In line with the purpose of strengthening the exchange of successful experience and application of digital transformation and promoting the in-depth digital transformation of central enterprises, the Cadre Education and Training Center of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council held the 2023 Seminar on Typical Cases of Digital Transformation of Central Enterprises in Hainan in late February, with nearly 100 students from more than 30 central enterprises participating.
In the process of the seminar, we combined the introduction and sharing of invited enterprise experts, the exchange and discussion with the trainees, through the questionnaire survey on the digital transformation of central enterprises carried out by the trainees, consulted relevant materials, preliminarily sorted out and summarized the characteristics and achievements of the digital transformation of central enterprises, and put forward our thoughts and suggestions for the effective promotion of digital transformation of central enterprises in the future.
01 Central enterprises attach great importance to and actively promote digital transformationIn August 2020, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council issued the "Notice on Accelerating the Digital Transformation of State-owned Enterprises", proposing to accelerate the digital transformation of state-owned enterprises, and take digital transformation as an important means to transform and upgrade traditional kinetic energy and cultivate new kinetic energy for development.
Since then, relevant policies have been introduced to support the digital transformation of central enterprises, and digital collaborative innovation platforms in different fields have been established, such as Beidou industry, e-commerce, blockchain, digital transformation of automobile enterprises, intelligent manufacturing, industrial Internet, etc., and more than 80 central enterprises have joined the relevant platforms.
As the backbone of the national economy in the mainland, the central enterprises have fully realized the importance and urgency of doing a good job in digital transformation, and actively promoted the digital transformation of their own enterprises, achieved some results, and emerged a large number of typical practices.
According to relevant statistics, by the end of 2022, among the 98 central enterprises directly managed by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, more than 70 central enterprises have established digital transformation organizations under the leadership of the state-owned enterprises, and 86 have included digital transformation in the "14th Five-Year Plan" of the enterprise; 70 central enterprises have set up digital technology companies directly under the group, more than 80 central enterprises have set up full-time departments for digital transformation, and more than 100 central enterprises have built industrial Internet platforms.
02 The basic practices of digital transformation of central enterprisesThe importance and urgency of digital transformation require central enterprises to explore and practice their own digital transformation path. According to the characteristics of operation and management, the business environment they face, the problems and pain points to be solved, and the goals to be achieved in the future, the central enterprises have promoted digital transformation, and formed some fruitful typical practices. 01The group builds a unified cloud platform
Most of the central enterprises have built a cloud platform from the group level, and put the group's core business and new business on the group cloud platform, and generally the digital technology company undertakes the relevant business accounting functions, and the information resources of each business sector are connected and compatible with the group's platform.
For example, China Resources Group has built a cloud platform with "resource sharing, unified architecture, security and reliability", promoting the proportion of systems to the cloud by more than 99%, and more than 800 cloud application systems, of which the cloud platform is built by China Resources Group, providing cloud computing and related services for 26 industries of the group.
02Build a comprehensive management and control platform
At the group level, the central enterprises build a comprehensive management and control platform around finance, personnel, office coordination, asset management, etc., to ensure the smooth implementation of government decrees and cultural integration of the group.
For example, China Merchants Group has built a mobile work platform called "Merchants Accompanying" to achieve a unified portal, work communication, task approval and exclusive applications, etc., and has achieved full coverage of the whole group except China Merchants Bank. China Merchants Group also implements integrated management of domestic and overseas bank accounts, fund settlement, liquidity, financing and guarantees, and capital risks, standardizing revenue and expenditure, improving efficiency, and controlling risks.
03The group built a digital technology middle platform
The way in which the group uniformly builds a centralized data sharing platform and a digital technology middle platform is an important aspect of the current digital transformation work of central enterprises.
For example, China Merchants Group has built a unified data lake platform, which integrates the data sources of the group's customer service, production and operation, internal management, OA, HR, finance and other related systems, as well as relevant data of the financial sector, transportation and logistics, and real estate parks, and has so far entered 268 sets of lake systems.
04Build a supply chain integration platform
Most of the central enterprises have set up procurement, e-commerce transactions and industrial Internet platforms. For example, China State Construction has built a "cloud building" construction industry Internet platform, achieving a revenue of more than 2 trillion yuan in 2022, providing professional digital services at both ends of procurement and employment.
At present, there are more than 800,000 registered suppliers and more than 16 million registered labor workers on the platform, with a cumulative turnover of more than 6 trillion yuan and more than 1.37 million bidding projects. Among them, the procurement side has realized accurate and efficient sourcing and bidding services through a variety of digital procurement methods such as standard online mall, SAAS mall, customized mall, API docking, etc., and the supply path of industrial chain materials is more efficient and effective.
05Established a professional digital technology company
At present, 70 of the 98 central enterprises have established group-level digital technology companies, and some second- and third-tier companies have also established corresponding e-commerce companies and data companies to carry out digital innovation-related businesses.
For example, Baoxin of Baowu Group, Kunlun Digital Intelligence of PetroChina, China Resources Digital Technology of China Resources Group, and so on. These digital technology companies mainly serve the digital transformation of the group and related business sectors, and have accumulated rich scenarios and data resources in the process of practice, and are gradually turning the transformation practice into a methodology and solution for external export.
