Visiting famous IT companies | Xu Hongcan, Chairman of Nantian Information: Focusing on the main business and moving forward against the wind, adhering to long-termism in the face of uncertainty

A sudden epidemic has affected the development of the global economy, and the domestic economy has also been greatly affected. However, digital enterprises have actively promoted online business during the epidemic, and some technology companies have achieved counter-cyclical growth during the epidemic. BP Business Partners recognized the "2020 China Digital Ecosystem Counter-cyclical Growth Enterprises" at the China Digital Ecosystem Heroes Conference, and Nantian Information was one of the listed companies.

This is not only the result of the company's assessment of the situation and proactive actions, but also the reward for focusing on its core business and innovative development.

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The media group communicated with Xu Hongcan, Party Secretary and Chairman of Nantian Information

In order to enable companies that have achieved counter-cyclical growth to share their valuable experiences with the industry, jointly promote industrial development, and help achieve digital transformation, BP Business Partners organized a series of "Visiting Famous IT Companies" activities, and joined hands with People's Political Consultative Conference Network, Sohu.com, Economic Network, Financial Electronicization, China Financial Computer, IT168, 51CTO and ecological partners to visit Nantian Information.

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Industry elites accompanied Ni Jia, vice president of Nantian Information, to visit the Nantian Information exhibition hall and learn about its development history.

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In-depth dialogue with Guo Xiujuan, founder and president of BP Business Partners

Xu Hongcan, Party Secretary and Chairman of Nantian Information

Ecological partners discussed development opportunities with Nantian Information. The media group interviewed Xu Hongcan, focusing on future strategic layout, development planning, and technology direction.

Focus on core business and achieve growth against the trend

Guo Xiujuan, founder and president of BP Business Partners:

First of all, could you please tell us what arrangements and deployments the company has made in response to the outbreak of the epidemic?

Xu Hongcan, Party Secretary and Chairman of Nantian Information:

During this epidemic, the Party Central Committee made decisive decisions and led the people of the whole country in a thrilling and arduous struggle against the epidemic, and achieved a decisive victory, which is a blessing for the entire Chinese nation.

Nantian Information also attaches great importance to it and actively responds to it. At the beginning of the epidemic, the company issued an emergency notice on the one hand, prohibiting employees from traveling to Hubei in principle from that day on; on the other hand, it required employees in Hubei to work from home and the office in Wuhan to be closed urgently. As company managers, we are primarily concerned about the physical health and life safety of our employees. For this reason, the company held many meetings of the Party Committee and management to deploy and coordinate epidemic prevention and control work throughout the epidemic.

At the same time, Nantian Information also pays attention to the security of major systems. A team of about 400 people has been working at customer sites to ensure the stable operation of financial systems, transportation systems, etc.

After the epidemic prevention and control work has made phased progress, Nantian Information has adopted a flexible office method in line with the requirements of various provinces for epidemic prevention and control, and actively organized the resumption of work and production to ensure that the company's business can return to normal as soon as possible and the company's efficiency can be improved.

In addition, Nantian Information has also quickly developed some new products in line with the needs of epidemic prevention and control, such as contactless body temperature screening solutions, epidemic big data platform solutions, Nantian Anti-epidemic Data Collection Assistant, etc. It also released epidemic prevention and control news through the party building APP "Yunling Pioneer" and expedited the launch of anti-epidemic special sections to assist government departments in quickly completing related work of epidemic prevention and control.

Guo Xiujuan, founder and president of BP Business Partners:

We are also very pleased to see that Nantian Information achieved counter-cyclical growth during the first half of the epidemic. Please tell us in detail how this good result was achieved.

Xu Hongcan, Party Secretary and Chairman of Nantian Information:

In the first half of 2020, Nantian Information achieved operating income of 1.688 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 40%, and net profit increased by 54% year-on-year. Such results were hard-won under the epidemic. This is the result of the joint efforts of the company's entire leadership team and all cadres and employees.

First of all, Nantian Information focuses on developing five major businesses, and almost all of its revenue growth comes from these businesses. Among them, the software business continues to build core capabilities, the integrated service business continues to grow and become stronger, the product business continues to carry out research and development and promotion around the needs of smart outlets, the smart city business has also entered a rapid growth channel, and the innovative business has also achieved remarkable results after several years of development.

