SAP AG, the German enterprise resource planning vendor, has won a contract with Volkswagen AG, the German automobile manufacturer to provide six human resourcing modules for its car making plants in Germany. The HR extensions to Volkswagen’s R/3 systems will manage over 100,000 employees and 50,000 retired staff.
Although the HR modules are standard ones, says Jurgen Kielisch, SAP’s HR sales representative, the auto maker will make changes to the systems itself, mainly in the field of time management. Volkswagen has a complicated salary system involving a life-long account which allows workers to log overtime to retire early. SAP will use its own services arm, SAP Consulting, for implementing the HR modules.
The car manufacturer is a big customer for SAP. Gunther Seehorsch, global account executive for the Volkswagen account, puts it in the top ten of all SAP clients, although the ERP firm declines to give any figures on how much the contract is worth. The relationship between the two companies dates back ten years and encompasses Volkswagen’s global operations throughout South America, North America, Europe and the Far East. SAP has installed some 200 systems for Volkswagen, 90%, according to Seehorsch, have been the R/3 model.
