Large state-owned enterprises are the important force of the national economy, and there is a special kind of financial institution, the finance companies of group enterprises that are also commonly known as the "fund sources" of enterprises. These companies, by centralized management of funds and using financing leverage, work in reducing financial expenses and improving the fund management in enterprise groups.

Though different from traditional financial institutions such as banks and insurance, these finance companies are still important parts in economic operation. According to the Development Report on China's Finance Companies released by the China National Association of Finance Companies in 2016, there are 224 legal entities of enterprise group finance companies in China, and the total assets on and off the balance sheet have reached RMB6.67 trillion.

With such a large scale, the topic that how making good use of information tools and continuously upgrade digitally in the current information-based society to meet the regulatory requirements while achieving stable development shall be carefully handled by all finance companies.

Therefore, the role of some technologically innovative companies in this field becomes prominent. These enterprises help finance companies improve their informatization through own IT services, and help large state-owned enterprises manage their fund sources with professional informatization and digitization means.

As an industry leader, iSoftStone Information Technology (Group) Co., Ltd. (iSoftStone) has been highly recognized and served 100+ finance companies, accounting for 40% of the market share.

Especially, most of those customers are central enterprises and state-owned enterprises, accounting for 70% of the central enterprise finance companies customers, leading in market share in the same industry. Among them, there are many well-known enterprises such as China Petroleum Finance Co., Ltd., China Huaneng Finance Co., Ltd., CETC Finance Co., Ltd., SINOMACH Finance Co., Ltd., China Southern Air Group Finance Co., Ltd., Sinochem Finance Co., Ltd., and Shenhua Finance Co., Ltd.

Many industry practitioners believe that the development history of iSoftStone in the field shows that technologically innovative companies are promoting large state-owned enterprises to manage their fund sources by digital means through years of experience and optimized services, and have increased and maintained value of large state-owned enterprises, thereby highly contributing to national economic development and advancement.

Global solution

As a representative of the industry-finance integration for large group enterprises, finance companies are highly linked to the business of group enterprises. Therefore, their request in the informatization and digitalization is diverse and complicated, and the service requirements for technologically innovative companies are demanding.

In this way, enterprise that can provide a complete solution is more likely to win customers, which is indeed the advantages of iSoftStone compared to other peers. It provides a global service plan from business consulting, IT planning, network developments, standard software products, information system design, and later O&M, and supports the development of the group pan-financial business as a whole.

Take the system consulting as an example, iSoftStone provides opening guidance, strategic planning, business blueprint, etc. System integration includes hardware integration, software integration and computer room construction. The business implementation can realize business planning such as organizational structure, fund management, strategic planning and system planning, as well as system support such as business system deployment and business system tuning.

From the architecture, iSoftStone has adopted an advanced SOA-based technology architecture, with low system coupling and comprehensive coverage to support the business development and innovation of finance companies; from the technical level, relying on the advanced IAF platform and adopting key technologies such as ESB can establish a good underlying architecture for the project; from the application, new applications such as "domestic + overseas", "local currency + foreign currency", "cash + bill", "group + finance company" and "PC + mobile" will bring new experiences and business expansion to customers, and so on.

All these have driven a sound solution for iSoftStone, used for favorable information-based processing at the core business system service channel layer, business operation layer, group asset management layer, basic management layer, and data analysis layer of finance companies.

However, the internal business personnel of finance companies can handle a number of businesses in the local area network on the premise of an ensured security, improving the efficiency of business processing. The customers of finance companies can share and highly integrate data between business management system and financial /ERP accounting system through the Internet, reducing the repeated entry of information and improving the digitalization.

According to industry practitioners, providing global solutions is also in line with the diversified strategic needs of large state-owned enterprises. With such services, a unified and comprehensive management of financial sectors among various businesses can be realized so as to satisfy more diversified business scenarios.            

Move towards group fund control

Given the development trend of Internet finance and sci-tech finance, it is necessary to address the new regulatory requirements of management departments against large state-owned enterprises as the business of large state-owned enterprises develops. Now the fund control of many state-owned enterprises has turned to the group level, including related budget control, risk control and fund management. In the view of this, iSoftStone has formed its own characteristics in the group fund control, thus helping large state-owned enterprises manage their "fund sources" at a higher level.

According to Mr. Jianxiang Zhu, Vice President of iSoftStone, this first needs to meet the expansion and development of the group business while providing more customized services in the extension of functions; secondly, great efforts shall be made for the performance, security and reliability of the whole system, moving towards the specialized banks, to cope with the new requirements in both function and technical system level.

In fact, many technologically innovative companies in this field are providing similar services. Some of them are functionally advantaged, while others have considerable technology reserves. As an enterprise that has been deeply involved in the industry for fifteen years, iSoftStone, besides rich experiences, has applied the group fund control solutions to many sectors, including funds, securities, insurance, banking, energy, and manufacturing, which safeguards iSoftStone to define the industry competitiveness.

The group fund control solutions developed by iSoftStone cover not only the establishment of information portal, big data analysis platform, internal and external interfaces, but also fund management systems such as fund settlement budget, bill management, international settlement, internal banking, and financing management, as well as financial systems such as general ledger system and accounts receivable management, and tax management systems such as tax planning, invoice management and tax accrual, so as to realize unified management at the business application level and improve efficiency. For the system management platform, assistance is offered by setting up approval management, authority management, system monitoring, data management, interface management, and other mechanism to the leaders in making better decisions and improving the management. In other words, the trinity of "enterprise management planning + financial product design + information system planning and establishment" was realized, which has effectively improved the group fund management.20

Supported by these integrated and comprehensive solutions, iSoftStone has held the major direction in the trend of enterprise finance digitalization, which empowers large state-owned enterprises to manage fund sources more scientifically and greatly benefits the financial informatization of large state-owned enterprises.