In the first half of 2020, Nantian Information also completed a private placement to increase the company's R&D investment in its main business and solve the problem of insufficient liquidity and innovation investment during business growth. A total of 650 million yuan was raised this time, and it was issued at a premium, which fully reflects investors' confidence in the future development of Nantian Information.

Secondly, Nantian Information has also iterated and upgraded its core products and solutions. Because technology is developing very fast, many products and solutions need to be continuously upgraded after they are launched. At the same time, Nantian Information has also launched some new products and solutions, including distributed microservice application platform, mobile collaborative office platform, blockchain basic service application platform, etc., to continuously enhance the company's core competitiveness.

Third, seize new market opportunities in a timely manner. While continuing to focus on financial digitalization, Nantian Information is also paying attention to the digitalization of other industries and has made layouts in the fields of smart cities and education digitalization. As a key enterprise in Yunnan Province, Nantian Information pays attention to and seizes new opportunities in Yunnan's digital construction projects and industrial layout in a timely manner.

In addition, another important development opportunity this year is the creation of information technology, which has great potential in the party, government, military, finance and other industries. In March this year, Beijing Nantian Software Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Nantian Information, officially obtained the double-A confidentiality qualification for software development and system integration issued by the State Security Bureau, and has the conditions to carry out confidential business, laying a good foundation for the company to carry out related business.

Fourth, Nantian Information continues to strengthen the company's internal digital construction, determines the digital strategy of "integration, cloud computing, intelligence, and sharing", and successively establishes internal management platforms including an integrated business, economic, and financial management system, forming a digital operation and control system to support business development, which has played a solid supporting role in the company's operation management and performance growth.

Ecosystem partners are an important factor for growth

Guo Xiujuan, founder and president of BP Business Partners:

In the process of achieving these results, what role did Nantian Information’s ecological partners play?

Xu Hongcan, Party Secretary and Chairman of Nantian Information:

Ecological partners are undoubtedly a very important factor in the growth of Nantian Information. At the beginning of 2019, an important theme proposed by Nantian Information was symbiosis, emphasizing the need to create a symbiotic ecology, strive to integrate into and participate in more ecosystems, and provide support for corporate development through ecological cooperation, which is also very critical.

For example, Nantian Information attaches great importance to integration into the financial ecosystem. First, it participates in the formulation of standards and specifications of the People's Bank of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, etc.; second, it establishes long-term cooperative relationships with more financial partners, including cooperation with financial technology companies established by major banks, on the one hand, jointly exporting technological capabilities with them, on the other hand, enriching products and solutions, broadening sales channels, supporting each other, and jointly integrating into the national information innovation strategy.

Another dimension of ecological construction also includes the trust creation ecology. Everyone is integrated into the national trust creation strategy. Only through the support of corresponding system software and application software can we provide customers with complete trust creation-based solutions; Nantian Information is working hard to adapt to Kunpeng, Tongxin, Kylin and other systems. At the same time, it actively joins the ecology of Alibaba, Tencent and other companies, and exerts its efforts on the application of financial scenarios. Although necessary investment is required in the early stage, mutual promotion can be achieved in the later stage. Through scenario-based applications, Nantian Information's information products can also cooperate with software to participate together.

In general, ecological construction is becoming more and more important to us. At the beginning of this year, Nantian Information also set up an ecological partner department, which is a very critical measure to centralize the functions that were originally scattered in various business departments, coordinate the construction and development of the company's overall ecology, and use the power of ecology to enhance digital service capabilities.

Guo Xiujuan, founder and president of BP Business Partners:

Just now you talked about the ecological cooperation with Alibaba and Tencent. They all have their own financial industry solutions. Where are our differentiation and advantages compared with them?

Xu Hongcan, Party Secretary and Chairman of Nantian Information:

Although Alibaba and Tencent both have their own solutions, they are still some distance away from customer applications, because the ecosystems of Alibaba and Tencent are developed based on their own large platforms. If they want to expand into the financial industry, they must adopt a platform + ecology approach and provide complete solutions to financial industry customers through resource integration.

It is based on this consideration that Alibaba announced the establishment of the "Financial Core Pioneer Alliance" at the Cloud Summit in June this year. Nantian Information is one of the alliance members. Tencent is also building the "Jin Teng Plan" to carry out cooperation around the financial ecosystem. Nantian Information is also actively involved in it and carries out corresponding cooperation. They are very strong in IaaS and PaaS platforms. We are more focused and professional in SaaS layer-based financial business and application scenario solutions.

