Industry Focus: Pathway of Digital Transformation for Group Treasury and Finance Companies

In the context of the fast development of information technology, it has turned out to be an industrial focus for the large group treasury and finance companies to utilize the innovative science and technology like big data, AI and blockchain to realize digital transformation of corporate finance. Zhu Jianxiang, Senior Vice President of iSoftStone explained the key points of such digital transformation in an exclusive interview with Chinanews.com on November 26, 2019.

The Group Treasury and Finance Company Industry Development Summit 2019 was recently held in Chongqing. It discussed the hot topics of group treasury, capital management, bill management, finance sharing, digital transformation, RPA robot, blockchain, etc. and concentrated on the pathway of innovative development and digital transformation of the corporate finance sector.

As a leading software and IT provider in China, iSoftStone has more than 90 branches and 25 global delivery centers in 36 cities around the world with more than 50,000 employees.

In the interview with Chinanews.com, Zhu Jianxiang explained that digital transformation may vary in terms of approaches and considerations in different sectors and enterprises. With respect to the treasury management of large groups and the finance companies acting as financial institutions, firstly they should better utilize the available data of capital resources for big data analysis and risk control management; secondly they should cover from desktop business management to holistic processing at mobile terminals; thirdly the new technologies like facial recognition and robot are used for digitalization, automation and normalization of the traditional manual businesses so as to achieve the holistic digital intelligent management.

According to Zhu, iSoftStone provides services to 110 of the 255 licensed finance companies in China. The digital transformation of this sector remains in its infancy, and its progress is mainly affected by finance companies' prioritization of big data analysis and their urgency of improving intelligent management proficiency. The finance companies of Dongfang Electric Corporation, Genertec and China Southern Airlines took the lead in digital transformation. Three years ago, iSoftStone assisted Genertec's finance company in building a platform on financial data decision, analysis and display. The platform offers visualized display and data analysis of the conventional hardcopy and softcopy statements in a multi-dimensional and multi-indicator manner when needed, e.g. the company's capital changes of all its bank accounts, and analysis of client contribution based on loan balance and settlement amount. It is foreseeable that more enterprises will apply the digital management.

As the unique municipality directly under the Central Government in the central and western regions of China, Chongqing is vigorously promoting digital industrialization and industrial digitalization to "empower economy and enrich life" by intelligence. In 2018, Chongqing's digital economy totaled 715.7 billion yuan, ranking second in western China, and its share in the local GDP reached 35.1 percent, ranking first in western China.

Zhu Jianxiang believes that Chongqing holds a prominent position in financial innovation and digital economy in China. The solid foundation of local manufacturing industry implies huge demand for digital transformation, e.g. the whole process of procurement and production of the manufacturing industry has a big appetite for efficient capital management. In addition, Chongqing's enterprises also highly anticipate a smoother capital chain centered on core enterprises that connects upstream supply and downstream production and sales, and breaks the bottleneck of financing. ISoftStone attaches great importance to this issue and looks forward to going deeper into Chongqing's finance diversification to have more profound cooperation with local financial institutions and enterprises and thus improve the capital management level of the enterprises in Chongqing.