Vienna City Administration Waltzes With SAP

by Alicia Lenze

City of Vienna Leverages SAP(R) ERP to Enhance Public Sector Administration and Maximize Public Value for Its 1.7 Million Residents

,p> SAP AG today kicked off its international customer conference SAPPHIRE(R) '07 in Vienna with the announcement that the Vienna City Administration selected SAP(R) ERP to create a more cost effective and efficient financial management system. The Vienna City Administration, hosting one of the largest computer networks in Europe that connects more than 30,000 employees to serve 1.7 million residents, will use SAP NetWeaver(R) Process Integration as the foundation for the City's electronic billing system. This accounting modernization project is the latest in the Vienna City Administration's relationship with SAP, which goes back to 1999. SAPPHIRE '07 Vienna will bring together SAP customers and partners from throughout the world in Austria's capital from May 14-16 to present how they utilize and benefit from SAP applications to do "business at the speed of change."

"After a thorough evaluation, we selected SAP as it provides us with the tools to move full-steam into the digital age by replacing our labor-intensive batch processing towards an automated accounting system," said Bernd Wunschek, SAP development strategist, City of Vienna. "Processes that historically take a whole day being handled by two people are orchestrated by a centralized Web- based system which determines and posts updates automatically."

After introducing SAP software for its controlling, materials management, and sales and distribution operations in 1999, the Vienna City Administration decided to utilize SAP(R) ERP Financials for the introduction of a citywide paperless financial management system that provides superior asset management and a centralized overview of its partners' receivables and payments. Crucial to the flow of revenue and expenditures throughout government, Vienna's financial management system is estimated to currently process more than 1,600,000 invoices per year. Vienna plans to gradually transition the majority of the city's supplier billings to this SAP installation.

SAP NetWeaver(R) is the uniform technology platform on which the Vienna City Administration is basing its standardized, optimized administrative processes. SAP NetWeaver Process Integration, an evolution of SAP NetWeaver(R) Exchange Infrastructure, manages the overall process of the automatic distribution and administration of suppliers' billings. Suppliers can connect to the city's electronic accounting system via a Web portal, featuring an easy-to-use graphical user interface. The SAP software supports the provision of different billing formats and its content-based routing allows easy identification of the billing recipient. The software validates the signatures and archives the invoices based on pre-determined criteria. The accounting department developed a quality assurance system that verifies execution logs by selected staff members.

"As SAP and thousands of our customers gather in Vienna for our annual SAPPHIRE conference, we are thrilled that our host city continues to select SAP to leverage IT to maximize public value by reducing costs and providing better service to its residents," said Tom Shirk, president, SAP Global Public Services. "We are honored to be part of the city's move towards a value-based administration system, the first stepping stone to a truly transformed government."