Chapter 187: Chapter 187: I want to start a company
The father and son returned to the provincial capital with some small gains. That night, Mei Yiliang brought Cai Hong, who was already visibly pregnant, to welcome Feng Zhenchang and the others.
During dinner, Feng Zhenchang talked excitedly about the negotiations with the foreigners. Everyone had seen the foreigners, but no one had dealt with them before, so they were all very interested in the two of them getting to know them closely.
'You didn't see that foreigner, he was tall and strong. He walked in front of everyone, blocking the view of the woman following behind, who was about the same height as Cai Hong. He was probably two metres tall, and at least 200 kilograms. He even sounded strange when he said hello.'
'Your Mandarin isn't very good either.' Mei Qiuping gave her son a piece of fish and at the same time gave Feng Zhenchang a little slap on the back for his rambling speech.
'It's better than his!'
'Brother, how can I not laugh when I hear you compare your Chinese to a foreigner's?' Cai Hong couldn't help laughing when she heard his words.
Forget it, I won't argue with these women whose hair is long but their knowledge is short. Feng Zhenchang then switched to talking about climbing the Oriental Pearl Tower. However, the photos had not yet been developed, and his ability to tell the story was almost lacking in firepower, so he could not bring everyone to the scene. The listeners could only feel a sense of nostalgia, that the building was really tall!
Feng Zhenchang suddenly felt like he was playing the lute in front of a group of cows.
'Brother, as you said, if this transfer is successful, how much money can we get?' Yes, that is what everyone is concerned about.
'I'm not sure exactly, but a few hundred thousand yuan,' Feng Yiping said vaguely. He really didn't know either, and in this line of work, since he was considered a pioneer, there was no precedent to compare with.
'So there's no problem buying a house in Shanghai?'
'I think there shouldn't be a problem, but I have plans for the money.'
'You're not buying a house at such a young age, and what are you going to do with such a large sum of money? You're not saying you don't want to, are you?' Feng Yuxuan asked discontentedly. The adults, especially Mei Qiuping, had their bowls on the table at this point and looked at him with incomprehension.
'I want to start a company that develops software. I think if I invest all this money, it will just be enough to get the business off the ground.'
'Software? What is it?' Mei Qiuping asked.
'It's for computers!' This, Mei Yiliang knew.
Well, it can't be said that his brother-in-law was wrong.
'Can you make a profit?' Feng Zhenchang asked.
'If you do a good job, you can make a lot of money; if you do an average job, you can make some money; if you do a bad job, you can still save some money in the future.' This was Feng Yiping's honest opinion.
'That's not a safe investment, son. Think again. Your sister is right. Even if you use the money to buy a flat, it's a sure-fire business!' Mei Qiuping advised him.
'Exactly, it's better to buy a flat than to invest in something so unpredictable,' Feng Yuxuan still remembered Feng Yiping's words and wanted to become a Shanghainese.
'Yes, it's better to think about it more. Buying a shopfront is not a bad idea. I think the one on Xueyuan Road might be able to be bought,' Feng Zhanchang said.
At the critical moment, Cai Hong came out in support of him, 'Brother, sister, you'd better listen to Yiping first. How he spends it is his business!'
'Yes, let Yiping tell us first. What is that software of yours?' Mei Yiliang also said.
In order to make them understand, Feng Yiping really had to organise his words well. "I want to develop this software for businesses. Just like using it at home in a noodle shop, mom and dad can then use a computer at home to click a few times and see that they can know how much each item has been bought so far in that shop, how many customers" orders have not been served yet, which employee is cleaning the tables, what kind of noodles the chef in the kitchen is cooking, how many eggs purchased from the three poultry and egg stores in the farmers' market are in the second compartment on the left of the third shelf in the kitchen storage, and how long it will be before the eggs need to be delivered to that restaurant, how many wheat cakes are left in the wheat cake machine, how many dried vegetables are inside, how many pickled vegetables are inside...'.
The group of people were all listening in a daze, so Feng Yiping had to relate it to reality. 'It means that after each store is installed with this, even if you don't go to the store, you can know the real-time situation of each store. Those who want to do something wrong will no longer be able to do anything, and they won't be able to steal any money.'
This is a straightforward way of putting it, but no one quite understands it. Feng Yiping has to elaborate a little more: 'We currently have a dozen stores in the provincial capital, which are relatively concentrated. You can drive around the whole area in less than a day. Suppose we have 110 stores all over the country. How would we manage that? And what if we expand overseas in the future? Wouldn't the store managers definitely try to make extra money on the side with their subordinates?' In order to convince his parents, Feng Yiping has to focus on the money.
'I still don't understand!' Feng Yuxuan was the first to shake her head.
'I don't really understand either, but what Yiping said sounds pretty good. If it really works out that way, won't it be a lot easier for you guys in the future?'
