China Petroleum Financial Management Information System

In early 1996, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), in view of present financial management situation of petroleum industry, decided to set up China Petroleum Financial Management Information System according to the needs of the reformation and opening, and the economic development of the social market of our country. This decision symbolized that the financial management of petroleum industry began to move towards normalization, standardization, modernization and scientification; and also symbolized that the financial management style of petroleum enterprises will be changed radically. On 19th January 1998, China Petroleum Financial Management Information System passed the expert evaluation which was organized by the CNPC Science & Technology Bureau, and the evaluation members were the domestic famous experts and scholars in the domains of information system, finance and accounting. The evaluation committee thinks that “the design idea of China Petroleum Financial Management Information System is advanced and in the leading position among the domestic similar system, it came up to the global advanced level in application scale and operation benefit.”

In 1999, CNPC was regrouped. In order to meet the needs of listing on the stock markets abroad of the corporation after regrouping, ensure that the financial reports and financial information announcement are in accordance with the international accounting norms and the demands of the securities management organization of U.S and Hong Kong. From 18th October 1999, we made improvement on a large scale basing on the original system. Through this improvement project, the development and the construction of “China Petroleum Financial Management Information System version 5.0” was finished.

During this improvement project, China Petroleum Co. Ltd cooperated with Price Water House Coopers (PWC), Inspur Genersoft, Liaohe research institute, taking nearly 8 months to finish the project according to the plan, set up a large financial network system that covers more than 1800 accounting entities, 112 business units, 4 professional sections and the headquarter of the whole corporation, 550 servers online and 14800 customer terminators. At present, the system works stably; it can make financial reports that meet domestic stock system accounting norms and international accounting norms; it meets the demand of announcing financial information and has certain financial analyzing function, and fulfils the creation of KPI (Key Performance Indicator) reports.

The setup and development of China Petroleum Financial Management Information System is not only a software engineering, but also touches all aspects of the petroleum financial management and is a large system engineering that integrates innovation, management, finance, accounting and information. It contains contents in the fields such as institutional framework adaptation, accounting entity setup, financial reports procedure rationalization, setup of the accounting system of stock system, reconstruction of new coding system, section cost accounting, software improvement, personnel training and technology support, etc. The following is the introduction of technological work of China Petroleum Financial Management Information System.

China Petroleum Financial Management Information System adopts modern communication technology, network technology, computer technology and the information technology, fulfils the work such as collecting, transmitting, processing, stocking and managing relevant data of finance and assets; it can make financial reports that are in accordance with domestic and international accounting norms and it has certain analyzing and deciding function. Form the objective of design, this system contains three levels, i.e. business - processing, management - analyzing and decision - supporting. Therefore, this system is neither usual financial software nor a normal system that processes accounts or statements, it is a super large network system that takes modern technology as method, fits with international and domestic financial information – processing demand and integrates modern financial management idea and method.

China Petroleum Financial Management Information System contains five sub-systems – financial analysis sub-system, assets sub-system, office automation sub-system, KPI reporting sub-system and network sub-system.

Development and construction methods of the system

1. Ideas of internationalization of system design and localization of development implementation
   During the system design, we keep to select system – improving plan together with PWC; PWC provides general method that is adopted internationally, we provide the practical situation of PetroChina and implement the design plan, thus ensuring that we designed consolidated statements sub-system, KPI reporting sub-system, general account sub-system of financial information system and the correction plans of assets UOP depreciation provision functions in a relative short period. And the member of the project team of original China Petroleum Financial Management Information System finished software programming and system implementation. Therefore, the whole improvement project can be assured in a relative short period and by relative low cost and the predetermined objective can be achieved.

2. Take life cycle method as main method, prototype method as complementary method
   The method of developing China Petroleum Financial Management Information System is taking “life cycle method” as main method, “prototype method” as complementary method, taking “life cycle method” to construct the main framework of the system and taking “prototype method” to research some system function module thus not only ensuing the reasonability of the whole system and orderly developing progress, but it is also favorable to accelerate the research steps, shorten the developing cycle and make the system in accordance with practical situation.
   Following the “life cycle method”, the whole developing process of the system can be divided into 9 stages, i.e. feasibility study, system analysis, system general design, system detail design, system implementation, system test, system pilot project, system promotion and system maintenance, etc. There are relative strict boundary between the stages, and only after certain evaluation or check & acceptance to the content of one state, the work of the next stage can be carried on. And the work of the next stage also should be carried on according strictly to the content of the former stage that has already passed the check & acceptance.
   Basing on the life cycle method, the development of some module of China Petroleum Financial Management Information System adopts “prototype method”. It is a system model constructed rapidly by the system developing persons according to their recognition of original system and referring to existing system prototype. Then they carried on a series of discussion and correction around this model with users. The developing progress is a progress of moving in cycles and exploring continuously. At the beginning stage, the users’ and developing persons’ recognition of the final function of the system is uncompleted and simple. Following the setup, demonstration and correction of the system prototype, the contact between system – developing persons and users and the deeper understanding between the two parties, the system functions were improving continually, thus making users satisfied. The development of KPI reporting system adopts prototype method.

3.  Adopting module technology to accelerate the developing progress of software and improve the quality of programs
   Although the structuralized program – designing method before brought a lot of improvement to the information system, it did not solve radically the problems such as the maintainability and expandability of the software. And only by accumulating more standard program base can neither increase greatly the importance of the position where the software situates nor reduce the work quantity of the development. Because in the structuralized program – designing method, it is not “target” and “data structure” but “process” and “operation” that are regarded as the center when constructing the system and designing the program.
   Therefore, during the progress of software development, we continually accumulated, summarized and continually studied new technology; we adopted facing the target method of analyzing, designing and realizing to develop a set of multipliable modules that were applicable to the information system – inquiry module, aid module, condition-filtering module and arranging module, etc. The successful application of these modules accelerated the developing process of our information system and improved the quality of the programs.

4. Integrating two structure, C/S and B/S, basing on the idea of database
   China Petroleum Financial Management Information System adopted Sco Unix operation system, NT operation system, SYBASE database, Liveware Web applied service program of Netscape, JavaScript programming language and Powerbuilder developing tool; it adopted C/S (Customer/Server) structure and B/S structure in system structure; it includes not only the business-handling module that takes online business-handling (OLTP) as the dominance, but also management & analysis and decision-supporting modules of online analysis (OLAP). The technology guarantees the advance and reasonability of China Petroleum Financial Management Information System.
   
   KPI reporting system developed data extraction module that extracts, assembles, processes and handles the exterior data, then organizes the data according to the time and unit equal dimension degree, finally adopts Web technology to carry out KPI indicator display, DrillDown (drilling analysis) and BreakDown (indicator structure analysis).

Technological Characteristics

1. To utilize data-sharing technology, face financial report procedure, realize the flatness, fineness and specialization of the financial data - processing

2. To realize KPI reporting system and UOP adjustment basing on database technology

3. To realize the coupling of KPI reporting system and other subsystems by data-extracting technology

4. To realize analyzing functions of DrillDown and BreakDown and so on basing on Internet technology

5. To realize cooperated statements by “fictitious account set” method

6. Openness and expandability
   UNIX operation system, SYBASE database, network RCP/IP agreement, Web technology possess good openness and expandability themselves, and laid foundation for the future development of China Petroleum Financial Management Information System in technological continualness and expendability.

7. Safe and reliability technology
   In China Petroleum Financial Management Information System, the system has relative high secret maintainability, security and reliability assured by adopting the following system technology and solving plan.

8. Composing authorization technology