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Why BI R&D is Part of Our Lives?

Ruan Xia Ming, Managing Director of Sunnet Technology (May 08, 2006)

People hold different views as to the core of life. But for us, it means three most important aspects: career, health and family. While there are various careers, we choose BI R&D and consider it the aim we will fight for in our lives.

　　First reason: to end the agonies in the implementation of software engineering
　　Based on our experience of software engineering implementation for over twenty years, we found that reports are the most annoying and troublesome matter for developers. Reports are the most fundamental and indispensable part of application software development because what the clients care about is the final result. The intuitionistic report presentation form, convenient analysis and enquiry, and multi-dimensional analysis results can improve the clients' work efficiency and increase their confidence in application software. In a word, the quality of reports will affect the progress and quality of software engineering and an unqualified result will affect the acceptance of work and even cause the loss of the balance of the engineering.

◆ The requirements for reports change constantly and forever
Clients have different requirements against reports and the requirements constantly change, which make the developers confused about what to do. As a result, no matter how many resources the developers spend and how many times they revise the reports, they can't meet the client's requirements against reports. According to our experience in software engineering in the past, at least 40% of the engineering time are spent in developing and revising reports, which makes people annoyed and hopeless.

◆ It is hard to find report talents
Report developers (full time programmers) must be masters of software development. They must have the following abilities: to be proficient in programming techniques, to grasp database programming knowledge, to be familiar with clients' businesses and to be experienced in the application system data dictionary. They must have two other qualities, that is, sound psychology and angelic patience. Client's requirements against reports change constantly, and the changes of reports are realized by the full time programmers. When the programmers are busy or when they quit their jobs, the new comers will find the tasks extremely difficult and troublesome. Report tasks mean little technology factors and promotion chance for them. As time passes, the programmers will feel bored and sick, and they will lose interest in keeping the job for a long period. So, to do this job well requires sound work psychology and angelic patience.
◆ The cost of software development program is too high
It is hard to find programmers who possess the above-mentioned qualities for software engineering and the enterprises have to pay very high salaries even when they can find some. If the programmers quit their job soon, the enterprises have to find new programmers. Only after understanding the programs of the old employees can the new comers begin their job. They prefer to rewrite the programs since every programmer has a different way of thinking and programming, which will lengthen the development period and increase the development cost. At the same time, the frequent replacements of employees will increase the cost of enterprise management.

　　Due to the above reasons, we are determined to focus our efforts on the development career of BI products. We hope that software developers will be freed from the agonies resulting from high cost and low development and maintenance efficiency of the BI sector (report realization) in a software engineering implementation, and the BI sector will be performed by non-specialized programmers. The users will actually enjoy the value, satisfaction and joys from information products.

　　Second reason: to offer superior national information products is the mission of our career
　　We have been engaged in IT businesses for more than twenty years and thanks to the opportunities and our efforts we have made some fortunes, but it is not a great achievement for us to be proud of, because we do not think at the bottom of our hearts that money is the sole criterion of a successful career. We would not like to waste our IT experience and wisdom we gained from over twenty years' hard work in the IT field, and we would not like to be sky and silent when our children inquire what we have done for the IT industry. They will not take pride or find encouragement in what we have done in the past! We are determined to offer superior national information products that equal to and even outweigh foreign products, create a BI splendor and benefit BI product users. So we define our mission as: to integrate Chinese and Western culture and technology and to create superior national information products!

　　Third reason: to have foreseen the market opportunities of BI application
　　According to our experience in IT industry for over 20 years, application systems of various industries have gradually become mature with the development of software application and increasing popularity and constant upgrades of enterprise application systems. The data of enterprises, including both e-commerce are e-governance, like ERP, CRM, SCM, MIS and OA, were becoming increasingly comprehensive and massive. How to effectively integrate these mass data, analyze and extract more valuable information and change them into useful information to help enterprises with scientific management and provide correct foundations for decision-making is an application of business intelligence, which indicates the coming of BI's application times. At the same time, homemade BI products were unavailable in the market, which was occupied by foreign BI products unsuitable for the reality in China. So, we grasped these two extremely rare business opportunities and determined to focus on the development of BI products.

　　Fourth reason: to achieve the enterprise's high added-value and employees' high returns
　　Profit is the symbol of an enterprise's success, which is a most fundamental and practical weighing criterion. With the strong competitions in the domestic IT industry and poor profits, the enterprises find it is hard to survive, not to mention high added-value for the enterprises and high returns for the employees. How an enterprise overcomes the present difficulties is an extremely challenging and hard matter for the enterprise leaders. An enterprise will achieve abundant returns only when it finds programs in the IT fields which can rapidly increase the enterprise's profits.

　　The application of BI products is one of the new growth points of profit in the IT field in future which will rapidly develop. The demands for BI products increase fast both at home and abroad because BI products are indispensable for software application. If we can provide superior national BI products, and they are widely accepted and used in the market, their functions will become increasingly perfect due to our market promotion and sales efforts and the profit will grow steadily, like a snowball. It will be hard to predict how big the profit will be. The sales mode of such products is a "copying" marketing mode marked with a minor cycle , a speedy return and a wide sales area. Example one: Kingdee has over 200,000 clients in 2006. If 10% of the clients, namely 20,000 clients, are interested in BI and each client pays RMB 100,000 Yuan to purchase a set of BI product, we will achieve an income of RMB 0.2 billion Yuan. Example two: there are over 100,000 software developers in China, if every year 10% of the developers, namely 10,000 developers, need a set of BI product for software engineering, the yearly income will amount to RMB 0.1 billion Yuan, which means that we can make great fortunes easily. It is often said that few employees will achieve great success. But who will restate it if an enterprise can let its employees share such high value-added returns, which means the employees with ten years' working period will be able to get as much as other enterprises' employees with thirty years' working period and the employees can retire twenty years in advance to do what they prefer and enjoy a happy and free life? Only such employees will experience a real sense of belonging and only such an enterprise will become an admired information product and service supplier!