SinoServices

Consulting is a knowledge-intensive service, and knowledge is carried by people. SinoServices International Technologies (SNS) boasts a team of veteran experts –experts in logistics management, talented people in IT and various cutting-edge logistics information technologies, and professionals in IS planning and implementation as well as in logistics business and management. With a standardized management methodology and a mature, canonical consulting procedure in terms of team management and project consulting, we are able to provide a complete consulting report and maximize values for customers through our professional analysis method and occupational working altitude.

Since the 1990s, the constant progress and development of scientific technologies and economy, the globalized information network, the market globalization and the accelerated technical innovation and reform led to the increasingly intense competition in new product market. Logistics industry accounts for a big part in the national economic activities and the growth of modern logistics counts much on the informatization which becomes increasingly essential in the economic globalization and logistics internationalization.

It has been over 20 years since China began to promote IT application in enterprises. Generally speaking, almost 1,000 companies bought and implemented large management software, only 10-20% of them achieved desirable results though. It is mainly attributed to the generally insufficient awareness of information systems by the logistics companies of China. Meanwhile, the ingression of overseas competitors, as a result of China’s entry into WTO, the big gap of logistics development between China and foreign countries and the characteristics of logistics business urge Chinese logistics enterprises to introduce consulting service in the establishment of logistics information systems.

Over the recent years, the ever-emerging information technologies provide logistics enterprises with a number of choices of IT applications. But how to leverage on such technologies in a reasonable and comprehensive manner to suite a particular logistics company? The more advanced applications are unnecessarily better for a company, while an application should not be always cherished only because it is costly. The current requirements and future growth of a company, as well as the competition situation, input-output ratio and other factors should be taken into consideration. The question, however, is that logistics enterprises generally are in a lack of specialists in this aspect, and thus have no idea how to capitalize on the technologies to support the businesses. The introduction of external consulting service will help the enterprises better understand and use advanced technologies to achieve optimal cost-effectiveness.
At present, the logistics industry in China as a whole doesn’t have a high management level, with unstandardized operating process and low-level informatization. The logistics industry in developed countries, on the other hand, is a comparatively mature industry with low profit margin, where advanced management methods and suitable information systems are established. Attributed to the robust growth of Chinese economy and the its entry into WTO, many overseas MNCs in logistics industry view Chinese market as highly potential and march into China with their successful experiences and information systems. The domestic logistics enterprises have to face the competition with those MNCs in Chinese market in all aspects, and the state-of-the-art logistics information systems are the core to rival. Therefore, a big gap exists between the fact of low level of IT application and the target to challenge international advanced information systems. The introduction of consulting service with expertise in international advanced management and logistics information systems will help to bridge the gap.
Although Chinese logistics enterprises are on a fast track to grow, the logistics market here is unstable and the enterprise management is still under exploration. This force logistics enterprises to adjust their own market orientation, management mode, operating pattern, business process, organization structure and so on, which has become a characteristic of Chinese logistics industry in the current stage. Meanwhile, due to the fact that the enterprises are in a small scale generally with limited financial recourses, they prefer a solution with one-off planning and by-stages implementation. This requires all-around consideration on various development possibilities and system flexibility when a logistics information system is under construction. Only by drawing supports from external consulting service to broaden the vision, can an enterprise predict the changes during the development and plan, design and implement a flexible system.
To realize system- and network-based logistics business, the borders between departments and between geographic locations should be broken through. However, as a result of history, Chinese logistics industry currently has a big infrastructure, with low level of hardware which are mostly controlled separately, a lack of resource consolidation, and insufficient utilization of a tremendous number of logistics facilities. In order to maximize the cost-effectiveness, logistics companies would like to integrate external resources to enhance their competitiveness, wherein the information system is taken as a major technical measure. However, because the informatization levels of external resources are different, the system needs extensive interfaces. How to realize connection with a variety of external data and control over external data? This is a difficult challenge in technology, business process and even management decision-making. Enterprises need professional consulting service to provide powerful assistance.

Before an enterprise information system is proposed, the external consulting service should be introduced to give a training course on information system to the decision makers, including logistics concepts, industry status, key points of business process optimization, implementation methodology, important contents of system application, and implementation risk prevention, to help them properly understand logistics information systems, evaluate the benefit, impact and cost the system will bring about, work with the enterprise to build a project team, and set up targets, methodologies and QC criteria of the project team.
In the formal proposal and planning stage, the consulting service plays the most important role, as the works in this stage critical for the project. The external consulting service can offer professional know-how and skills to, based on the investigation on process and requirements inside the enterprise, comprehensively use key issue analysis, business process re-engineering and other cutting-edge analysis tools and technologies to answer a series of questions: How to construct an efficient internal management and operation system? How to optimize business process? What IT means, organization structure and performance assessment system should be adopted to meet the company’s requirements in strategy and process. Finally, a complete IT solution is worked out.
In the system implementation stage, the expertise and experience of external consulting service are required to arrange implementation schedule, coordinate among departments and staff, provide IT support, make a summary for each step during implementation, tackle with abnormalities and so on. In this stage, external consulting service should also be provided for training of all company staff to enable them to understand the system benefits, their own roles in the system and the changes they have to face.
When the system implementation comes to important milestones or the end, the external consultants are required to help evaluate the results and define the achievements. External assistance is more likely to be professional and objective when the implement results are being appraised, so that the problems in implementation can be identified and suggestions provided to amplify the achievements and amend the existing defects.