Combination of two swords to raise the Inspur together
----the historical review & prospect of the cooperation
between Jilin Tobacco and Inspur Software

At the beginning of 2002, after the sufficient demonstration and investigation, the decision-making level of Jilin Tobacco Company launched formally the major efforts of system construction of information development. Basing on development, long-term planning, respecting the reality and gradual improvement, the information construction of Jilin Tobacco Company has been put on a high starting point since the very beginning.

In the middle of March 2002, Jilin Tobacco Company invited relevant specialists from National Tobacco Monopoly Bureau, all provinces and cities, and the tobacco business to hold a fair, serious and high-level evaluation meeting for tender – invitation. By the general strength in its business and the implementation capacity for the solution of tobacco business, Inspur Software received high appraisal from the specialists. Entrusted by Jilin Tobacco Company, it undertook the development and project implementation of distribution resource administration system and monopoly administration system, which are the core of the information system of Jilin Tobacco Company.
At that time, there was no such province level tobacco company (monopoly bureau) to suggest adopting provincial core business system by the general concentration plan in whole province. Based on the attitude of responsibility for the development of Jilin Tobacco Company, Inspur Software and the information center of province company and other relevant companies started the arduous work of system planning program demonstration, from network to the main machine and the terminal equipments, from the system software to the application software, from development step to the implementation process, they have made abundant investigation and discussion for each aspect, even on the May Day of year 2002, the relevant key members of the cooperation of the two parties did not take one day for rest. Finally they reached the agreement and signed the system development and implementation contract on June 17th, which represented the start of entire formal cooperation between Inspur Software and Jilin Tobacco Company and the new stage of common promotion and development.

The distribution system is the core business system of the commercialized enterprise of tobacco company, which involves every people from the directors to the basic sale points, any detail of it links with the application of certain people. Everything succeeds with planning and fails without planning. The project management also addresses that the planning work is the premise and crux of the success of all projects, so the formulation, execution and control of planning go through from the start to finish; the unified working team that consists of our project team and persons from the information centers of Province Company and Changchun Branch have spent more than 5 months on the formulation and correction of plan, they worked strictly according the schedule, and check the execution result of the planning at the end of each relevant period and important milestone. Especially since the end of 2002, Inspur Software has started to implement thoroughly the CMM3 standard, and emphasized on the scietification and normalization of the project management. Because the project management is definitely not the personal business of the project manager, each member of the project team has to comprehend and execute the project from different levels, we have organized more than 30 times of project management training of project team organization by all means. Just the project documents of the distribution system of the project team are up to several megabytes.

The control is the guarantee for the success of the project. Because “change is absolute, and “no change” is relative, since the first half year of 2002 till now, within more than one year, and for such a big software development project, it will surely encounter with many changes of requirements, and the problems and difficulties may take place at any time. Thus we need a perfect control system; the project team made up of Tobacco Company and Inspur Software has clear procedure to deal with change, and treats all types of changes and problems according to the different level of change.

At the beginning of this year, in order to meet the needs of the business development and requirements from the National Bureau, Jilin Tobacco Company made two important decisions, one is to improve marketing model, which focuses on telephone visit sales model, and gradually decrease the “separated visit & delivery” and “combined visit & delivery” model of the main home visit sales, the new model requires much higher workload of the system, higher and more standard business operation process; the other one is to respond to the demand from the National Bureau, to remove the county level legal persons in the whole province of Jilin, let the legal person authority stay until region & city level companies, and change relevant business process. To adapt with these changes, we suggested relevant change plans and handed them to the project direction team after we have seriously analyzed and demonstrated the impact to the projects, within the required time, we fulfilled successfully all these tasks and always controlled the project within the estimated direction and range required by the development of project target.

The arduous effort and investment of the two parties resulted in abundant achievements. On November 25, 2003, Jilin Tobacco Company Liaoyuan Branch started to use formally the Inspur distribution system. Before it, the first test company of Jilin Tobacco Company – Changchun Branch had already operated entirely and stably the system in June, and forsaken the original tobacco sales system; in more than 5 months after it, other 9 regions and cities in the whole province started to use the Inspur distribution system with plans and steps, and all successfully fulfilled the change from old to new system in less than one month and operated formally and stably, thus it represented that the first tobacco sales network system of provincial general concentration model in China was formally put into overall production.

The series of high – tech application such as “open-type” operation system, “B/S frame & structure” application, the abundant “intermediates technology”, huge database administration system, and four – level network structure have injected abundant connotation to the construction and application of the Jilin Tobacco information system, and the “provincial general concentration of data, operation and business administration” laid solid base stone for the development toward modern enterprise of Jilin Tobacco Company, the information system, especially the construction of the distribution resource administration system of Jilin Tobacco Company has explored a new successful way in the development aspect of how to combine the high – tech with compatible business operation administration.

As the first IT company to provide the information construction application to the tobacco enterprise in China, Inspur Software further enhanced its implementation ability for the entire solution of the trade by the successful implementation of this project, and further showed to the trade at the same time that, Inspur Software had the capacity to help the tobacco enterprises to realize in short time the leap – over development from the original weak reality of information foundation, and directly stepped into the advanced level of efficient application of information system.