Stepping Forward to a World-Class Corporate University ―An interview with Chen Jianzhou, Dean of ZTE University

ZTE University stands on the east coast of Shenzhen, a prosperous coastal city in southern China. It is a corporate university founded by leading telecommunication equipment and network solutions provider, ZTE Corporation. Relying on technical strength, advanced training facilities, standardized training management, and a team of excellent lecturers, the university has attracted learners from all over the world who are eager to learn telecommunications knowledge and advanced management ideas. Recently, reporter Zhao Lili of ZTE TECHNOLOGIES interviewed Chen Jianzhou. Now, let’s dive into this corporate university on the beautiful seashore.

Clear Orientation Creates Better Value for Internal and External Customers

Drawing on many years of experience in the training industry, Chen Jianzhou explained three key elements necessary for building a corporate university. These elements include correct orientation, clear internal and external service-driven mechanisms, and continual building of core competency to improve services. So how does ZTE University make its orientation clear and improve its value?

Chen Jianzhou told us that the university is committed to providing professional training, documentation, and consultancy services to ZTE and its cooperators, and to build strategic cooperative partnerships. Currently, the university operates three kinds of businesses: training, documentation, and hotel. The training business comprises ZTE staff training, and external customer training, both of which employ technical and/or management training according to specific needs.

The documentation business also consists of two parts: general user-orientated documentation and customized documentation. The former is delivered to customers in conjunction with ZTE products, while the latter focuses on specific projects, and is under full-process management.

The last business is our hotel business, which differs from an ordinary hotel business. It offers facilities such as classrooms, projectors, audio, and print materials, thereby satisfying specific training needs. ZTE University has been in existence for seven years, and its responsibilities have been continually expanded during this time. Apart from these three major businesses, ZTE University also assists ZTE in its effort towards globalization, which involves building up an English working environment, implementing English certification, and offering English training.

A major change for the university, occurring in 2009, was the introduction of market-oriented services. Market-oriented services are designed to enhance the company’s brand image and push forward its services marketing through value-added training and services contracts. “We have attracted income to ZTE after promoting service contracts in 2009. We have also made contributions towards furthering the company’s services marketing; in particular, our training courses on management and advanced techniques have strengthened our communication and exchanges with high-level customers. The management training we offered to high-level leaders of a telecom operator in China, for example, played an important role in its service transformation, helping them to strengthen business vitality and improve operational efficiency,” said Chen Jianzhou.

In addition to training, documentation also plays an important role in ZTE and partner organizations. Some high-end operators pay great attention to documentation detail and usually ask for customized documentation. For example, in a cooperative project with a Hong Kong mobile operator, the university successfully developed customized documentation for them through project operation management. The project itself was complicated for it involved 2G/3G network swapping and convergence, a feature which posed great difficulties to the process of document production. Therefore, the university promptly assigned documentation managers to the project site and set up a full-process documentation delivery team. Employing such joint efforts, the team was able to supply satisfactory documents to the operator.

In addition to its external customers, ZTE University is also responsible for training the company’s staff and management leaders. Training classes are arranged annually for management leaders at all levels, and have played a significant role in deepening their understanding and encouraging the implementation of company policies and strategies.

Learning-Oriented Hotels Open Up New Business Model Opportunities

The hotel industry occupies a central place in the working and daily lives of many people — especially business people. A person’s time can generally be spent at home, in the company, or on a journey. When on a journey, people usually require the services of a hotel, and commercial hotels are the most common type of hotels used for business and other purposes.

When asked to describe learning-oriented hotels, an idea put forward by ZTE University, Chen Jianzhou gave us a clear answer. He said that there could be many types of hotels with different market orientations, such as commercial hotels, convenience hotels, and learning-oriented hotels. ZTE’s learning-oriented hotels aim to create a truly people-oriented learning environment that can meet training needs. The concept of learning-oriented hotels put forward three years ago is different to that of commercial hotels.

Learning-oriented hotels are designed to create a convenient environment for learners.  Signboards inside the hotels, for instance, are different to those in other hotels. The learning-oriented hotel in Dameisha, Shenzhen, has clear signboards that guide learners from lobby to classroom, dining room, and guest room, and provide specific information about classes, dining, and rest time. Each guest room is equipped with reference books for learning, and high-speed Internet access, which allows learners to browse the university website and communicate with one another. The hotel also has a book bar where learners can borrow or check out learning materials. Consumption and entertainment facilities unrelated to learning, such as sauna and department stores, are not available in the hotel. Moreover, we are actively exploring new methods of classroom management, and new designs that will improve ease of use in lecture rooms, discussion rooms, and library. Overall, we focus on learning as a key concept when building and operating our learning-oriented hotels.

Strengthening the Construction of Overseas Training Centers 

With the continuous expansion of ZTE’s business around the world, the globalization of training has also become a necessary task, and an important direction of development for ZTE University. It has been four years since ZTE University started to build overseas training centers in 2005. Overseas training centers not only facilitate learning for both local ZTE employees and overseas customers, but also contribute to the promotion of skills of the local population.