03 The main characteristics of the central enterprises to promote the digital transformation of the central enterprises in the process of promoting digital transformation, showing some basic characteristics, in a nutshell, is to pay attention to the combination of data and reality, to promote industrial digitization and digital industrialization, specifically including five aspects.
01Digitalization of R&D and design
At present, 306 digital collaborative R&D platforms have been built by central enterprises.
For example, Sinopharm has built a biosafety protection level 3 laboratory to conduct high-throughput data screening. The Ordnance Group built a virtual simulation platform and launched the first intelligent voice and audio interaction, shortening the overall R&D cycle by 1/3.
02Intelligent production and operation
The numerical control rate of key processes of central industrial enterprises has reached 68.9%, 13 percentage points higher than that of other industrial enterprises in the country.
For example, COMAC established a 5G industrial innovation center, built the first 5G fully connected factory in China, and developed application scenarios for industrial innovation. CNOOC's real-time monitoring of key crude oil equipment has changed from multi-point decentralized to centralized, and the efficiency has increased by 30%.
03Integration of operation and management
Nearly two-thirds of the central enterprises have achieved comprehensive coverage of the digitalization of operation and management, and some central enterprises have realized the integration of the group.
For example, the State Grid has set up a leading group and working group for the enterprise middle platform, based on the integration and sharing of business data in the data middle platform, so as to realize the digitalization of multi-dimensional financial operation and management and improve the collaborative benefits of enterprises. China Resources Group has integrated more than 400 applications, enabling 400,000 employees of the Group to work online, integrate business and exchange information at the same time.
04Agility of user services
According to relevant statistics, 75 central enterprises have carried out e-commerce applications, and the transaction scale will reach 10 trillion yuan in 2021, accounting for about 1/4 of the national e-commerce transaction volume.
TravelSky's air travel platform integrates the resources of more than 1,600 airports and more than 240 airlines around the world to provide users with flight travel services. Sinochem has built a modern agricultural technology service platform, with more than 200 million mu of cultivated land providing online services.
05Industrial synergy and ecology
There are more than 120 supply chain integration platforms for central enterprises.
PetroChina's E-Paike oil trading e-commerce platform connects more than 1,600 large enterprises in an integrated manner, with an annual transaction volume of 2 trillion yuan. China COSCO United Shipping and Port Company has created a blockchain alliance for shipping, which has been applied in customs and ports in more than 100 countries around the world, and the goods of relevant countries have been shortened from the original 2 days to less than 4 hours.
04 Thoughts and Suggestions on Promoting the Digital Transformation of Central EnterprisesAlthough the current digital transformation of central enterprises has made certain achievements, a number of typical practices have also emerged. However, in our training on promoting the digital transformation of central enterprises, combined with some feedback from the trainees, we also found that there are still some problems in the digital transformation of central enterprises, which need to be paid attention to in the future development of relevant work. In the future practice of digital transformation, it is recommended that central enterprises carefully study and do a good job in the following aspects.
01 It is necessary to promote the effective coordination of the group's common management and control and the individuality of the industry
Considering strengthening the group's operation control and data circulation and sharing, the main practice of the current central enterprises is to solve the key common needs and shared content at the group level, and do a good job of basic and common digital platform.
However, each business unit has basically formed its own information system in the long-term development process. How to do a good job in the connection between the group level and the business level needs to be paid attention to. In the future practice of central enterprises, it is necessary to carefully sort out the interface and architecture of the existing information system, and effectively connect with the new information platform of the group. At the same time, we pay more attention to the personality differences and professionalism of business units, do a good job in industry solutions and industry application solutions, and solve the synergy problems of group common management and control and industry personality differences.
02We should give full play to the value of digitalization and improve the overall ability of digitalization
In the previous enterprise management pattern, the positioning of the digital department was basically a supporting organization of the enterprise. In the current era of digital transformation, the digital department has a new functional positioning, which needs to be transformed into a new engine to reshape the development of the enterprise.
In reality, there is still a certain gap between the overall capabilities of the digital departments of most enterprises and the requirements of the digital transformation era, and the role of digital platforms and systems in reshaping enterprises and promoting business development needs to be further strengthened.
In the future, central enterprises need to strengthen research on the mechanism and model of building organizational, business and technical integration and mutual cooperation. At the same time, attention should be paid to the introduction and cultivation of cross-border compound talents who combine digital technology and business practice capabilities, improve the overall ability of digitalization as soon as possible, and give full play to the value of digitalization.
03 It is necessary to dig deep into the value of data elements and strengthen the ability of digital industrialization
Central enterprises have accumulated a lot of valuable data in their business. For example, there are some environmental protection data, through clustering, reasoning, etc., people's living habits can be derived to design relevant sewage treatment products; Automobile companies have accumulated engineering research and development data of new vehicles, quality data in the production process, equipment data, failure rate data, industry index data, ESG data, traffic accident data, upstream and downstream chain data, etc.
However, the analysis and output of data is not enough, and the value mining and industrialization transformation of data elements need to be further improved. In the next step, central enterprises need to promote data privacy, security and compliance according to their own realities, dig deep into the value of data elements, and promote digital industrialization.
This paper is the interim result of the project of the Cadre Education and Training Center of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (Project No.: 22GZW0303).
Source: Digital Transformation Studio
Source: Digital Transformation Strategy Guide