Intcube EPM Solution: Decoding the Budgeting and Expense Control Challenges in the Electronic Information Industry_Trends_北京智达方通科技有限公司

As enterprises accelerate the digital and intelligent integration transformation of comprehensive budgeting and expense control, the development of China's electronic information industry has achieved remarkable results. By deeply integrating AI, big data, and cloud computing technologies, EPM systems have evolved from traditional reporting tools into intelligent decision-making platforms, achieving a dual leap in real-time budget preparation and forecast accuracy. However, new challenges follow closely. Currently, the intelligence level of most electronic information enterprises in the market remains at an early stage. Issues such as data silos, system integration difficulties, and high technology costs have become key challenges constraining their development. Continuously iterating and upgrading EPM systems, now in more advanced forms, are strengthening causal analysis and real-time scenario simulation capabilities. They are not only becoming the core support for corporate strategic simulations but will also help the electronic information industry build a credible data ecosystem, promoting its transition from a cost controller to a value creator.

Management Pain Points in the Electronic Information Industry in a Volatile Environment

● Data Silos and System Integration Difficulties

Enterprises typically possess multiple independent information systems such as ERP, OA, CRM, and various business platforms. Due to inconsistent data standards and non-interoperable interfaces between these systems, key data required for budget management—such as project costs, sales expenses, and manpower inputs—is difficult to automatically and real-time aggregate, heavily relying on manual integration. This leads to insufficient timeliness and accuracy of data.

● Budget Preparation Agility Disconnected from Business

Facing rapid technological and market changes, traditional annual budget preparation suffers from long cycles and rigid adjustments, making it difficult to respond agilely to the dynamic needs of new businesses and projects. Budget targets often disconnect from the actual pace and uncertainties of frontline business operations, resulting in budgets being "outdated upon completion."

● Weak Process Control, Lagging Execution and Analysis

Expense control in many enterprises still remains at the "post-expense reimbursement" stage, lacking real-time, flexible control over the application stage before business activities occur and the payment stage during occurrence. Budget execution analysis is also mostly retrospective, unable to provide early warnings and intervention during the process. The absence of control tools makes it difficult for management intentions to be effectively implemented.

● Insufficient Level and Depth of Intelligent Application

Although new technologies have been introduced, many enterprise systems still focus on process automation. Regarding aspects such as forecast accuracy (e.g., marketing expense effectiveness prediction), intelligent identification of abnormal expenses, preemptive risk insight, and dynamic decision support based on multi-dimensional data, the depth of intelligent application remains insufficient. The added management value urgently needs further exploration.

● Difficulties in Cost Refined Accounting and Allocation

The electronic information industry is characterized by project-based operations and a high proportion of R&D investment. Accurately allocating R&D expenses and indirect operational costs to specific product lines, projects, or customers to support precise profitability analysis and performance evaluation is a core challenge for Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) in achieving value management. This places extremely high demands on data granularity and accounting rules.

Building a Comprehensive Budget Management and Expense Control Platform for All Staff, the Entire Process, and All Aspects

The Intcube EPM system upgrades budgeting and expense control from the finance department's "post-facto recording tool" to an "real-time management dashboard" for business operations. This is achieved by deeply integrating business systems, strengthening process control, empowering agile finance, and enabling refined accounting, providing direct support for lean enterprise operations and efficient decision-making. Relying on its deeply integrated functional system, Intcube is committed to building a budget management and expense control platform for enterprises that involves all staff, covers the entire process, and enables all-round collaboration, precisely solving the core pain points currently faced by the electronic information industry.

● Breaking Down Data Silos, Achieving Automatic Business-Finance Data Linkage

The system seamlessly connects with enterprise systems such as ERP (e.g., Kingdee, Yonyou), OA, CRM, and project management systems through pre-configured connectors, automatically extracting business data like project hours, purchase orders, and contract payments. This enables business departments to rely on historical actual cost data when preparing R&D project budgets; finance departments can also grasp the business context of each expense in real-time without manually consolidating multiple Excel spreadsheets.

● Supporting Agile Budgeting to Respond to Rapid Business Changes

The Intcube EPM system features multi-version management and rolling forecast capabilities. For example, when the marketing department applies for an additional marketing budget due to a new product requiring quick market entry, managers can quickly create an "additional forecast version" through the system. Based on the original annual budget, they can conduct simulation adjustments, clearly showing the impact of the adjustment on the company's overall profit target. This enables flexible on-demand adjustments and rapid decision-making, ensuring the budget remains synchronized with the business rhythm.

● Shifting from Post-facto Control to Intelligent Mid-process and Pre-process Control

The system moves control points forward to the stage where business activities occur. For instance, when an employee submits a travel application or a purchase contract, the system performs real-time validation of the available budget for that department or project and automatically triggers the approval workflow. At the contract payment stage, the system again automatically executes payment control, achieving "no application without budget, no payment without budget." Simultaneously, the system monitors budget execution rates via real-time dashboards and automatically issues warnings for abnormal overspending.

● Achieving Refined Cost Accounting for Projects and Products

Addressing the characteristic of high R&D investment, the system supports the establishment of multi-dimensional cost models, such as division by product line, project, or R&D phase. After expenses are incurred, they can be automatically allocated to specific R&D projects and products based on predefined rules (e.g., personnel hour proportion), thereby accurately calculating the true gross margin for each chip design project or software product. This provides precise data support for product pricing and project decisions.

● Improving Preparation Efficiency and Automation Level

Leveraging an online collaborative budget preparation platform, the system can digitize the entire process of departmental budget entry, consolidation, and multi-round negotiations. Relying on historical data, it achieves automatic pre-filling, significantly shortening the annual budget preparation cycle. In the expense reimbursement stage, the system can automatically generate accounting vouchers based on business types and rules and push them to the general ledger, effectively improving accounting efficiency and accuracy.

Cross-Industry Practice: The Refined Expense Control Transformation of a Pharmaceutical Enterprise

The value of the Intcube EPM system is not only reflected in the electronic information industry but also plays a key role in the heavily regulated and complex-process pharmaceutical industry. A well-known pharmaceutical enterprise faced management challenges such as high R&D investment, strict compliance requirements for marketing expenses, and disconnection between budget and actual execution. By deploying the Intcube EPM system, the enterprise established a multi-dimensional control model of "R&D project - clinical phase - expense type," enabling real-time R&D cost accounting to support project decisions. The system has built-in compliance rules for the pharmaceutical industry, performing automatic verification and control during the expense application stage to ensure marketing activities are conducted within the budget and compliance framework. Furthermore, integrated with business systems, the system achieved full-process online control from budget preparation, expense application, and approval to payment. Intcube helped this pharmaceutical enterprise deeply integrate budget control into R&D and marketing business scenarios, improving resource usage efficiency while ensuring compliance and strengthening strategic execution capability.

The Intcube EPM system provides a solution for the core challenges in budget management and expense control within the electronic information industry through deep integration and intelligent control. The system effectively breaks down data silos between multiple systems such as R&D, production, and sales, automatically bridges business-finance data like project hours and purchase orders, supports agile budget formulation, and helps enterprises quickly respond to technological iterations and market changes. By moving control points forward to stages like contract signing and expense application, the system achieves pre-process hard constraints of "no execution without budget" and real-time mid-process warnings. Simultaneously, the system supports the construction of multi-dimensional cost models, enabling accurate allocation of R&D expenses and indirect operational costs to product lines, projects, and customer levels, providing solid data support for product pricing and project decisions. This full-process, embedded expense control model drives electronic information enterprises from "passive bookkeeping" to "active value creation," helping them build sustainable competitive advantages in a rapidly changing market environment.