'I don't understand either, but, brother and sister, I think that since three years ago until now, everything Yiping has said has been pretty reliable. That thing you guys want to sell to the Americans in Shanghai might just be what he's been working on for this. Since he wants to do it, let him. We adults can't help, but we can't hold things back either!'
Not only is the reality show's copyright for this, but the novel he sent to his brother's publishing house to be published is also for this. My brother and sister-in-law understand me! Feng Yiping silently praised the two of them in his heart.
'But you're still in high school, and starting a company at such a critical time could affect your studies, and then the losses would outweigh the gains.' Feng Zhenchang didn't want his son to fail in college in the future.
'It won't affect me. I'm not doing the actual work, I'm just looking for someone who is professional to do it.'
'Let's see how much money we can make from the Americans this time!' Mei Qiuping gave Feng Zhenchang a look.
Well, although they haven't given their explicit consent, at least they don't oppose it now. It's also true that it's normal for parents to be cautious about something that important, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There's a saying that technology makes human progress, and Feng Yiping has a crooked theory that laziness makes technological progress.
Think about whether this is true. Focusing on the theme of making things easier and more comfortable for ourselves, how much technological innovation have we all driven?
Of course Feng Yiping wanted to make money, a lot of money, but he didn't want to work too hard, day and night, just for money. Just as our country later came up with the slogan, 'Faster and better development,' Feng Yiping also wanted to make a lot of money with less effort.
His extravagant wish was not a daydream. In this era of impending information technology, a suitable enterprise management system can help managers save a lot of trouble.
So, what Feng Yiping wanted to do was an enterprise management system, which would later be referred to as the 'ERP' system.
The history of the development of this system is not long. Initially, it only served manufacturing enterprises. Its predecessor was the order point method proposed by some Western industrial powers in the 1940s to solve the problem of factory inventory control. With the development of computer systems, inventory ordering plans were developed on the original basis, and then spread to the management of procurement, inventory, production, and sales. Then, modules such as finance and engineering technology were gradually added. However, it is still mainly oriented towards comprehensive planning and management of internal enterprise resources.
It was only in the early 1990s, that is, in these few years, that it gradually developed into a management idea of how to effectively utilise and manage overall resources, that is, ERP, Enterprise Resources Planning, which is Chinese for enterprise resource planning, and is enterprise management software that covers the integrated management of material resources (logistics), human resources (people flow), financial resources (financial flow), and information resources (information flow).
At this stage, only some large domestic machinery manufacturing enterprises, such as some machine tool factories, as well as automobile manufacturers such as FAW, Shanghai Volkswagen, Guangzhou Peugeot Citro?n, and enterprises like Chengfei, have introduced these systems from abroad.
However, by the beginning of the next century, domestic software companies had also developed some ERP systems with independent intellectual property rights, and they became popular in China. The industries that used them were not limited to large manufacturing enterprises, but spread to all aspects, such as government, finance, electricity, petroleum, chemical industry, and service industry, etc. Medium-sized enterprises and even some small enterprises with a small scale also used systems with fewer modules.
Therefore, a popular saying later was, 'not using an ERP system is waiting to die, and using an ERP system is looking for death.'
Why not implementing an ERP system is waiting for death? To put it simply, because those companies that have successfully implemented an ERP system have been able to improve efficiency by at least a few tens of percent and significantly reduce costs. If companies in the same industry do not follow suit, they are just waiting to be driven out of the market.
Why is going live with an ERP system a death sentence? Going live with this system is a very complicated matter, not simply a matter of adding some hardware and then installing the software and calling it a day. Apart from anything else, first of all, it has to be accompanied by process optimisation. In an established enterprise, process optimisation is equivalent to major surgery, and if it goes wrong, it can be very damaging.
And the cost is also considerable, from the initial consultation, investment in hardware and software, staff training, to the subsequent maintenance, it is a long-term, costly undertaking.
For example, Guangzhou Mark spent 20 million francs on building this system, but in the end it was unsuccessful and they withdrew from the market a few years later.
What's more, as anyone who has experienced it knows, when a company carries out an ERP system transformation, the endless project implementation, endless overtime and training can really exceed the tolerance of the average person. It's not unlikely that before the system is even finished, half of the staff will have already left.
Feng Yiping thought that, since he hadn't started anything yet and no domestic software company had launched the project yet, he should gather a group of people to work on it first. If they succeeded, it would be best to use it from the start of his own business, so that he wouldn't have to make changes later.
Moreover, just for software alone, the price can range from tens of thousands to millions of RMB for different versions targeting different companies. The core is more or less the same, just with some adjustments and optimisations based on the actual situation of the company.
If you can't develop it yourself, you can try to be an agent for foreign software, and you can make a lot of money by coaching companies to use this system, from pre-sales consulting, intermediate guidance, to post-sales maintenance.
If you can't be an agent, then when your own company finally uses this system, at least you'll have a few people who know what they're doing, and you'll save a lot of money on post-sales maintenance.