the business needs of large companies like Huawei.
According to Huawei insiders, Huawei's ERP first of all needs to meet internal use, forming a one-stop, full-process, safe and trusted operating platform internally, and developing more software based on this platform in the future, and then opening it to the outside world.
To put it simply, Huawei's current ERP layout is mainly for self-use, and it has little impact on industry players in the short term. But the market is worried that the industry will become more and more volatile.
From Ren Zhengfei's disclosure, MetaERP has been applied in various departments of Huawei around the world, and has also passed the annual settlement test of Huawei's general ledger, from Huawei's mention of the operating system, database, compiler, voice are their own can know, Huawei breakthrough high-end ERP has actually had the bottom.
Huawei's advantage is that its own scale and enterprise information model itself can help polish heavyweight products such as MetaERP, and by the way, it can export its own experience, knowledge, standards, and solutions in the industry.
As mentioned above, under the wave of digitalization, the digital construction of domestic enterprises, especially large group enterprises, will become a trend in the future, which will become an important market for Huawei. Referring to Huawei's Hongmeng intelligent cockpit and the ecological expansion capability of intelligent solutions in the automotive industry, it is difficult for Huawei to expand the ERP market, but it is not impossible.
The growth of SAP and Oracle has always had an enterprise service ecosystem, and the launch of MetaERP may bring the rise of a new ecosystem. With the expansion of the market, the advancement of the wave of intelligence, and the optimization and opening of Huawei's MetaERP to the market, some enterprises may prefer domestic substitution.
It has awakened the domestic large but not strong basic software industry
From the perspective of the ERP industry, Huawei's self-developed ERP has replaced its original ERP product (Oracle) within it, but this cannot be equivalent to Huawei's MetaERP can be fully applied to other industries, which remains to be tested and optimized over time.
For a long time, the ERP high-end market mainly has SAP, Oracle two, Oracle is through the supply chain to start, more technical background, more emphasis on development flexibility, from the SAP point of view, it is more business, better in stable and complete management ideas, and cover most of the top 500 customers, and multinational companies more.
On the other hand, in the ERP industry, in general, with the accumulation of ERP implementation experience and the enrichment of the knowledge system, its customized development, consulting capabilities and value will continue to improve. From the perspective of the rigor of the solution and the applicability to different industries, SAP has no one in the industry as its opponent, and from the perspective of system continuity, SAP has also achieved a certain height.
Oracle's UI interface advantage is very strong, the user experience of the operation has always been its advantage, secondary development is easier to implement, database is its strength, the general large enterprises based on stability and database storage comprehensive considerations, will choose a robust Oracle. According to the latest IDC data, Oracle's share of global relational databases is about 42% of the market, compared with 24% for Microsoft and 13% for IBM.
In general, it is difficult to surpass SAP and Oracle.
However, the advantage of Huawei's development of its own ERP software is that the current wave of digitalization is already a general trend, ERP is moving towards pan-ERP, from large enterprises to medium-sized enterprises, and more and more small and medium-sized enterprises need overall digital solutions, covering more and more industries, when the market is large enough, more segments will be derived, so the market segment leader is born. As mentioned earlier, under the big wave of digitalization, Huawei has the potential to create a new ecosystem.
The essence of ERP is management output, Yonyou Kingdee Huawei may have its own industry expertise, refer to Huawei's past entry into the server/smart car market, in fact, it has not affected the development and profitability of Inspur Information and Desay SV. Huawei wants to cut the high-end market, and the high-end market itself is a market that domestic enterprises are unable to break through, which is actually dislocation competition, rather than homogeneous involution, even if Huawei wants to open up in the future, it will compete more with the customer groups in the high-end market, especially the customer base of large state-owned enterprises.
In general, ERP software is essentially a set of software-based management system, it covers all aspects of enterprise management, is an important part of the basic software level, from the domestic point of view, the basic software level, has long been a large but not strong state, especially this kind of industrial-grade software has long been a domestic short board. According to financial reports, there are currently no listed companies in China with software revenue of more than 10 billion yuan, and the market value of software companies is almost always less than 100 billion yuan. There is a lack of large software vendors like Salesforce, Oracle, and SAP.
In addition, in addition to ERP, the industrial-grade basic software industry includes EDA software, although China also has independent research and development of EDA software systems, such as Huada Jiutian EDA and EasyEDA and other products, but there is still a big gap with foreign advanced EDA software. Some insiders pointed out that these gaps are reflected in the huge "generation gap" in function, mainly manifested in major defects such as insufficient support for advanced technology and processes.
This stems from the fact that the proportion of software in China's IT spending structure has long been lower than the world average, and large companies are not willing to go, and Huawei has actually set a precedent. After all, in China, from the underlying chip to the operating system, root technology, development tools and various application software services, China has already fallen, the layout range is very large, but many professional software, software development tools, databases, high-performance service software on the server, and even professional graphic audio and video editing tools, industrial design software, etc., is the long-term short board of the domestic basic software industry, big but not strong, how to break through is still a big problem.
Huawei's independent research and development and self-use of ERP is a bit like a light in the independent replacement of domestic software, in fact, it also gives a wake-up call to China:
In the era of digital economy, databases are needed to store and manage big data, and databases are one of the most important basic software systems in the era of digital economy. However, China's basic software, especially industrial software, is still in its infancy, the localization rate is low, including R & D design industrial software The current localization rate is particularly low, many R & D design industrial software, but also only used in the system function of a single function, low industry complexity of the field, it is no longer suitable for the needs of the intelligent era, especially from the support of automation, high complexity of the development of intelligent manufacturing, there is still a huge gap.
The basic software industry still has a long way to go to become bigger and stronger, but this is another road that has to be taken, and major factories should actually accelerate the completion and overcoming of the shortcomings of basic software.
Author: Wang Xinxi TMT Senior Reviewer This article is not reprinted without permission