Customer Stories

As the Lunar New Year in China bids farewell to the truly challenging 2020 and looks forward to a 2021 that can turn the tables as the New Year greetings wish, since my earliest memories of every Spring Festival as a child, I have always felt a sense of aloofness and arrogance, thinking that the Spring Festival blessings like “congratulations on your wealth” and “may good luck follow you” are overly mundane and exaggerated.

This Spring Festival, I miss the blessings from relatives and friends whom I once looked down upon more than ever. There has never been a year when I have been so eager for the new year to come, to bid farewell to the virus, to fear, to masks and to isolation. In 2020, we have strived and persisted over and over again. Why can’t the blessings for 2021 come true?

The theme of Luo Zhenyu’s New Year’s Eve speech in Wuhan in 2021 was “Growing Up”. In 2020, grown-up China faced many challenges from around the world. In the past year, the colleagues of ESiC, just like China, have also grown up. We have been negligent, made mistakes, and been questioned, but more often we have been trusted, encouraged, recognized and accepted. The people of ESiC have gradually seen their own value, and the company’s procurement strategic management ideas have been recognized by more and more enterprises.

Growth and Gratitude – My 2020 Kehua Project Experience

Shanghai Kehua Bio-Engineering Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Kehua Bio”) is one of the clients that ESiC successfully deployed and implemented in the challenging year of 2020. Friends familiar with the IVD industry may not be unfamiliar with Kehua Bio. A brief introduction: Kehua Bio is a global Chinese IVD listed company, originated in Shanghai, founded in 1981. The company focuses on core technology fields such as immunoassay, biochemical assay, and molecular assay.

The Kehua project was my first client project as a project manager. Mr. Zhou Zhengfeng was the project leader from Kehua. The project was initiated at the end of April 2020, a time when the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic was extremely tense. At that time, as a listed company for COVID-19 nucleic acid testing, Kehua’s multiple production lines for immunology and biochemistry were in high demand, and the workload of the employees was highly saturated. I was quite impressed that Mr. Zhou still resolutely demanded the project to be launched as soon as possible despite the extremely tense external environment. Due to the impact of the epidemic, our kick-off meeting had to be conducted via online video. However, this did not dampen the enthusiasm of Kehua colleagues for the digital transformation of procurement.

At the kick-off meeting, Kehua’s vision for the project was always kept in mind: hoping that the e-Sourcing system would help Kehua achieve digital management of its procurement work, improve its procurement process, and realize strategic procurement management. Throughout the different stages of the project, such as the requirements analysis and UAT phases, Jenny’s procurement strategy sharing sessions were consistently integrated into the entire project process.

The application of the sharing session content by the colleagues of Kehua Bio is also a highlight of this project. To support the implementation of the procurement strategic management and to manage materials more rationally, the colleagues of Kehua Bio have meticulously sorted out all the materials for several rounds without getting tired of it. During this period, they attached great importance to communication with ESiC. Besides frequent communication with me through phone calls, WeChat and video calls, Manager Lu from the procurement department even led the key members of the department to visit Suzhou and spent a whole day consulting with the category experts of ESiC on the logic of category classification and resolving the difficulties in the existing classification one by one. After returning to the company, they patiently communicated and explained with other departments (R&D, finance, IT), modified the category tree in the ERP system or created new categories, achieving consistency in category classification between the ERP and SRM (e-Sourcing) systems. Through cross-departmental collaboration, they accomplished a milestone work. It is truly admirable and respectable for the spirit of change of the colleagues of Kehua Bio.

In early September 2020, we officially launched the first phase of eight modules for the headquarters of Kehua Bio-Engineering Co., Ltd. In early January 2021, we completed the first phase launch of the Kehua Laboratory System (factory). It must be said that Kehua Bio-Engineering Co., Ltd. is another successful customer case for ESiC. The successful launch of a customer’s system is always inseparable from the support of the customer’s IT department. Here, we also sincerely thank the leaders and colleagues of Kehua’s IT department for their active cooperation and many constructive suggestions, which have made the procurement department colleagues’ usage process smoother. Thank you for your silent efforts and dedication behind the launch of the ESiC e-Sourcing system.

The successful launch of the Kehua project has not only brought us customers but also friendship. I will never forget the ice-breaking dinner carefully arranged by Mr. Zhou at the project’s initiation, which brought together the SRM teams of Kehua and ESiC. I will never forget the warm welcome and thoughtful parking arrangements by Kehua colleagues whenever we visited their headquarters or factory, as well as the cups of warm and refreshing coffee. I will never forget the exquisite tea cups presented by Kehua colleagues during Christmas and New Year as a token of gratitude… This trust and friendship are the greatest support and motivation for me and the e-Sourcing project. As the implementation party, I can only convert this support into the driving force for the successful launch of the project, pay more attention to the actions and effects of the client during the project implementation, and live up to the Kehua colleagues’ aspiration for improving procurement management efficiency and achieving digitalized procurement management.

The 2021 Kehua Project is still ongoing and has not been completed yet.

The Kehua project is not yet completed. The tasks of the second and third phases remain arduous. We hope that in 2021, ESiC and Kehua will “work independently, each improving on their own, mutually recognize each other, and support each other in times of need.”

Teacher Luo’s New Year’s Eve speech also mentioned, “Some people will be trapped in the digital system and even be replaced by it, while others will become stronger because of the digital system. Whether digitalization is a sweet or poisonous thing depends on whether you are responsible for people or for things.”

Teacher Jenny has been constantly preaching to ESiC’s project managers and product managers: When assisting customers in implementing the SRM system, everyone must demonstrate ESiC’s value. The Kehua project has enabled me to truly understand this: For every system, every module and every function that ESiC implements for customers, it is not merely an online process or tool. Compared to simply installing a procurement management system for customers, we are more concerned about helping customers sort out their procurement strategies and management systems through the implementation of the procurement system, truly implementing and consolidating procurement management concepts and processes, and achieving outstanding procurement management.

Shirley Wang Ping Written on February 13th, 2021.