As the special campaign for listed company governance advances in depth, the regulatory requirement to guide qualified listed firms to strengthen the integration of business and financial systems is being translated into corporate governance practices.

Reporters from the Shanghai Securities News recently interviewed Guizhou-based listed enterprises including Qianyuan Power and Zhongwei New Materials. It was found that business-finance integration is no longer merely an information technology project led by the finance department, but a systematic undertaking involving organization, processes, performance assessment, talent development and risk prevention and control.

Driven and guided by the Guizhou Securities Regulatory Bureau, multiple listed companies under its jurisdiction are elevating business-finance integration from an “IT project” to a “governance project”. Financial logic is embedded into frontline business operations, and data truly serves as the basis for decision-making by management and operational teams.

From Isolated Systems to Unified Data Sources

Field investigations reveal that the main difficulty of business-finance integration lies not in technology itself, but in breaking organizational barriers and statistical discrepancies behind “data silos”.

To resolve the long-standing problem of inconsistent narratives between business and finance, fragmented data sources and numerous standalone systems, the surveyed enterprises generally regard building a unified data foundation as their priority. They press ahead along three main lines simultaneously: system transformation, process reengineering and organizational collaboration, ensuring every piece of operational data is traceable at source and visible throughout its lifecycle.

Jin Dong, Member of the Party Committee and Chief Accountant of Qianyuan Power, stated that given the scattered hydropower stations and widely spread subordinate entities, the company opted not to replace its existing systems entirely. Instead, it built an intelligent data middle platform to connect interfaces across production, materials management, contracts, invoices, current accounts and other systems, and unify master data and statistical standards. For remote sites, a lightweight deployment model of “central headquarters middle platform plus simple mobile operations at grassroots sites” was adopted. Budget and cash flow controls are finely broken down to individual power stations and single photovoltaic projects.

“After the company enables automatic synchronization of frontline production, procurement and construction data with financial systems, every accounting voucher can be traced back to original business records. A full-cycle control chain featuring pre-project estimation, in-process monitoring and post-implementation review has gradually taken shape, reducing accounting deviations caused by manual statistics at the source,” said Cao Hua, Director of the Finance and Assets Department of Qianyuan Power. At present, the automation rate of corporate financial statements exceeds 95%. Financial control has also been moved forward from post-hoc accounting to business initiation links such as investment review, project cost evaluation and asset capitalization.

Zhongwei New Materials took the upgrade of its core business system as the starting point, unified accounting standards and data specifications, promoted the interconnection of business flows, information flows and accounting flows, and realized unified data sources, visible processes and full traceability. Meanwhile, the company broke down financial and economic processes layer by layer, assigned responsibilities to specific posts, established an authorization system with matching rights, obligations and interests, and solidified management standards into institutional assets for continuous iteration.

“Business-finance integration does not mean building another independent system. It takes unified data sources as the foundation, embedded processes as the pathway and institutional frameworks as the guarantee, enabling financial and business logics to operate within one unified network,” said Zou Chang, Chief Financial Officer of Zhongwei New Materials.

From Post-hoc Accounting to a “Decision Dashboard”

Business-finance integration is a long-term initiative. Separating the disconnection between business and finance is only the first step. Its real value lies in supporting business decision-making and preventing and defusing risks.

Practical results from these companies show that data connectivity not only boosts efficiency and cuts costs, but also moves risk control forward and grounds operational decisions in data. It provides underlying support for the authenticity, accuracy and completeness of information disclosure.

It is learned that Qianyuan Power breaks down budgets down to a daily granularity, achieving a fund matching accuracy of 95% and keeping budget execution deviations within 3%. From 2021 to 2025, the company delivered “four declines”: lower interest-bearing liabilities, asset-liability ratio, financial expenses and comprehensive financing cost. Its comprehensive financing cost dropped from 4.45% to 2.81%. In 2025, the voucher automation rate reached 97%, document processing cycles were shortened to 0.5 days, fund utilization efficiency rose by 35%, and financial expenses were cut by 65.5989 million yuan.

Risk prevention and control has also been moved upstream. Powered by cross-system automatic verification via RPA robots, Qianyuan Power issued early warnings for 125 matured payable/receivable items and achieved zero overdue current accounts. In 2025, the company handled 60 risk alerts with a 100% timely disposal rate.

Data does not only serve risk mitigation, but also feeds back into business operations. Zhongwei New Materials deployed business finance teams across procurement, production, sales, R&D and other business chains, shifting finance from back-office accounting to front-line empowerment and from post-event review to pre-event participation. Business actions are embedded into system nodes. When staff initiate procurement, sign orders or arrange production scheduling, they apply unified cost standards and profit calculation logic, allowing business and finance teams to share one common “data language”.

“What management sees is no longer static aggregated reports, but an operational dashboard that identifies problems and triggers actionable responses,” Zou Chang noted. The company has closed the loop of “data – insight – action – feedback”. Business analysis is drilled down to the product, customer and order dimensions, and analytical outputs directly feed operational decisions including pricing, production scheduling, inventory management and credit granting.

Focus on Outcomes Rather Than Quantity

With the basic platform in place, how to further deepen business-finance integration with new technologies and form long-term mechanisms has become a key task for the next stage.

When talking about future plans, Cao Hua outlined a clear roadmap. Qianyuan Power intends to expand the scope and depth of RPA application to scenarios such as project settlement, asset inventory, electricity price calculation and tax declaration. It will tap the value of big data analytics to build operational forecasting models for hydro and solar power output prediction, investment benefit assessment and rolling cost forecasting. It also plans to explore large language models for intelligent generation of operational reports, smart identification of risk red flags and automated review of financial clauses in contracts.

Zhongwei New Materials also focuses on long-term development. Centered on the integration of “business, finance and technology”, the company prioritizes intelligent analysis and forecasting, process automation, data assetization and full-domain intelligent risk control. It will build a closed-loop mechanism for risk identification, assessment, early warning and rectification, driving management toward forward-looking prediction and intelligent decision-making.

For three common industry challenges: inconsistent data standards, fragmented systems that are hard to connect, and shortages of interdisciplinary talent, several industry insiders interviewed put forward suggestions. First, data should be generated at the business source. Core master data including suppliers, projects and assets shall be unified to realize “one-time maintenance, full-system synchronization”. Statistical standards for production, engineering and finance need alignment, and data quality should be incorporated into two-way performance appraisal. The middle platform embeds reconciliation and validation rules to automatically alert anomalies and close loops through joint rectification. Second, existing legacy systems should not be fully replaced blindly. Instead, an enterprise-level intelligent data middle platform or core system can serve as the hub to connect interfaces and renovate legacy modules, breaking data silos at minimal cost. Third, talent development should rely mainly on internal cultivation rather than external recruitment. Measures including two-way job rotation, a three-tier talent reserve pool, incentives tied to assessment and professional title promotion, business-finance integration labs and cross-disciplinary training can foster local professionals with both business and financial expertise.

From system interconnection to organizational restructuring, from upstream risk control to intelligent decision-making, the business-finance integration practices of Guizhou listed companies demonstrate that this is not a simple informatization project, but a four-in-one systematic engineering covering organizational mechanisms, processes and rules, digital technologies and talent teams. To evaluate its effectiveness, we should not count system modules, but measure improvements in operational transparency, resource allocation efficiency and risk resilience. As the governance special campaign deepens, explorations by enterprises such as Qianyuan Power and Zhongwei New Materials are building referable and replicable governance models for Guizhou and more similar listed firms nationwide.

Source: Shanghai Securities News