On this point, Chen Jianzhou provides valuable insight. First of all, the business of ZTE University serves the company’s strategy, so its domestic and overseas operations are in line with the company’s strategy. We will continue to develop overseas training centers based on the following needs:

First, overseas training centers are necessary to meet the training needs of overseas customers. In most cases, customers require the company to provide relevant technical training when signing contracts. It is often impractical for the customer to send all its employees to China for training; therefore, 80% of customers ask for local training delivery. This means that in the future, we will need more of our own facilities, and resources such as teachers, classrooms, organizers and accommodation. Customers from developing countries sometimes even ask us to assist them in establishing their own technical centers in a bid to strengthen the capability of their employees.

Second, overseas training centers are necessary to meet the needs of our company. ZTE now employs several thousand international staff in its overseas offices. They also need to expand their knowledge and develop relevant skills. However, most are located outside China, so the challenge for ZTE University is to meet their learning needs. Considering all the differences between countries and languages, how should we reasonably arrange training?

Third, there are needs centered on documentation. Standardized documents provided with each ZTE product line have become incapable of fully meeting the customization requirements of our clients. In particular, some high-end customers require documents to be exactly consistent with their on-site equipment. So some documents need to be developed locally. In addition, the company’s international employees also need access to documentation, even if they have already received relevant training, as the transmission of routine information relies mainly on documents.

Fourth, there exists the need to train overseas university students. Through training, ZTE pools local telecom talent and provides these students with job opportunities, which also helps expand the company’s local brand and reputation.

Since 2006, we have established 10 overseas training centers in countries as diverse as Ethiopia, India, France, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, Algeria, Egypt, Columbia and Mexico. The training centers in Ethiopia, India, France and Brazil have also been upgraded to overseas divisions. They are called overseas divisions because they not only provide standard training, but also manage document production and other responsibilities of the university. 

With respect to training bases, besides the Dameisha training base in Shenzhen, we will establish new bases in Shanghai, Nanjing, Xi’an and Sanya, China, in 2010 to alleviate the mounting pressure on Shenzhen, and to offer greater convenience and more courses to learners. We also plan to establish overseas training bases for the first time in Ethiopia and France.

With the gradual development of overseas training centers, ZTE University has is not only meeting the company’s internal and external learning and training needs, but is also contributing to the improvement of knowledge and employment among local people. The company’s leader once stated that the biggest social responsibilities of an enterprise are firstly to pay tax, secondly to reduce unemployment, and finally to contribute to the industry and field you are in. In the communications industry, for example, a business’s responsibility might be to construct high-quality communications networks worldwide. Apart from this, there also exist other types of social responsibilities, such as protecting the environment.

For ZTE University, a core social responsibility is to train learners and facilitate the transfer of knowledge. Knowledge is a kind of productive force. China advocates invigorating the country through science and education, the core of which is knowledge. The aim of education is to cultivate talents, and the core value of knowledge is reflected through people. This process is dynamic and so must be the dissemination of education and training. The dissemination of knowledge drives competition, and is a central tenet of social responsibility. Improving the capabilities an individual enhances the capability of a team as a whole, and the overall capability of society.

Take the training center in Bandung, Indonesia as an example. It has been a very successful endeavour. The center trains customers and ZTE staff, publicly recruits local learners, and trains local talents. It has received a positive response from the local society. A great number of university students and those seeking re-employment have all registered actively. As for those with outstanding academic performance, ZTE has chosen to directly hire them. In this way, ZTE is annually contributing to the development of a large number of talented individuals within the local Bandung area, while providing many job opportunities — which has positive flow-on effects for the wider society.

Plans for the Future Based on the Vision

Speaking on the vision and future plans of ZTE University, Chen Jianzhou was very pragmatic and clear- minded. “ZTE’s vision is to become a world-class enterprise in the telecom industry. As a corporate university within ZTE, it also aims to be a first-class corporate university within the industry. Driven by such an ambitious goal, we can plan our future in a scientific way. Our university will serve as an efficient and advanced knowledge-service platform that can directly contribute to the company’s business growth. This is our overall orientation,” said Chen Jianzhou. “On this platform, we will launch training, documentation, and learning related software development, as well as consultancy services and interactive businesses related to knowledge transfer. It is a challenge for us, because we not only need to keep abreast of the company’s internal and external environments, but also the most advanced knowledge, methods, and means within the telecommunications industry.”

Chen Jianzhou added that it is very important for the university to effectively integrate internal and external resources to push forward the goal together. For example, engaging professionals in developing or teaching training courses is an important consideration. Such professionals might not work in the university, but in another department of the company or even outside the company.  Attracting individuals who are skilled in both theory and practice to ZTE University is a challenge.

Indeed, how to integrate all resources, correctly understand internal and external environments, and offer better service is a challenge for ZTE. Moving into the future, we intend to stick to our original development direction, that is, we will continue to actively expand our knowledge service systems and improve the capabilities of individuals, while pressing for the construction of training bases at home and abroad. We will set key projects according to the company’s strategy and provide high-quality training and documentation through our efficient operations to meet diverse training needs. Moreover, we will actively expand our development space, integrate our resources, and pay close attention to the training field, with the view of building ZTE University into a corporate university of global excellence.