SPG，Group Enterprise Comprehensive Budget Management: A Case Exemplar_Customers_北京智达方通科技有限公司

Established on August 6, 2019, and headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong Port Group (SPG) is a major provincial state-owned enterprise. It comprises four port operating groups—Qingdao Port Group, Rizhao Port Group, Yantai Port Group, and Bohai Bay Port Group—as well as three listed companies: Qingdao Port, Rizhao Port, and Rizhao Port Yulong. Additionally, SPG oversees 13 specialized business segments including financial services, port construction, port-city integration, logistics and shipping, cruise tourism, equipment manufacturing, trade, technology, overseas development, vocational education, and healthcare.

SPG has established an integrated and coordinated development structure described as “led by Qingdao Port, supported by Rizhao Port and Yantai Port as two wings, expanded through Bohai Bay Port, bolstered by various segment groups, and backed by numerous inland ports.” The group operates 21 major port areas with over 330 productive berths and more than 310 container shipping routes.

▌ Building a Multi-Level, Multi-Caliber Budget Management System to Strengthen Group-Wide Financial and Business Data Sharing

With the overarching goal of “accelerating the construction of a world-class oceanic port,” SPG is capitalizing on new development phases and digital transformation opportunities to enhance its overall competitiveness and comprehensive influence. Since 2015, SPG has been upgrading its comprehensive budget management system to achieve dynamic and efficient internal management. Intcube EPM has been deployed across its four port groups and 13 business segments, establishing it as one of the core platforms for financial management.

As the consulting and implementation partner, Intcube conducted in-depth analysis of SPG’s current budget management status and requirements. Leveraging experience from comprehensive budget digitalization projects with other industry clients, Intcube developed a unified budget compilation, review, consolidation, offset, and reporting system tailored to the diverse needs of SPG’s various groups and business units. By implementing a dual-caliber budgeting system—both management and statutory—the platform enables user-input management data and automatic sharing and analysis of statutory entity data based on management data. This has facilitated the establishment of a group-level financial sharing center, embedding comprehensive budget management into daily operations.

▌ Enabling Group EPM Management Upgrade Through Budget Preparation and Execution Control

As China’s first pilot unit for building a “smart port” under the national strategy to strengthen transportation power, SPG places high importance on technological innovation and actively promotes the application of financial shared services. Intcube adopted a holistic, phased, and incremental implementation approach centered on “budgeting” and “accounting,” using the “Execution Control Center” as a bridge to integrate business flows across various systems. This meets SPG’s horizontal and vertical digital management needs for comprehensive budgeting and empowers the group’s EPM upgrade.

Building a Comprehensive Budget Management Platform Balancing Uniformity and Flexibility

Given varying levels of budget management maturity across segments, Intcube EPM accommodates both unified group-wide (common) and subsidiary-specific (individual) requirements. While adhering to group-level common standards, the system supports hierarchical deployment for secondary groups and subsidiaries to address unique management needs. This enables differentiated budget preparation, execution control, and forecasting analysis across business units. With group headquarters acting as the central command, subsidiaries can flexibly configure budget management tasks based on business needs, gradually refining a business-plan-driven financial budgeting system.

Open Interfaces and Flexible Expansion

Using Intcube’s standard budget control service functions, bidirectional integration has been achieved with the group’s financial sharing system and Rizhao’s reimbursement system. seamless connections have also been established with investment, contract, accounting, fund management, and business travel platforms. This breaks down barriers between business units and between business and finance, promoting efficient collaboration across operational lines and enabling group-wide dynamic control and decision-making.

Unified Management and Comprehensive Control  

In line with the group’s shared service center planning, a unified budget execution control strategy and data mid-end platform have been established. These support service configuration, querying, control, registration, and auditing, ensuring that the budget execution control center is configurable, visible, manageable, controllable, and auditable.

Autonomous Control, Security, and Reliability  

The comprehensive budget management solution, built on a proprietary multidimensional database, ensures SPG’s autonomy and control over core technology. Multidimensional modeling restructures the enterprise management framework, integrating strategic planning, business planning, budget preparation, execution control, budget adjustment, and financial analysis into a unified process. This significantly enhances data security and reliability while accelerating the mining of enterprise data value.

Using comprehensive budget management as a core tool and unified data standards, SPG’s financial shared service management platform has established a dynamic, business-driven and full-scope comprehensive budget management system. This achieves digital operation and management for SPG, supports dynamic and visual group-wide objectives, improves precision control and decision-making capabilities, and provides a first-mover advantage in building a smart port.