Haier

  “For the first time a Chinese enterprise has been invited to WCOA over the past 110 years. Haier was the only Chinese representative releasing achievements among the 8 global leading enterprises invited to the congress. Haier’s innovation mode attracted extensive attention, which justified its exploration orientation in the age of Internet.”

Though unfamiliar to many people, WCOA was the well-deserved palace in the eyes of accountants, known as the “Olympics” in the accounting field in the world. The loftiness of WCOA is because of not only its unparalleled standard, but its rigor in selecting the attendees. That’s why WCOA has always been a pain in the heart of Chinese enterprises which had never appeared on the congress since its launch over a century ago.

On Nov. 10th, 2014, however, this gap was filled by Haier, and the embarrassment finally ended. Tan Lixia, the SVP and CFO of Haier was invited to WCOA and shared Haier’s experience in business mode innovation at the closing conference. Together with Haier were another 7 world-renowned enterprises.

Themed “Prospect into 2020: Draw Development Experience, Create a Better Future”, the WCOA was aimed at constructing an Internet-oriented financial management mode through the brainstorming of global accountants, attracting nearly 4000 accounting professionals from 138 countries and regions. The achievements of Haier’s innovation mode were recommended by both CICPA and AIAPA, winning the opportunity of being released on the congress drawing the global attention together with BT, Yahoo, etc.

An the opening ceremony in the afternoon at Nov. 10th, Charles Tilley, CEO of the Royal Chartered Institute of Management Accountants welcomed Haier, observing that “Haier is one of the most innovative enterprises in the world”. Tan Lixia arrived in Rome with Haier’s innovation mode and vivid cases as one of the female enterprise representatives ever, which added new atmosphere to the 100-year-old WCOA.

Tan said that it was Haier’s platform strategy that brought it to WCOA. The congress was concerned about two challenges. One was open human resources, and the other was the earthshaking influences of Internet technology on enterprises. Haier’s “platform-based enterprise, entrepreneurial maker employees and customized user experience” not only were in conformity with the congress, but have harvested preliminary fruits. Tan brought her Haier’s newest exploration and the most vivid cases.

Haier’s truck-based microenterprise best explained its concept marketing of talents. On the other logistics information platform, the 90000 cars and 180000 service personnel can compete for orders through mobile terminals, thus providing the best experience for users. Compared with Haier’s who has absorbed external resources into its business ecosystem, most of its attendees of the congress are still in the traditional stage of human resource outsourcing. Haier’s “microenterprise” caused a heated discussion and some attendees sought access to Tan even after the forum.

According to Doctor Mu Sheng from Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, haier informed the world of the orientation of organizational transformation in the age of Internet with practices. The enterprise boundary has long been the greatest challenge for traditional accounting, while Haier’s finance has been totally integrated into the platform ecosystem instead of simply meddling with instrument panels after its transformation to an open platform. Mu Sheng believed that Haier’s practices proved that Ram. Charan’s idea that human resources report to CFO was finally realized.

Another innovation case Tan Lixia shared was how haier’s financial personnel have become efficient cooperators in the open resource system. The employee Liu Shuai collected the capital demands from about 400 clients and promoted the establishment of a reciprocal system after negotiation with the bank which could provide a credit line of 200 million RMB, facilitating small clients with loans. This case reflected Haier’s self-driven mechanism under the win-win model of individual-goal combination.Quoting CEO Zhang’s “enterprises are humans and humans are enterprises”, Tan put an emphasis on humans despite the importance of Internet and new technologies. She believed it was the innovative employees themselves that created these wonderful stories.

Ash Noah, Vice President of AICPA believed that Haier ranked front in the world in terms of its organization transformation, management innovation and financial system transformation, which led the trend of our times and set an example for other enterprises. The global experts, scholars and professionals in accounting and business and other attendees all expected the opportunity to have a deeper understanding of Haier. Some overseas attendees even requested to take photos with the local staff members of Haier after the congress. All the excellent stories about the employees’ innovation became Haier stories Tan Lixia told to the whole world. Hearing the stories, a journalist with Chartered Global Management Accountant expressed his sincere compliment to tan, “Your performance on the forum is amazing! Those excellent stories even stole the thunder of the whole event!”

Behind the excellence stood perspiration. When Tan Lixia received the invitation, she thought it were just a keynote speech and there won’t be any problem since she had a knowledge of English. But later she was informed that it would be a forum instead of a keynote speech, which would be harder for her. Then she was told that there would also be live debate, which caused her great stress. From then on, every day Tan Lixia would get up at 2:00 in the morning to practice English. Having experienced this extremely difficult “reality show”, she is deeply aware that with the future exploration of Haier’s innovation mode, the platform will have more to tell to the world, which raises an urgent requirement for a better command of English to every platform leader.

During the intervals of the congress, Tan Lixia looked around the Auditorium Parco Della Musica, finding that the central air-conditioner was Haier’s MRV, which unquestionably turned out to be a highlight, but except, no more. Standing in the center of the international stage, Tan Lixia deeply felt the supporting and decisive role enterprise platforms play in realizing individual values.

The nest morning after returning from Rome, Tan Lixia received an email from the chairman of the congress, telling her that the innovation cases had been unloaded on the Internet for the real-time sharing of the attendees and that she was expected to reply and discuss on the emails from the readers.

The wind of microenterprise has blown from Rome to the whole world. For over 100 years, a Chinese enterprise first attended the WCOA. Of the 8 enterprises invited, Haier was the only Chinese representative releasing achievements on the forum. All these proved the correctness of our exploration orientation. While we were promoting management accounting, many enterprises even didn’t know that management accounting is a system, and it’s impossible to build an Internet system with the traditional way of thinking. As early as 3 years ago, we integrated the separated functions into the FU organic platform. In terms of the theme of the WCOA this time, our proactive exploration was of global significance.

It’s early to understand something but difficult to put it into practice. And the difficulty lies in opening up. Rome and Qin Dynasty grew into great powers nearly at the same time, but the former was mending roads while the latter was building the Great Wall at around the 200s BC. Qin Dynasty completed the 5000-kilometer Great Wall, while Rome ended up with 150-thousand-kilometer roads, so it’s not difficult to tell which was isolated and which was open. Anyway, the Great Wall could not protect the Chinese people from their enemies but the result of opening up is that every road leads to Rome.

9 days to go before the HGEC and Haier's 30th anniversary celebration

(Translator-editor:Haier New Media Zhou Xiaoming)