New infrastructure will bring more opportunities to the industry

Guo Xiujuan, founder and president of BP Business Partners:

Currently, "new infrastructure" has become a hot topic in the industry. What new opportunities are particularly worth looking forward to for Nantian Information, and how will we seize them?

Xu Hongcan, Party Secretary and Chairman of Nantian Information:

In the future, the proportion of digital economy in the national economy will become higher and higher, and "new infrastructure" is the infrastructure of the digital economy era. When the infrastructure of the entire economy undergoes major changes, it will undoubtedly bring a lot of opportunities.

First, the large amount of investment brought by the construction of new infrastructure will bring many opportunities to related manufacturers and integrators. Taking 5G as an example, the direct opportunities it brings include the construction of base stations, communication equipment, and the increase in mobile phone consumption; with the development of 5G technology, many application scenarios will also be born, and new product and business needs will be driven, including data center construction and related applications, and many innovative companies will emerge.

Secondly, in the process of building the "new infrastructure", information technology will also usher in great development opportunities. China must solve the bottleneck problems. In the process of solving these problems, many adjustments must be made from the bottom layer, the middle layer to the application layer, from chips, operating systems, databases, middleware to application software, which will definitely bring broad market opportunities.

Third, the "new infrastructure" will further promote the development of the entire industrial Internet. In the process of industrial Internet development, there will be integration between industries and industries, and between industries and technologies, including mobile Internet, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and blockchain. This integration will break many traditional models and contain many new opportunities. As a digital service provider, Nantian Information will actively seize historical opportunities and participate in the construction of more "new infrastructure" projects with its core capabilities.

Fourth, during the entire process of "new infrastructure", Nantian Information will pay close attention to financial technology, because the development of "new infrastructure" will also have a very big impact on financial technology. The application scenarios will be further enriched, and the channels and services of financial institutions will also undergo many changes, and changes mean opportunities.

In short, in the future, Nantian Information will combine the opportunities brought by the "new infrastructure" to launch more products suitable for various application scenarios; at the same time, we will also pay close attention to the new "species" that emerge in this process, actively participate in these new ecological systems, and achieve cross-border integration. Nantian Information must be fully prepared for this.

Adhere to long-termism amid uncertainty

Guo Xiujuan, founder and president of BP Business Partners:

At the Digital Ecosystem Heroes Conference on August 22, you mentioned uncertainty and long-termism, and the response from participants was particularly strong. Today I would like to ask you again, how should long-termism be applied to corporate management?

Xu Hongcan, Party Secretary and Chairman of Nantian Information:

From a broader perspective, China is facing a major change that has not been seen in a century, and the external environment is also undergoing various changes. Regarding the issue of uncertainty, I emphasized at the company's internal cadre meeting in 2019 that this year we are talking more about how to cope with the uncertainty of the external environment through continuous improvement of cognitive ability, learning ability, and agile response ability, and adhere to long-termism. Only in this way can we better promote the improvement of the company's management capabilities and promote the development of the business.

Nantian Information adheres to the long-termism in the following six aspects. First, adhere to the company's 12355 strategy and continuously build the company's core capabilities. Building core capabilities is difficult, and even if there are losses in the short term, it must continue to invest according to the established ideas.

Second, we adhere to Nantian Information's business philosophy and corporate culture. On the one hand, we convey Nantian Information's business philosophy and principles to employees and partners; on the other hand, we show employees Nantian Information's corporate culture, organizational model, and management policies.

Third, adhere to the independent management model. Practice has proved that this is also a successful management model of Nantian Information. Because the company is large in scale and has many teams, if everyone is broken down into small business units around the company's overall strategy, each business unit is an independent business entity, and implements independent management and independent decision-making, it can quickly respond to external market changes and customer needs.

Fourth, we must adhere to the concept of innovation-driven development. Technology is changing rapidly, and we must adhere to the concept of innovative development and continue to quickly apply the latest underlying technologies to industry application scenarios.

Fifth, adhere to the strategic human resources system. If an enterprise wants to realize its strategic goals, it must have a corresponding human resources system to support it. To this end, we have established Nantian University to carry out systematic training for key talents, business talents, and professional talents, including business philosophy and corporate culture training.

Sixth, adhere to digital operations. On the one hand, we must empower customers' digital transformation, and on the other hand, we must empower ourselves, continuously improve internal operational efficiency, build an agile organization, and enable enterprises to respond to changes in the external environment more quickly and flexibly. This is also one of the long-termisms that Nantian Information must adhere to.

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