Nelbao CTO Xu Lei: Enterprises embracing digitalization is to "cultivate internal strength"
2024-08-17
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Cui Liyong, reporter of China Economic Herald and China Development Network
Active digital transformation provides continuous impetus for the development of Neilbao.
Neilbao, known as the "indoor Disney", was founded in 2017. In just 7 years, it has built 44 "fairy tale towns" with different styles in 21 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Changsha, becoming a star check-in spot for urban parent-child activities.
In 2021, the number of Nailbao stores is growing rapidly. Nailbao calmed down and thought about the problems it had encountered before and the challenges that may arise in future development. Nailbao CTO Xu Lei said that this kind of precipitation is Nailbao's "internal cultivation", and one of the important considerations is to give the company digital wings.
At that time, Nailbao was under considerable pressure from financial accounting. With the opening of more and more stores, the mechanical and repetitive work in the financial accounting of each store was also increasing. The functional scale of the corporate headquarters had to expand linearly with the increase in the number of stores. It was imperative to choose a highly automated, stable and scalable digital management system.
After repeated comparisons, Nairbao, which was determined to transform digitally, finally chose SAP ERP Cloud. Xu Lei introduced that with the assistance of the SAP original factory team, Nairbao used SAP ERP Cloud to reorganize its business processes, achieved process standardization of the four major business lines and all sales channels, achieved T+1 data aggregation, and sales profit analysis could be accurate to the SKU of a single product.
Within two years after the launch of SAP ERP Cloud, Nailbao opened 18 new stores across the country. However, with this system to manage, the efficiency of the headquarters' finance department was greatly improved, while still maintaining the previous staff size.
Why did they choose to work with SAP in the digitalization process? Xu Lei said that this was due to three considerations.
First, one of Neilbao’s strategic goals is to enter overseas markets and open stores all over the world, and going overseas requires compatibility with domestic and foreign business and market requirements.
Second, Nairbao has been adopting a direct sales model in its rapid development. The selection of software and application systems is not only a matter of IT, but also a hope to introduce advanced standards and management concepts. "SAP provides not only financial software, but also financial management software." This statement from the SAP consultant touched Nairbao.
Third, Nairbaorui places special emphasis on the implementation team. "Good software is like a 'toolbox/treasure box'. It does not mean that you can create good processes and standards just by having the toolbox." Xu Lei said that the implementation team needs to have a deep understanding of the relevant financial rules, financial standards and other management requirements in complex business scenarios.
In fact, Nailbao’s digital transformation journey is not an easy task.
Nelbao has transformed the traditional indoor park into a complex business format. It also has different types of stores such as children's science and technology museums and sports halls. The innovative model of multiple business lines includes ticketing, courses, catering, retail, etc. In terms of operational details, Nelbao also strives to "arrange one customer one" and provide personalized and humanized design. Taking the annual membership card as an example, if the member needs to leave the country for a long time due to reasons such as going abroad, Nelbao will help to suspend the card to avoid time waste. When the member re-opens the card, he can also choose to extend the benefits.
For example, the ticket sales of Nairbao also cover many different channels, including Douyin, Dianping and local parent-child platforms, etc. The enterprise financial system needs to connect with them separately to complete the order verification and fee settlement. At the same time, the cost split of different channels varies greatly. For example, Douyin is divided into influencer commissions, advertising fees, traffic-related fees, etc.
It is not difficult to imagine how high the demands these extremely complex scenarios and businesses place on Neilbao’s finances and operations.
After starting to cooperate with SAP, Xu Lei discovered that the original SAP implementation team had rich implementation experience in the theme park industry. They worked closely with Nairbao and used SAP ERP cloud as the digital management base. They not only built standardized processes for Nairbao's four major business lines, but also classified the originally scattered sales channels and carried out a thorough standardization transformation of business processes and financial management.
"It is really not easy to achieve this quickly." Xu Lei said that through joint efforts, Nailbao's operation and management have become smoother, and the practical problems encountered by the company have been effectively solved.
After SAP ERP Cloud was put to good use, Nailbao further used the SAP Build process automation product to organize multiple application scenarios into automated programs. Take the "transfer of store procurement needs to headquarters centralized procurement" business as an example. The previous process involved 10 steps and 6 documents. Now the automated program will split the information to generate files and automatically run multiple processes. Frontline store employees only need to fill out one form. In this scenario alone, SAP Build saved more than 1,900 working hours in four months after it went online, and the efficiency was improved by more than 83% compared with the original process.
The 2024 SAP China Summit with the theme of "Business AI: Unleashing New Productivity" held in Shanghai recently reported that SAP's generative AI smart co-pilot Joule is gradually expanding to the entire product portfolio. It is expected that Joule will help SAP's 300 million users manage 80% of common tasks, improve work efficiency by 20%, and ensure higher work quality. SAP's business AI has also been embedded in core business processes to achieve intelligent management in finance and decision analysis, supply chain, human resources, customer experience, and sustainable management.
"We are full of expectations for AI." Xu Lei told reporters that Neilbao plans to introduce AI technology and related tools to use advanced digital technology to cope with new issues in the rapid development of the company.
